It came up in casual conversation that my friend’s purse weighs over six pounds. The only reason she knows this is that she is recovering from major surgery and she is not supposed to lift anything that weighs more than... five pounds.
“What do you even have in there?” “Everything! I’m like a Boy Scout - except I was never a Boy Scout - be prepared, right?” “My husband is an Eagle Scout and he doesn’t carry a six-pound purse.” Everyone knows that it’s a little silly to carry a huge, heavy purse. That’s fine - I am a big proponent of silly, as my sock drawer will attest. The main reason not to carry that big of a bag is that it can lead to chiropractic problems and chronic neck and shoulder pain. Or at least it used to be. The main reason not to carry a big, heavy purse now is that everything in it is vulnerable to contamination from coronavirus. It also raises a few pertinent questions.
I happen to know that my friend still goes to church almost every day of the week. Physically. There are undoubtedly hundreds of thousands of people doing this, which makes me really sad, because I was under the impression that church is about love and caring and having a close community. In my mind, that means protecting each other from deadly infections at the bare minimum! Let’s change that subject, though, and talk a bit more about the whole “being prepared” aspect of scouting. I know a bit about it because I’ve been trekking for weeks on end with my husband, the Eagle Scout. It drives me crazy with envy that he got to do that, since girls are still not allowed, and I was obsessed with survivalism when I was around 12. You mean to tell me you know how to build an actual snow cave?? And start a fire without matches?? This is why my hubby doesn’t carry a six-pound purse - or any purse. As long as I have known him, he carries: A wallet Keys Phone ...and, now, his eyeglasses and a mask. I have learned this, having absorbed these lessons through proximity. And distance running. On the vanishingly rare occasions when I leave the apartment, I bring: My phone Keys ...and two fabric masks and a plastic face shield. I bring my phone and keys even when I take out the trash, because I have to let myself back through the security system. One night I forgot, and I wasn’t able to go back up the elevator, and then the call box no longer worked due to a security upgrade. I had to call my hubby to come downstairs and let me in. Good thing he doesn’t go on travel anymore! What a big purse is about is not really being prepared - it’s feeling like you can handle anything that might come up. Is that actually true? My friend mentioned that she carries a sewing kit. Yeah, me too. I have a sewing kit in my expedition backpack and another one in my suitcase. How would I deal with it if I... had a sewing emergency while I was outside somewhere?? ...I... look over my clothes when I fold the laundry? I have owned a sewing kit since at least the age of ten. I have used one several times. Not once have I needed it while doing errands or out for a run. Why not just keep it in the car? There is one “emergency” item that I keep in my work bag - a bag that currently resides inside my bedroom closet - and that is a backup battery for my phone. I used to use it at least once a week, since I spent a lot of time on the bus, going to club meetings, or writing for hours in a cafe. (Remember when?) Then it turned out that I almost never needed it, because I got a phone upgrade and the battery life was better. Why carry such a relatively heavy item everywhere I went?
My friend evidently feels safe and prepared because she has a sewing kit, among nameless other items, in her six-pound purse. In reality, she is endangering her health post-surgery, causing herself actual physical pain by carrying so much. She is also endangering her health by continuing to leave her house and socialize with people in enclosed indoor spaces, like she used to do before the pandemic. Look, I know a lot of people are still gallivanting around because they believe they have evaluated the risk and made a conscious, adult decision. I know that. One of them had a phone conversation with me last week, wanting to know why I hadn’t made a bigger fuss about how serious my COVID symptoms were, because if she had realized she might not have traveled with three other families who all wound up getting sick. Uhhh... What I’m talking about is how people make decisions, and how we evaluate risks, and what we do to mitigate those risks. I changed a few things after I got sick with COVID. One of them was to reevaluate who I accept into my social group. One of my close friends is a loving, giving person who tolerates a wide spectrum of behavior in her friends that I don’t really tolerate in mine. I don’t trust her friends, and therefore I won’t socialize with my friend until the pandemic is over. Afterward, well, I’m still going to reevaluate. We had a quaranteam buddy for a while. That ended a few months ago for a variety of reasons. My husband and I now socialize with zero people in person. The only people we see are our inconsiderate neighbors who refuse to wear masks in our building lobby, laundry room, elevator, etc. We are physically afraid to open our front door, much less go anywhere. That’s why neither of us will be found carrying a six-pound purse. Carry it where? Hey, did you pack your go bag yet?
