I feel like I’ve been training for this my whole life.
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Great perspective…
Update - scratch all I said before 
Now that the weather is warming up in Denver, CO, all the fitness folks are out. (well, ok, EVERYONE is out). The “neighborhood app” that was once coming together has now become a hate-fest. “How DARE people not wear masks outside?!” It has become so bad, some folks resort to personal attacks because another admitted they were not aware of some particular rule (bravery in honesty), or simply because the birth name given to them by their parents (one’s parent’s named an individual “Isreal”, and he/she was attacked simply for that 
)
I notice the sharks swarming but when they circle closely or go in for the kill, I chime in with a “pause!!!” comment along the lines of Bigger Picture. Often using myself as an example of what not to do/what I learned. But this one particular man accused me for “reporting” him (I did not).
The admins gratefully decided the finger-pointing posts were not conducive to the intent behind the forum, which is to connect neighbors. And would block such posts until people pull their panties up.
That didn’t take long. 
Internet Trolls come to mind.
I’ve always said - “how brave are you, really, when not hiding behind your keyboard, bored and angry (i.e. hurt)? Tell me this to my face.” No one takes me up on it, strangely. Now I see the Troll Phenomenon manifest everywhere since folks are locked up with themselves.
Perhaps it’s a side-effect or secondary infection to the Viral Principle.
As the shift goes to “tele-working” - my experience in Corporate-Land was that people get a LOT braver when on the phone vs. face-to-face, and usually not in a nice way. They forget there’s a human at the other end. Hopefully video-conferencing can reduce that.
Yesterday’s experience:
I went to the grocery store (usually when an Rx is ready for pick-up, or I run out of peanut butter). I started feeling anxious, judged (self-judgement) for not following the rules I’m not aware of. This then morphed into wondering if I’ll catch COVID19 which was my 
. I refuse to jump onto that paranoia train!
Trying to use anxiety as a pointer, I felt my feet and tried to feel “grounded.” Relaxed my ever-tense belly. Then gently felt into the anxiety. Behind it was sadness.
A LOT of sad.
I teared up, and my heart opened.
The anxiety shifted/lifted.
Last thought:
I read “when this is over” and other such comments. Then people stop having to wear masks and quarantine goes away for a bit. Everything gets back to “normal” (ha!!!).
The issue is which “Virus” is the true pandemic? “Going Viral” - is good for one’s small business and social media on the plus side. Not so much with the Troll Phenomenon and other mechanisms (“haters gonna hate!” or “brainwashed since birth” etc). And it’s in our face when it is a biological virus that spreads fast.
I still think fear is what’s truly Viral AND pandemic.
On the dream front, I’ve remembered a few when I take afternoon naps. It had to do with a music artist I grew up with.
Uranus conjunct Sun, I’m a rebel at heart but too chicken to upset the herd (or tribe 
). I just discovered a book on this guy and realized he’s kind-of my hero. Not caring what other people thought, not afraid to be himself, clever yet subtle, and very intelligent on world matters from the get-go.
This people pleaser/wallflower is seeing some of her gold projected onto this artist, realized via a dream.
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I was in Portland, Oregon for a new job in March of 1980. It had been recently voted the best place in the US to live and a real-life green paradise. Runners, bikers, surfers, skaters, dancers and mimes proliferated both near and far. The day we arrived Mt. St. Helen’s recorded its first tremor and by the next month it had its first eruption. The initial blast blew all the ash inland and left Portlanders excited to watch the eruption, totally unscathed by any pollutants. However, succeeding eruptions threw blankets of ash over the city so we eventually had to leave, me being an asthmatic and all. However anyone who wore a mask experienced similar reactions as you write about—“How dare you criticize our wonderful city by wearing a mask!” There was a palpable division and hard feelings everywhere.
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Humans are strange animals. 
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Mice can be like that too.
Don’t even mention my cat!! 
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Interesting article: People May Be Remembering More Dreams During the Pandemic: A new survey shows a rise in dream recall, especially among younger people.
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Why, cat got your tongue? 
Yikes. I was going to post this in the Anyone having COVID-19 dreams? thread I started, but currently I’m getting a message saying “Oops! That page doesn’t exist or is private.” Hopefully a temporary glitch. 
