My Congresswoman, Jennifer Wexton, had a panel discussion on an topic that is very important to me. I remain scared in my situation not just because of the hypochondriac in my situation but also as I am unpaid next week. I have a second-line manager who is actively trying to fire me for being 75 minutes late when I was stuck in Ubers and Tesla was trying to bankrupt me. I am very stressed right now.
To be clear, my issue is just her having paranoia over SARS-CoV-2 combined with abusive “jealousy” that tries to keep me at home and under her finger which under the Shelter In Place. But my situation is not violent, and I will be alright. I am worried about the mainly women who are with male, physical abusers with no way out. So, please, forget what I’ve said about myself and let’s focus on the real problem here, when women are forced to be with their male abusers 24/7.
Jennifer is joined by Buta Biberaj, Saly Fayez, Mayra Jane Martinez, and Jonathan Yglesias. I was very happy to hear them mention the increased risk factors when an abuser is always home, and how folks who have English as a second language. It was great hearing how Law Enforcement is aware of these issues and are working hard to assess each situation individually and being very mindful of the increased dangers.
One thing I feel most acutely is the problem women face in terms worrying they don’t have enough money to leave. It’s most distressing that it’s money that binds a victim to her abuser, just as a diminishing savings account being the reason I’m stuck. Money has always been a problem for victims to leave, but in this case, her abuser may be unemployed or furloughed, and so money for the whole family is tighter than normal, making things all the more dangerous. What’s worse is with ACTS having to shut down shelters, and with social distancing, it’s been hard to find places to help women in need.
Another serious issues is, without physicians or schools to monitor children to detect child abuse, it means that child abuse is going on under the radar, and thus number are down but there’s no reason to assume incidents are also down.
I’m holding a virtual roundtable discussion on domestic violence during #COVID19 with law enforcement and local service providers.
Tune in right here on Facebook to join us for this important conversation⬇
Ladies, please be safe and know that there is hope, and there are people willing to help. Jennifer is right, you don’t have to live like this. Equal means equal, and we should all be equally free of abuse.
Today, I will be the official Timer for tonight’s Loudoun Toastmasters. Last time, I was on hold to do an Evaluation but the speech maker was ill so instead I was instead without a role. On the upside, it gave me time to consider using my Zoom background to enhance the effect of the Timer role. I was therefore anxious to try it out as soon as possible.
Originally, my dear friend Capt. Laura Savino was planning to be Timer, but, since SARS-CoV-2 she’s been busy hanging out with her wonderful boys as she’s hunkered down, sheltered in place. Hope to see her again after Covidapolis is over. But, in the mean time, for tonight, I’ll be stepping into her role.
The role of the timer is to time how long speeches are and to indicate when time is running out to the speaker. Each speech has a minimum time. When that time is hit, I indicate success with a green background.
The Yellow Card in Toastmasters means you’re met the minimum time requirement
Next, when a speaker is half-way through her or his allotted time, I flash the yellow background.
The Yellow Card in Toastmasters means you’re half-way through your allotted, acceptable time
Finally, when the speaker is out of time, I flash the red background. At this point, the speaker has thirty seconds to wrap up or be disqualified because his or her speech ran too long.
The Red Card in Toastmasters means you’re out of time
I time all speeches, which range from 5–7 minutes for a standard speech, 4–6 minutes for an Ice Breaker speech, 1–2 minutes for a Table Topic speech, and 2–3 minutes for Evaluations.
It all happens tonight. Stand up straight and deliver my friends!
This is going to be one of my hardest articles for me to write because it’s extremely personal. I covered this issue somewhat with my article about Sheltered in Place with a Domestic Abuser, but when you add in the paranoia of hypochondria, things get even darker. So, alas, I need to go deeper.
It’s also hard to justify my including myself in a post that is ostensibly categorized as Equal Right. After all, I am, quite frankly, not—nor could ever be—a cis-woman.
To be clear, when we talk about equal rights, we don’t mean that should apply to more men getting abused. Reducing abuse overall should be our goal. I do think, though, men are feeling more opened about admitting when something doesn’t feel right, when things go from simple disagreement to some of the hallmarks of abuse.
One caller to a domestic violence hotline reported that her husband threatened to throw her out into the street if she coughed. Another reported they had been strangled by their partner, but feared going to the hospital because of the threat of coronavirus. An immunocompromised man from Pennsylvania called in after his emotionally abusive girlfriend began hiding cleaning supplies and hand sanitizer from him.
Fielding, Sarah. “In quarantine with an abuser: surge in domestic violence reports linked to coronavirus.” The Guardian 3 Apr. 2020: Online.
I am very happy Ms. Fielding was able to show, what I consider hypochondriac controlling abuse, isn’t only affecting women. I feel for both the women is tossed onto the street with a cough, and even more for the one who was strangled (way to social distance, m*th*r f*ck*r!). But that poor man being withheld from necessary sanitizing agents, that’s pretty tragic as well.
Advocates are concerned that this bleak reality has reached the United States, where experts say one in four women and one in seven men face physical violence by a partner at some point in their lifetimes.
Fielding, Sarah. “In quarantine with an abuser: surge in domestic violence reports linked to coronavirus.” The Guardian 3 Apr. 2020: Online.
Statistics tell the whole story. While one in four women are likely to be the victims of an abusive relationship, one in seven men are just as likely. So, while women make up the majority of victims, for every two women victims, there is at least one man.