Someone close to me has been on an evacuation order, the fires are that close. Seven people on his work crew had their houses burn down. I told him, yeah, my good friend had her house burn down last year. Between us, we probably know almost as many people who have been affected by wildfires as we do people who have contracted COVID-19. (Which, by the way, has started touching my own personal family in a most offensive manner). The first thing to think about with go bags is actually not your own stuff - it’s your pets and their stuff. This is what I reminded my person, who claimed that his cat likes to ride in the car. True. Cool story, bro. Have you tested that theory when there are flames down the street? Animals panic when things are on fire. This may save their lives, if they can outrun the flames in the right direction. It may also mean their certain doom, if there’s nowhere to go. It’s also unlikely you’ll be able to find them again. BTW did you get your guys microchipped? We have a parrot, and fire would be extremely bad news for her. Smoke inhalation would probably take her out before we could get her into her carrier. Nevertheless, I keep it directly under her sleeping cage, door facing out. All we would have to do is pull the Velcro so the door flaps down and stuff her inside. Right next to the carrier is her go bag, with styptic gel and a few other supplies. Styptic gel, you haven’t heard of it? Neither had our vet. It stops bleeding if you smear it on a wound. It stings a little, but it’s got a topical analgesic in it so they calm down right away. Birds, dogs, cats, people, probably lizards, I dunno. Most useful veterinary first aid item I know of. I keep it in the outside pocket of the go bag for easy access. First aid. That’s the thing that nobody really thinks about until something happens. Like this time I was running for the bus, and I tripped and flayed open my knee just as the bus was coming. I got on but I didn’t have so much as a napkin to stop the bleeding, and that was the end of my white capri pants. Now I take those large bandages and the gauze and the rolls of tape a lot more seriously. Our smaller first aid kit is right on the top inside my go bag. It’s bright red, of course. No matter how many times I might pack and repack this bag, the first aid kit is staying on top. What else goes in there that we always meant to pack, but never got around to it? Somewhere, somehow, you want all the contact information for your insurance. (Medical, car, homeowner, whatever else you have). Also all your bank information and anyone you’d want to get in touch with if you have to evacuate. Assume, of course, that you’ve lost your phone somewhere. Strangely enough, I had a second conversation right after I talked to my person about evacuating his pets. This one was about restoring a device that hadn’t been backed up. * this is your regularly scheduled random reminder that, oh yeah, you kept meaning to get around to that, too * I explained that, considering what the device was used for, it was probably okay that it had never been backed up. But please talk to the free tech support person about getting that set up, so you won’t continue to run into this situation every few years? Imagine the perfect combination of factors: your device was never backed up, you never packed your go bag or listed off your emergency contacts, and then you actually did have to evacuate. You’re sitting in an emergency Red Cross shelter trying to rack your brain and figure out how to get ahold of everyone. Anyone. Facebook, probably, and someone would probably be kind enough to let you log in for a few minutes. But then, with your life up in the air, how many hours do you really want to spend tracking down all your insurance and bank info? As well as lining up somewhere to stay? And trying to track your poor missing animals? Hopefully not while your kids cry down to their chins over them? I have had to evacuate my apartment because of a fire. I’ve also had to evacuate my building at work after explaining to my customer why I had to hang up our call, which they did not believe. When it happens, it’s not like they write you several letters first. You’re either sound asleep or doing something important when BOOM BOOM BOOM. That is, if you’re lucky enough to have a firefighter come and beat on your door. I don’t mean to be scary, except that I totally do. Packing a go bag is somewhere way down the list from writing a will, becoming an organ donor, and putting your fire extinguisher somewhere accessible. (Um, you do have a fire extinguisher, right?) Try to make it vivid and visual in your mind that these things happen, and lately they happen all the time. Practice. Practice grabbing your stuff and rounding up your small dependents and actually getting them out the door. It will immediately become obvious if there are any flaws in your plan. I tried it with the dog, the parrot, and my backpack. It was nuts. I could barely walk 1 mph. Fortunately, nothing was on fire so they were both like “Walk? Right on!” Suddenly all my great plans about packing a paperback book and some playing cards didn’t sound so great. Keep it light. If you don’t actually have practice walking long distances with a heavy backpack, don’t put yourself in that position on the one day you really need that backpack. Either train for it or keep culling what you have in there. Keep putting it on and weighing it. Having a solid evacuation plan is more valuable than a go bag. Even better is to have several plans. Think out what you would do if certain roads are blocked. Think out what you would do if you have to shelter in place for several days. Talk it out with your best friends, especially the fluffy kind. Hopefully we never need any of this stuff. It sure is a lot easier to sleep soundly when we know that we have it zipped up and ready to go. Here we go again. I’m writing this a couple days ahead, feeling cruddy but with no idea what it is or how long it will last. All I know is that if I do have COVID-19 for a second time, I’m better off preparing ahead of time.
