Self-distancing is good for the herd

Self-distancing to protect your queer herd from Covid-19? Good for you! The best evidence is currently saying that the more people stay at home and away from other people, the slower the pandemic will spread. The slower the pandemic spreads, the less likely the health system will get overwhelmed and the fewer people will get dangerously ill and require hospitalization, meaning that our hospitals will be able to keep up. We can do this! Our community has a lot of immune-compromised people to protect.

Self-distancing doesn’t have to be lonely

In order to keep from getting lonely or feeling isolated during self-distancing or quarantine, it’s good to reach out to your people. Host a video dance party (host leaves the sound on but everyone else mutes their microphones, or work from a shared playlist on a tool like Spotify), or a group chat with your besties or talk to people one on one.

Here are some ways to do this:

Regular phone calls:

Your phone is a good way to hear the voice of your favourite people and calling is easy even for the technologically challenged. Call your older peeps and check-in. Nag them to stay home. It’s love.

Facebook video calls:

This is a good method to use to call older loved ones or people who have little or no experience with video calling. If you can message someone on Facebook you can video call them. Use your phone, tablet or a laptop that has a built-in camera (that little indented dot at the top of your screen). Message your friend to be sure they are there and are up for a video call, and then click/touch the blue video camera icon. Facebook messenger will put in a call and if accepted from a device that also has a camera/microphone, you will be able to talk to the person.

If you set up a group chat in Facebook messenger by addressing your message to more than one friend, then clicking the camera icon from within a group chat will set up a video call with all the people in the chat. People within the chat/call can add their own friends to the call as well.

Word of warning: If you’re calling your family and there are young children involved, they’ll probably want to dominate the call playing ‘Facebook' Games’ - so you might want to try Skype or Facetime instead!

Facetime

Facetime only works between two Apple devices so may be less useful. Here are instructions to use Facetime if you know the person you are calling is on an iPhone, iPad or other Apple device.

Skype

Skype requires installing the Skype software on your device and setting up an account. You log into Skype using your Microsoft account, which might be the same email and password you use to log in to your personal computer. If you don’t already have a Microsoft account, you will be prompted to create one. Skype was developed for people to make personal calls but has since moved into providing business services. Skype can be a bit trying to set up, but once you are in, you can search for your friends using their name, email address or their Skype id if they give it to you. Starting a call is similar to Facebook where you click on either the microphone or camera icon to make the call, depending on whether you want voice or video.

Zoom

Zoom works similarly to Skype but is designed for businesses. In general it is better for larger groups of people to video chat because it can handle the increased load without slowing down video display. A nice feature of Zoom is that you can add a ‘virtual background’ that covers the space behind you with an image so that you can hide your home from the people you are calling with.

To join a meeting set up by someone else you can visit https://zoom.us/join and then put in the meeting id or link name the meeting organizer gives you, or you can use a link provided by the organizer. When you join you will be asked to put in your name, which will be shown to all the other participants. From there you can decide whether to have your video on or off, which controls whether you will be seen by others. This is controlled by clicking on the video icon.  You may also be asked, in larger meetings, to mute your microphone, which you can do by clicking the microphone image until it shows as having a line across it. This means that no-one will be able to see you.

Looking to host a large meeting? Want your queer choir to rehearse together online? A free Zoom account for the host will give you up to 100 participants for up to 40 minutes at a time. For more people or longer the host needs a pro Zoom account that costs $20 USD /month.

Jitsi.org

Jitsi is a new platform that works very well. It’s free, open-source, and has no time limit. It has all the features of zoom and other video-conferencing services. And what I like most is that you don’t need to download software or have an account. You simply create a room URL (link) and send it to your peeps. The room can stay open as long as you like!

The link will look like this

meet.jit.si/YourRoomName

The only caution is that CHROME is the best browser to use with this. As well, if anyone is on a phone, they’ll have to download the app.

All of these systems will require that you turn on sound and video -

Let’s stay connected

We are all in this together. Let’s look after one another and stay connected. Community of choice is what we do. For more information on how to support one another during the pandemic and resources for queers, please check out our Assist / Need Covid 19 Resources Page.

Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash

Photo by Kon Karampelas on Unsplash

Written by Sophia Kelly

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