Of course, some may find that hard to believe. How could a big, strong man be abused by a “feeble” woman? But that’s because the ways a woman might try to control or belittle or isolate a man, they are different than what a man might do to a woman. A woman typically won’t use violence against her man, though even if she did, many men are cultured to never raise their hand against a woman, even in self-defense. Many men eschew violence and would never use it to assert themselves. So, assuming a man can always prevent abuse because he’s bigger and stronger totally misses the point of what abuse is all about. Abuse is abuse, regardless of gender.
The crux of my point is that, if you combine a controlling partner, a partner who actively tries to isolate and belittle, with an abuser who is also a hypochondriac, you end of with a cough fit chucking you out on the street—or sequestered in a single room, hoping for some water, not allowed to exit confinement.
I write this from my spare room. I am prohibited from leaving this room because on Tuesday and Wednesday I had a runny nose and the bridge felt so tender, like it had been punched. I had no fever, and I know for a fact that these are not symptoms of SARS-CoV-2, but still I have been ordered not to leave this room, except to use the facilities. If I want something to eat or drink, I must make a request, and be at the whim of the hypochondriac. I may not be out of this room when the hypochondriac is around. And, even if I wanted to leave, #CO2Fre is still at the dealership, so I couldn’t go anywhere even if I wanted.
Nothing is, per se, forcing me to stay here, to be sure. But when you’re told to do something in such a commanding tone, it’s not worth trying to fight your prison sentence. I want to leave my cell, but I am afraid of the consequences if I do without consent. So, here I lie, on this bed, no free chair in the room, wishing to be free but not having the savings to make it so.
And neither do the women and men in Ms. Fielding’s article. That’s the rub.
Only, it’s not.
The National Domestic Abuse Hotline will help. I posted this before but it bears repeating because this is such an important issue and needs to be published. Please, if you are in any danger, call or text the National Domestic Abuse Hotline. They will help.
The Domestic Abuse Hotline statement on SARS-CoV-2. They’re here to help. If you’re in trouble and afraid, please give them a call.
As for me, I was told I could get out of quarantine jail and retrieve #CO2Fre tomorrow. Then again, I was also told that yesterday…
A lot is being said nowadays about how there are more cases of SARS-CoV-2 infections in the United States of America than in any other country, worldwide. The truth is, some countries just have more people than others. Indeed, there are only two counties with greater than a billion people and while China is likely deflating its numbers, India is just not reporting anything anyway. The third biggest nation, though, is these United States.
The United States is the biggest in the class of middle-sized countries, along with Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil, and Nigeria, all with over two hundred million residents. You’d expect any of these top seven nations to have more cases than Nauru and Tuvalu, or even of France and Italy because there are much more people in these top seven countries than there are, by nature, in any of the smaller ones.
The long and short of this is that the proper way to compare infection rates is to do so relative to the population size. For instance, if the numbers are taken per million, you can see which counties are handling Covidapolis better than others. And that is exactly what the following graph shows.
This graph puts SARS-CoV-2 into perspective. A huge country like the United States or China should expect by virtue of just more people to have more cases than Italy. But when compared per million it’s clear that as of now, Italy is worse off, but we are headed there. So please, Shelter in Place, everyone!
As you can see, Italy is still ahead of the United States in terms of infections and mortality in terms of overall population size, but the United States isn’t abating and is on the road to match Italy of folks don’t properly Shelter in Place.
So please, my sapiosexual friends, just stay home.
Our esteemed leader Kevin Sadeghian of the Northern Virginia Tesla Owners Group, like all of us, misses our occasional Tesla meetups. The last time we met, I was late, without #CO2Fre, and had just voted, and so was a bit out of it, not even appearing in the group photo. That was just the start of the Week from Hell for me, which was the same weekend I got a $1,800 bill from Tesla and was at the whim of lackadaisical Uber drivers.
So Kevin, realizing we’re all at home, Sheltering in Place, created a virtual meetup. He took an empty parking lot, with a photo of his Tesla, and invited all of us to photoshop our Tesla in there with him, as if we were actually meeting. Starman, my good friend Mel‘s Tesla Roadster, #PascalTesla from my dear friend Margie Hunter, and many other members.
Unfortunately, because of the events from the Week from Hell. Fast forward to today and with the scare surrounding the Weather and Safety Leave, which I’m still not willing to talk about publicly, I was so afraid when I researched that last weekend that I would not be paid because of some documents I read on the Internet. I thus refused to add #CO2Fre to the photo, decrying that I was worried I would not be able to keep here if I was to go for months without pay on Weather and Safety Leave. I am still facing one week of unpaid leave due to the Week from Hell, bringing the total cost for that seven day nightmare close to $5,000 out of my pocket—not to mention my Hedge Fund has tanked to July 2017, initial levels after just making a $2,300 commission payment in December.
However, when the office confirmed I would be on paid leave, I figured I could in fact weather the storm. I would be bankrupt and #CO2Fre would doublessly be repossessed if one more tragedy befell me, but for now, I’m just okay. And so I put #CO2Fre right next to #PascalTesla.
I love Kurzgesagt on YouTube, and as I was thinking of a way to explain what it means to flatten the curve, I noticed that the channel had just posted an excellent video on both SARS-CoV-2 and on the best way to keep the death toll down. Simply, shelter in place, and follow the instructions in my the post I just linked to.
Overall, I don’t think every Kurzgesagt video is up to the same scientific rigor that I try to maintain for my science posts, but that’s because, like this site as a whole, it’s not entirely a science channel so I can forgive it its minor excursions into Fiction. But this time, they did an excellent job explaining how the virus works, how to keep it at bay, and how to not overwhelm the healthcare system of your nation. Simply put, it’s another in a long list of great videos.
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