Why do I think I might have it again? 1. I feel tired and ill; 2. There are cases popping up in the news of reinfections, as well as people feeling better and then relapsing weeks later; 3. People don’t become immune to other members of the coronavirus family, so why assume we would from this one? If I’m wrong, then I’ll have extra supplies. I can either use them for some other respiratory bug or share them with someone else. I can laugh at myself for being a worrywart. If I’m right... well, so far I have failed to over-prepare for a single thing during this pandemic. The first thing I did was to take inventory of our medicine cabinet. I would not want to go through this the natural way, without modern pharmaceuticals, like some medieval person in a hut. I want Mucinex and Tylenol. Assuming it’s just me, I need enough supplies for 2x/day for at least three weeks. Last time, we ran out and there were shipping delays, but we got lucky and I managed not to miss any doses. Next, I decided to order a pulse ox, a finger pulse oximeter. During my second week, I was gulping air and having a lot of trouble breathing. If that happens again, I’m not waiting, I’m going to try to get myself admitted to the hospital for at least a few hours with an oxygen mask. I figure I have a better chance advocating for myself if I have metrics. The last time we went through all this, back in April, all this stuff was sold out. You couldn’t get a pulse ox - they were all marked up in price and back-ordered - in the same way that you couldn’t get masks or face shields or cleaning wipes or hand sanitizer. You could find Tylenol and Mucinex if you looked hard, just like paper towels and toilet paper. In some ways, it’s less scary to buy something like this and see a ship time of under a week. These are the easy steps. Retail therapy. Let’s buy a consumer item and then everything will be all better, right? The harder parts are playing through my memories of this illness and thinking back to what I need to do. Three months ago, I was deathly ill and pretty sure I would not live to see my birthday. Still not there yet. This is not fun to think about. I should probably re-pack my hospital bag and leave it packed. I should probably re-think my advance care directive. I was pretty adamant about the “do not resuscitate” part when I filled it out ten years ago. Now it seems fairly ordinary for a COVID patient to be in a coma for days or weeks, and then walk themselves out of the hospital. I’ll be 45 this week (*hope*) and I have as reasonable a chance as anyone else my age. Last time, one of the many little annoyances was that I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t follow a plot, either in a novel or a movie. I’m prepared for this now. I realized I could have been listening to music and looking at streaming nature cams. I have a folder of those just in case. I know a lot more this time around, because I’ve already been through this illness and because I’ve been avidly reading everything I could find about it for the last four months. I quit checking the daily statistics. I don’t feel like I need to read every single article about symptoms or transmission anymore. I know I need to set alarms to remind me to take my pills on time, because last time, every time I slipped up by a couple hours, my symptoms would be worse for days. I know I need to spend as much time as I can lying on my stomach, even though it makes my back stiff. I also understand that if I do have COVID-19 again, I probably won’t skip through it in a few days. I’m psychologically preparing myself for a minimum of six weeks. I’m going to assume that I won’t be able to exercise for the rest of the year, or at least until Halloween. Few things in my life have been as depressing, frustrating, and boring as having COVID-19. Trying to avoid lying on my back for at least twelve hours a day was really hard, exhausting, and demoralizing. I am not thrilled AT ALL to be facing this thing again. Not thrilled to have to contemplate dying young either. Worst of all is knowing that roughly 40% of my fellow Americans don’t think this thing is real. Either it’s a hoax or it’s no big deal. Even the person who originally infected me thinks it’s no big deal. I guess if I have three wishes right now, one of them would be that someone (who knows who she is) would go to her and say, “You really need to start taking this seriously now.” It’s not that I blame her for getting me sick; she couldn’t have known. It’s just important to me that if I die young, around my birthday, and pointlessly from this catastrophically managed pandemic... it’s important that it mattered to someone. My other two wishes would be that everyone in my family is careful and stays safe, and that my husband finds love again and remarries. I hope he can use the life insurance money to buy a nice house and eventually be happy there, with a smiling woman by his side. Of course I’d rather it be me, but what do you do? I’m trying to be a good Stoic about this. There’s no reason for me to be untouched by plague when millions of other humans throughout history have died in this manner. I have no right to complain about it. Once I’ve made my preparations, it’s time to get on with life, patiently, pacing myself for the next three years or more that this thing will be with us. Shortly after this posts, I have a phone appointment with a doctor. I’m definitely sick and my lungs are burning. Wish me luck. “Many of us are done with this,” said one of my neighbors on Nextdoor, following a demand to “stop policing people.” Okay, fine, cool, thanks for making this decision easier on me and my household.
