3/16 Covid-19 Update: "Taking care of other people can be a good cure for nightmares"
Morning everybody,
I'm going to try to keep this "short" today (a relative term for me, as I think you're probably starting to realize, but I do worry I've been including too much info to be useful). A lot has happened in the last 24 hours and I think we're all trying to catch up to the news. Every day I think we've reached the peak of how quickly things can change (even if the peak of the virus is still weeks away), and every day I'm proved wrong. Last night, Washington's governor announced that he was temporarily shutting down restaurants, bars, and places of entertainment/recreation (as of this morning, WA has 769 confirmed cases and 42 deaths due to the virus). Other cities/states are starting to do the same. Even for people immersed in covid, there's a bit of whiplash from how much the pace of response has quickened in recent days, and I think we all need to take moments to breathe when we can.
If you read one thing:
16 leading public health experts wrote a column with advice on what all Americans can be doing right now to fight coronavirus (tl;dr: #stayhome; save lives). Recommend reading the whole thing, but if you are able to stay home - here's what they recommend doing instead:
You can still take walks outside, shop for essentials and enjoy your online community of friends.
Stay connected in other ways. Check in on your loved ones and friends frequently.
Keep informed about what is happening in your neighborhood.
Give to people in need in your community: supplies for food pantries, financial donations, personal hygiene items.
Buy online gift certificates to your favorite local stores and restaurants — and use them when this is over.
Be a neat freak. Keep everything as clean as possible.
Wash your hands. Early, often, thoroughly.
If you’re going to spread anything, spread help, compassion and humor.
Above all, do not panic. Remember: Like all outbreaks, this too will eventually end.
If you’ve been infected and recovered already, you are highly likely to be immune. If so, you can serve your community in public spaces where others can’t.
Tl;dr/How to talk to your loved ones about covid:
Including this as a resource for millennials/Gen-X & Zers trying to talk to their parents or grandparents about the outbreak/trying to get them to take it seriously (I may or may not be the anonymous "woman who works for a public health organization" though I cringed at being called a "woman." I have new sympathy for boomers who don't want to admit that they're in the older population categories). But I'm also including because I want older people to see how much their kids and grandkids are worried about them. You can help ease our stress by listening to us 😊. Here's a summary:
Leave politics out of it. If there's a news source you know your parents/grandparents trust (Fox News, Joe Rogan, NPR), find information from that source that you can use to make your point.
Show don't tell: Show them photos of what Italy looks like right now
If they pride themselves on being health/fit, show them this video of a previously healthy 48 year old talking about surviving coronavirus
Don't be afraid to exploit the babies. Even though this disease seems to be sparing babies/kids - we all know that grandparents will do anything for their grandkids. Remind them that they want to be alive to see them.
Promise to Facetime them
Call in favors (this was mine! 😊 Hi dad!)
Volunteer on their behalf- if they're doing good work at their church/food bank/homeless shelter to help take care of people, volunteer to pick up their shifts
Feel Good Story:
With the aquarium closed to humans, penguins take opportunity to explore and visit other animals
Covid-19 Quote of the Day:
C.S. Lewis wrote 72 years ago about how to live through the fear of the atomic age. If you replace "atomic bomb" with coronavirus, I think there's some good wisdom here (thanks Colleen!), but ignore the part about chatting over a pint with friends 😊:
In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”
In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.
Okay - this wasn't short at all. I'll keep working on it.
Take good care!
Alison