So anyway, here is an interesting NYT article: Why Am I Having Weird Dreams Lately?: Because we all are. But know this: You can program your dreams.
Excerpt:
As the new coronavirus’s grip strengthens to a chokehold, waking life itself for many has taken on an odd, dreamlike air. For populations unexpectedly and indefinitely confined to their homes, timekeeping no longer seems staked to the orderly movements of the sun, but tied to a cloud selected at random.
The surreal reality of American cities and towns also mirrors the half-remembered, half-empty approximations explored in sleep, ordered by the same pliable, foggy logic: Masks are pilloried until they are mandatory; liquor stores open early for sexagenarians only; an invisible plague makes people fall gravely ill seemingly at random; touching anything — everything — is banned.
Metaphors and Nightmares
Deirdre Barrett, a psychologist at Harvard Medical School who has spent the past four decades studying dreams, has been in high demand lately. In April alone, she has spoken about dreams to a handful of outlets including The Los Angeles Times, The Cut, Vice and Yahoo! Sports.
In an interview with The New York Times, Dr. Barrett confirmed that many people are having weird dreams. “A ton of bug dreams,” she said.
A few weeks ago, she created a public survey to gather dream data from the pandemic. In it, she asks respondents to describe any dreams they have had that they feel are “related to the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic.” (Participants should also relay whether they have had specific experiences with the virus, in terms of being a health care provider, or having been diagnosed, symptomatic or tested for the disease.)
Dangers and threats that are difficult to visualize — such as abstract fears, or real invisible hazards like a poison gas attack — often cause similar metaphors to appear across the sleeps of concerned dreamers, she said. Tidal waves are common, as are monsters.
Nightmares are widely known to follow in the wake of trauma, and for survivors with post-traumatic stress disorder, the effect is even more pronounced; frequent disturbing dreams are described as a “hallmark” of PTSD.
But Dr. Barrett was quick to emphasize that while many Americans are experiencing the effects of the pandemic as “somewhat as a significant life change” — and might be having unsettling dreams — the circumstances do not, at present, meet the threshold for trauma in most people.
“It’s a stretch to say we’re all being traumatized in the sense that psychology means,” she said.
Experiences of short, intense trauma, said Dr. Barrett — like battle warfare, or working 12-hour shifts at a hospital overwhelmed by Covid-19 patients — “have such inherently vivid specific imagery that goes with the trauma that they are likelier to be dreamed about in a more realistic way.”
The virus-related dreams of, for instance, nurses managing the chaos of the outbreak firsthand might be differentiated from those of the general public by their stark realism — dreams consisting of, in essence, variations of real life scenes from their days, played out in sleep.
“The people that are deciding whether to give a ventilator to one patient or not, who have bodies lined up in their hallways — those people are certainly meeting the usual criteria for what we call acute trauma, and we’d expect to see post traumatic reactions from them,” Dr. Barrett said.
(Those subject to severe trauma dreams may already be experiencing them, if they’re getting adequate sleep. If they’re currently sleep-deprived, the disturbing dreams are more likely to occur down the line, after their schedules have calmed.)
While people whose coronavirus experience consists chiefly of working from home may notice some literal dreams, theirs are, overall, more likely to be less realistic, she said. That doesn’t mean they aren’t related to the topic on everyone’s minds.
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Another interesting article I was going to post in my currently disconcertingly inaccessible Anyone having COVID-19 dreams? thread:
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Interesting. Link still does not work for me, either in Firefox or Chrome. 
~ArthurG
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Nope. Thread doesn’t even show if I do that. In fact, all I see is the General Discussion category, as follows:
Don’t know what’s up, but the forum is glitching for me in two different browsers in a way that is unfortunately interfering with my participation in it.
~ArthurG
Have you cleared your browser cache on each?
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Barry, deleted all cache except for “cookies and other site data.” Installed Microsoft Edge for the first time on this computer, logged in. Same problem as described above under all conditions.
~ArthurG
Time for Andy to do his magic
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In several dreams lately, I was seeing groups of people without masks and it was making me feel concerned for their safety. Then I realized that the next time I see a group of people standing near each other that it will be a dream sign and I will do a state check!
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