I’m staying inside until 2023 and getting a head start on the new supernormal. Possibility thinking is not the same thing as optimism. For it to work as a strategic planning tool, possibility thinking has to include *all* possibilities. At least in my region, there seems to be a pretty broad consensus that there is nothing to worry about. I read that 1 in 5 Brits believe that COVID-19 is a hoax, and it’s probably not too different here in Southern California. This makes me feel some kind of way, as you can probably imagine. “I ate there and got food poisoning” NO YOU DIDN’T “I got a speeding ticket along that stretch of highway” YOU LIE “Attempted break-in on our street” NEVER HAPPENED *shrug* okay, so I guess we’re done with the concept of social proof. I would really prefer that nobody else in our galaxy go through what I went through the entire month of April, but have it your way. My experience isn’t real to you, all right. Noted. I feel no desire, need, or motivation to associate with people who feel that way... especially not in their physical proximity. How am I going to deal with this emotionally, mentally, socially? Reset my expectations. Cases are rising in at least 18 states? My county has roughly half of the cases in my entire state, and more than half the deaths? Coronavirus is active on six continents? There may be a separate strain now that takes longer to show symptoms? I don’t see this thing going anywhere any time soon. Therefore, I don’t see myself doing what I used to do for fun, anytime in the near future: Going to the airport, getting on airplanes, staying in hotels, going to live shows Hanging out in restaurants, cafes, or movie theaters Wilderness expeditions - will I ever be well or strong enough to do that again?? Everything else about my family, social, and commercial life can be done online, in some cases with more fun and greater efficiency. Do I miss my family and friends? Yes, of course. Would I ever forgive myself for picking up COVID again and exposing them to it? No. Especially if any of them ran up massive debt in the hospital, or died. We will meet again and we can hug it out when it feels obviously, finally, conclusively safe. In the meantime, what are we going to do with ourselves? We’ve doubled down with our quaranteam buddy. We’re helping her move to a new apartment this week, where we’re already planning a small shared garden. We’re teaching her how to pack a go bag and working on a team evacuation strategy for wildfire season. She’s our literal ride-or-die friend now. I cut my husband’s hair for the first time. It actually turned out fine! He can’t stop raving about it and running his fingers through it. I give it... an 80%. I’m doing my own split ends and feeling glad I wear mine long. QT and I agreed to color each other’s hair, and maybe we’ll tentatively try a trim, in the back where it doesn’t show on webcam. With videos and practice... maybe it just becomes a thing and we all save hundreds of dollars a year. We learn a few new artisanal skills, our cooking and baking improve, we expand the ways we support and care for each other, we develop a new group video call etiquette. Then what? It’s up to us to decide - first as individuals, second as households, last as a society. Or several adjacent societies? I fear for those who are struggling to live in the reality-based community. It seems like an awful lot of people have lost the plot as far as what sources to trust, what is objectively testable or verifiable, and how to make decisions. Most people aren’t all that great at long-term planning or strategic positioning in the best of times, and when a crisis hits, we often begin to act less rationally than we did before. Clearly there are some issues. One of the first things I’m personally working on is a quick vetting process. When I meet people (virtually) or see them (physically) how do I size them up? Who gets a shot at being in my social bubble and who would probably find it annoying and unsatisfying anyway? Another thing we’re working on, as a quaranteam, is speculating on business and investment trends. Not in the “let’s gouge people for PPE” way but in the “what will the world look like in 2025” way. Even *I* think this pandemic will be over by 2025! Though I have already made permanent policy changes, especially for travel, that I will carry forward. Reason: there are no rules about pandemics! We could have several new ones every year, which is one of the reasons why a COVID vaccine is, for my purposes, a moot point. I got a new job while I was sick with COVID-19, as I mentioned. They’re WFH-mandatory right now, and it’s possible that most positions will remain that way because they’re already seeing higher productivity. My Plan A is to absolutely crush it at this job. Rather than mope around wishing I didn’t have to isolate, I’m going to pretend the outside world doesn’t even exist, and I work in an alternative arrangement. Antarctica? A fire watch tower? Spacecraft to Mars or elsewhere? Emily Dickinson’s trance medium? Could vary from day to day or month to month? As part of my job, I’m determined to get a few software certifications. There is a modest tuition reimbursement. I’d like to get a master’s degree, maybe an MBA too. I’ll have nothing but time and no particular reason to delay. It’s not like we’re going anywhere... It would be easy to spend the next few weeks or months exactly as tense and anxious as the last few. It would also be easy to go out ONCE, like I did back before the shutdown orders, and get sick, and not even know for two weeks. Those are the default options. As a general rule, whatever is the default is uninteresting to me. I prefer to move forward, through this intense time when we are all in the Place of Uncertainty, in a direction of my own choosing. To the best of my abilities, I’d rather come out of this in better shape than I went in. I have the power, as do we all, of determining my own attitude and my own behavior. I’d like to emerge in three years better than I am today: like myself, only supernormal. Today I am a 5 out of 10, a 5! Magnificent!
Very proud of my superior gut flora. I did have an uncomfortable 20 hours of noticing my stomach, but I did NOT suffer actual indigestion. Weird flex but give this one to me. Yay belly, great job, go team! One reason I have not panicked or cried for myself after nearly two weeks of this… odyssey… is that I trust my body no matter what. It’s not the doctor or the drugs or the machines that heal, IT IS MY BODY that heals! Yours too. No amount of money or materials can do that for you, you do it yourself. It’s not death we are afraid of - I don’t think - it’s mostly PAIN, uncertainty, loss of control, death of the ego. Logically once we are dead we can’t feel pain or fear any more, right? Like a candle that is snuffed out, the flame is just gone. Does part of us survive physical death, no idea, but I am confident that physical sensations do not. Am I afraid of pain, sure. My coronavirus experience has not been painful, though. For instance if I had to choose between a day of nausea or a day of gulping air and struggling to breathe, (both of which I have had this week), I’d choose the nausea every time. I find it merely annoying and distracting. No biggie. In our culture we have this tradition where we are supposed to say “I can’t imagine how you must feel.” I hate this to my bones, it is a wrong thought. Of COURSE you can imagine how I feel, otherwise why would you be reading about it?? You know what nausea feels like You know what being woozy from the flu feels like You know what a headache feels like You know what being dizzy feels like I’m willing to bet you’ve been out of breath before You know what it’s like to worry you will die soon When people think about prepping they always think about the gear. (Will get there I promise). I say it’s way more important to focus on your emotions and mental state, your communications, and organizing your information. This is why my hubby and I got into leadership training. Everybody calm down or someone is going to kick over the kit. Can you contemplate being very sick in bed for two weeks without freaking out? Yes, I have great faith in you Can you picture yourself being confused, losing focus, losing your train of thought? Aka typical Monday morning, yes you can Can you picture yourself in total panic, crying and flailing your hands around? Maybe not, I know {I} can, I know that I am a pitiful coward and that is why I train Do the visualization exercises and then imagine yourself snapping yourself out of it. Your mental touchstone will be unique to you. Your methods will also be unique to you. For myself, I use a combination of sweet talk and massive verbal abuse, something I have field-tested. “Come on honey, you can do it, you lazy *****,” quoting to myself from Full Metal Jacket, etc. Babe you got this. Often I just tell myself HEY, hey. Emotionally I have been feeling massive guilt and shame, blaming myself, waves of sadness, annoyance at myself for having stupid priorities, a lot of philosophical thoughts about letting go and forgiveness (of others, not myself alas), curiosity and sometimes awe, wistfulness about things I will miss from this world… and also noticing how directly my optimism vs. moping are correlated with my physical energy level. I doubt another person would feel my exact combination of emotions, that’s totally understandable! I redirect to thinking of positives. For me these particular visualizations have helped distract me and give me a sense of purpose. Meaning? No. To me a virus that affects humans is a meaningless accident of fate, just like earthquake or hurricane. Purposes, to keep my husband well, stop frightening my poor parents, see my friends again, inspire others to keep a cool head, generate convalescent plasma! Field promotion from pawn to queen, saving doctors and nurses who will go on to save hundreds of lives. We can make some sense out of this. I could not imagine going to the hospital and I did not want to bother any actual medical professionals. I asked, who can teach me? Answer: sick people! They were endlessly kind and patient in sharing their experiences, including someone who got an organ transplant. Section 5 is with their help, mistakes are all mine. Okay, time for the list. You want to get ready in case this alien trash comes for you or your family.
All your questions really come down to, Can I handle this? Yes, you got this. Be well. What do you have on hand right now, and what do you wish you had? It’s time to take inventory and learn how to repurpose stuff and get creative.
One of the reasons that people go out on panic buying sprees is that they don’t have a solid grasp on what they need or how long their supplies will last. We’ve already seen instances where people went to Costco to buy up everything they could see… then changed their minds, tried to return it, and got sent away. This can be a real problem for people who spend all their liquid cash and still fail to buy things that they would have actually used. Learning basic inventory standards and practices can help with this. My first inventory job was at a 7-Eleven. I was assigned the cereal aisle, because there was a big markup on that product category and not much turnover. Once a week I would go down one side and up the other with a clipboard in my hand, tallying how many of each item were in stock. Then I would make an executive decision on what to replace and what not to. If something like Cool Ranch Froot Loops sat on the shelf for eight months, maybe we didn’t need any more. The basic concepts that I learned, over the two months I spent on that job, could be mastered by any ambitious 8-year-old: Shelf by category. Put all the matching stuff together. All the beverages go in one section, then divide by alcohol vs. non-alcoholic, then by brand, then by flavor, etc. Face outward. A big part of our job was to continually move products to the front edge of the shelf and adjust them so that the labels lined up. Standard Rotation. Put the oldest stuff in the front and use it up first. Another thing we did all day, every day, was to wipe down the counters. People were constantly spilling everything from nacho cheese to pickle relish to coffee and malt liquor. This is where many of us develop the keen eye for splotches and smears. When I went on to work with people who live in squalor, it amazed me how quickly everything can turn to chaos without those few constant daily habits. My people don’t generally have daily tidying habits, partly because they don’t see things in categories. This is why they may not notice that they have 55 cans of green beans in the cupboard, five pounds of black bananas on the dining table, but nothing to make for dinner. Some of my people have a lot of everything. Others have a lot of certain types of things, but none of other categories. As an example, one person might have cases upon cases of canned foods, soda, laundry detergent, etc. stacked up in the garage due to compulsive accumulation. Another might have a lot of books or craft supplies, but very few clothes or groceries, because they are deeply interested in a hobby but absent-minded about self-care. Some people are just low in situational awareness, and their surroundings tend to blur in their mind, so that they don’t really notice what’s around them. That’s called ‘clutter blindness.’ Taking inventory, or trying to do a little bit, is a great way to start to pick up these skills of sorting things into categories. We can skip entire categories of stuff right now, as we take inventory, because we’re really focused on just a few things:
When we take inventory of the food, we want to start with the stuff that goes bad quickly. Bananas and avocados are top on that list, and canned foods are last. Start with what is out on counters, the dining table, the top of the fridge, and anywhere else in the house where someone might be storing food. Throw away anything that is too scary to eat, so that any mold or insects don’t spread to the fresh food. Next, look in the fridge. It’s a good idea to throw away anything that is spoiled in there, too, partly so it doesn’t affect any more of your groceries and partly to make space when you need it. If the freezer needs to be defrosted, this would be a good time to do that. There might be stuff in your supplies that was put there by someone else, like a guest or former roommate, and you know you are not going to use it. Throw it away or, if it’s still edible and sealed, pass it on to someone else. You might have stuff that you bought and didn’t like. Get rid of that, too. Don’t feel guilty. Space is at a premium now and you don’t have to apologize for prioritizing. Usually there will be containers that only have a tiny amount of something, like a teaspoon of jam. Focus on using up these foods first, so you can get rid of the containers and make room for fresh food. There may also be several open containers of the same thing, like juice or mustard. Check the expiration dates, throw out any that are suspicious, and then use them up one at a time. After taking inventory of the food we have on hand, we check our supplies of any medications, including prescriptions, pain relievers, ointments, saline solution, or anything else we might need in the next couple of months. We also want to take care to throw out expired medication, because it can undergo chemical changes over time that make it ineffective or dangerous. Then we check our inventory of soap, shampoo, toothpaste, deodorant, and anything else we need to feel clean. This is the time to look at all those shampoo bottles with only a quarter cup left. Shampoo that nobody likes is still perfectly good for washing hands or cleaning other things, like a muddy bike. The reason we take inventory is so that we can delay shopping trips, save money, and take note of stuff that nobody in the household will use. We focus on buying only what we need and like, and then using it while it is still fresh. If we’re confident that we have enough food, soap, and other essentials, we can then focus on taking inventory of other things, like books and hobby supplies, reminding ourselves to spend at least a little time relaxing. The last few days have felt like 87 years, am I right? I’ve been doing what I usually do when I’m in the Place of Uncertainty, which is to gather as much information as I can. What I’m picking up right now is chilling me to my very bones. There is misinformation and highly dubious behavior everywhere right now.
What do we do about it? Last week I found myself in the position of thought leader. We were having an emergency meeting, and I discovered, to my astonishment, that I was the best-informed person on the call. How does this even happen when nobody really knows anything? I scrolled through my blog, trying to remember which day I posted that “We Prepped for Coronavirus.” (March 3) We... actually bought our supplies at the end of February?? Has it been that long already? It seemed simple and obvious for anyone who reads the news to be aware that the trend line wasn’t going in the right direction. Time to mitigate risk. “Up and to the right, up and to the right” for INVESTMENTS, not epidemiology Ughh As I started hearing from more of my friends and colleagues, and reading more reports on Nextdoor, and even scrolling through Facebook (which I haven’t done in several years), I started to realize that what is standard operating procedure in my household is actually very fringe behavior for our culture. Start with deep background, supplement with updates from trusted sources and subject matter experts, apply critical thinking skills, and run scenarios with favored sounding boards. Isn’t that how other people react to current events? ...no? I’m writing about the problem of fake virus news in this way because a bulleted list of conspiracy theories and actual facts NEVER WORKS. That kind of thing palpably does not work on the people who need it. I’m writing for the benefit of my fellow thought leaders, because the designated “smart person” in your circle of friends is probably you, yes, YOU, the one who is reading this. You have to look them right in the eye and talk them through their pseudoscience, piece by piece. Praxis. One at a time, patiently and with all the lovingkindness you would show to anyone you care about, if you knew they had only months to live. I live in a bubble, not just of privilege but of highly educated and brilliant people. A bunch of people in my social group have PhDs and a couple of my dearest friends are actual professors in STEM fields. The smart people are staying home, partly because their employers sent them and mostly because they know higher-level math. They look at the data and nod and trust the experts. Ah, but I also know people with advanced degrees who are *not* getting with the program. I was talking one such friend who was trying to convince me that we have nothing to worry about, because there were “only about 320 cases” in “all of California! The entire state!” All the blood drained from my face. The last I heard, it was... six. I’ve heard several people repeat the idea that “it will go away when the weather gets better” because “warm temperatures kill it” when they are missing the obvious, which is that the inside of a person is almost always significantly higher than that. Only about a dozen people in my acquaintance seem to understand the concept of social distancing, or how viruses spread. “For those of us who need a break from ‘social distancing...’” I love you, and you know that’s not how that works, right? Do you understand that you could be contagious for two weeks before you even felt any symptoms? And that’s why we have community spread? PRETEND YOU HAVE CHICKEN POX People have been panic-buying at the grocery store in our neighborhood. Store hours have been cut back. People are showing up at 5:45 AM every morning and standing in line for over an hour so they can stream in and buy toilet paper. Which is fine, but... People are bringing their entire families into the store and cramming themselves into these tight lines. Panicking their way into the exact opposite of what they should be doing. Can’t one parent go and have everyone self-isolate at home? Or at least wait in the car? The way people are reacting is like they are preparing for a cross between a hurricane, a terrorist attack, and... werewolves. Quick, buy bottled water before the storm hits land... NO We have to keep shopping and going out or the microbes will win... NO We have to stay together, hold my hand, we’re going in... NO Y’all been watching the wrong horror movies It breaks my heart to know how many families have already been impacted by this thing, and how it’s spreading farther because so few people are as educated about basic public health concepts as they are about, say, helping a dog that has been left locked in a car in hot weather. We do gradually learn, as a species. It’s fairly rare for people to die in structure fires now, for instance, when it used to be a constant problem in the Victorian era. This is because we have worked very hard on institutional inputs like smoke detectors, fire drills, crash bars, EXIT signs, and fire codes. Same thing with airplane crash fatalities. Little by little, every time a disaster happens, people take notes and start trying to avoid it ever happening again. At least we have the scientific understanding of germ theory. That was not obvious to past humans, not by any means. The first thing the medievals did during the Black Death was to cull domestic cats, not realizing that the vector was actually... rats and mice. Oops. The silver lining to this pandemic is that it has everyone talking and taking it seriously. Pop culture is eventually able to absorb new ideas, like “stop the shooter” and “don’t let the terrorist take over the plane” and “don’t leave a dog in a hot car.” We start adjusting to new social norms. We aren’t there yet with basic public health concepts, like how viruses spread, but we’re, um, going to learn it now. On the fast track. Please won’t you help me by using your social capital with your friends and family, and making sure they understand what is going on? How would we find out if we had/have COVID-19?
Recently a friend stopped by to visit after being on a cruise ship. He had a very scary cough. Now my husband is sick. Coincidence? Probably. But maybe not? The thing is, at this point in technological development, most people never get tested for anything when they get sick. We probably misattribute symptoms all the time. We say we have “the flu” when it might be a bad cold, salmonella poisoning, or some other type of virus that is not technically influenza. How would we know? A hundred years ago people thought tuberculosis was genetic. In trying to be rational during an outbreak, the most important step is to err on the side of hygiene. If we get anything out of this epidemic, hopefully it will be a higher regard for basic hand-washing. I did a speech on Ignaz Semmelweis last year, and I was appalled to learn that there was no specific date when it became universally required for doctors to wash their hands. I wanted to throw in a tidbit like “He was ignored for 80 years.” It’s worse than that because it never happened at all. Humans, we get pretty offended and defensive if anyone suggests we aren’t quite clean enough! Even as we walk around coughing into space, getting up from tables without even pretending to wipe our crumbs or pick up our cups, and turning a blind eye when our kids stick their ABC gum under their chairs. (Hey, SOMEONE is doing it and I’m pretty sure it’s not squirrels). Last night I had to move someone else’s wet laundry. (72 units, 7 washing machines; don’t hate the player, hate the game). It was still sitting where I left it when I came down to put my stuff in the dryer, so I put the other load back in the washer where I found it. “They think it’s clean! Now they’ll never know that someone touched it!” I told my husband when I came back upstairs. If coronavirus gives us anything, maybe it will encourage more people to set a timer and quit bogarting the washing machines. It didn’t occur to me until just now. What if that wet laundry was sitting in the washer because the person who put it there suddenly fell ill? How would I know? The indicators that we might be sick or in trouble tend to look just like regular, sloppy old human behavior. I don’t know any of my neighbors by name, and I’ve lived here over six months. People are not very friendly in our building... and will probably be less so as time goes by and epidemic preparedness becomes more culturally ingrained. I recognize a dozen people, but I don’t know who lives in which unit or what kind of schedule they normally keep. I wouldn’t know who to check on or what to ask. “Hi, are you dead yet? No? Okay great.” *clears throat* “TEN O’CLOCK AND ALL’S WELL!” There will probably be a digital solution for this. We all have a switch that we press at designated times and it lights up on a reader board somewhere. Everyone at 123 Main Street is still up and kicking. More likely this will be a sensor provided by Netflix. Still viewing, still breathing... unless they’re on auto-play, because it’s actually plausible that someone might not move for 8 hours with the right show on. We already know we can’t count on Amazon because sometimes those packages sit in the lobby for days. There’s an entire Instant Pot that’s been down there since January. Starbucks might know. Joe hasn’t been here for his regular order in three days, that can’t be right! Although one day I’m convinced we’ll have custom coffee spigots that dispense our regular beverages with six-sigma precision, right out of the sink. It’ll all be delivery robots, dropping off food on our doorsteps, sanitizing the sidewalks in little damp trails as they go. ...Have crows and gulls figured out delivery bags yet? Fortunately for us, we started prepping approximately five minutes ago. We actually have soup and stuff on hand. While we understood that we were very unlikely to be quarantined, and also very unlikely to die of COVID-19, there is nothing wrong with stocking up on two or three weeks’ worth of dry goods. It’s almost embarrassing that one of us got sick within the week. Like, why haven’t you been doing this routinely every September for your entire adult life? It actually is quite possible that we both have been exposed to COVID-19 and wouldn’t know it. Apparently the main reason it has propagated so quickly to the level of “community spread” is that most people who are exposed to it either don’t get all that sick, or don’t have symptoms at all. Why is my husband coughing and I’m not? I feel a little weird, tired and a bit lethargic, but it’s almost impossible to tell whether that’s due to the change to daylight savings time. It could be psychosomatic. I wouldn’t blame anyone who felt like me for going to work and running errands just like normal. This is kinda the daily reality of middle age. “Like a young person but tired and stressed out.” The difference between us right now is that any time I’ve been on the bus or out in public, and I heard someone coughing or blowing their nose, I would take my special zinc tablets that night. Hubby only takes them if I wave them in his face, because they taste strongly of garlic and mushroom. Bouillon cubes! This is now the third time he’s picked up a cold (or something, she said ominously) and I haven’t gotten it, even though we live together and eat mostly the same meals. Also I drink green tea and he drinks black tea, but who’s counting? In the end, we have to consider that there is a virus in our apartment and that both of us are probably contagious - with what, who knows? How could we ever know? Supposedly the standard-issue flu killed up to 80,000 people in one winter, and that has never been enough to inspire all that many people to get the flu shot, much less wash their hands more carefully or actually stay home when they are clearly ill. We’re taking precautions because we can, and because suddenly this year it seems to matter more. Whatever we might have, we’re pretty sure you don’t want it. We prepped before we even heard that someone on the West Coast had died from COVID-19. It went like this:
Hubby: I think we should get ready for this thing to spread. Me: I agree with you. *five minutes later* Me: Here’s a kit. If they have it on Amazon it could be here tomorrow. Hubby: *blink* *ten minutes later* [Confirmation email] Risk mitigation is something that, the smarter and/or wealthier someone is, the more they do it. We are already prepped for a number of things, because we have this sort of conversation on a regular basis and also because we have watched a darn lot of zombie movies. The funny thing about zombies is that almost anything you could do to prepare for a “zombie apocalypse” is also a thing that is smart to do to prepare for earthquakes, flooding, wildfire, any other natural disaster, or, of course, pandemic illness. The nuances are a bit different, which is why this is worth talking about. The more people who take the time to prepare, the fewer people there are who need serious rescuing - and, more importantly, the more people who are able to do it. When you see yourself as a first responder, the last thing you want is to be a casualty on someone else’s to-do list. Better for both of us to be up and doing, so the responder who would have been helping us is instead off helping someone else. We have go-bags in case we need to evacuate. This is quite a real issue for people in our region. I have no fewer than five friends who have had to evacuate for wildfire, one of them twice in the same season, and they all live in different cities. We have had smoke visible from our apartment and we sometimes see firefighting helicopters pass over our building. This is basically the opposite scenario from an epidemic. We can almost think of it as a lever that slides from ‘evacuation’ on one end to ‘quarantine’ on the other. What if we were advised to stay home for as long as three weeks? What would we do? On at least two occasions, I have picked up a cold or flu because I went to a pharmacy for an ordinary prescription. One time, I went to get my prescription, got the flu shot, and caught the common cold on the bus the same day. Ugh. If only the flu shot covered every possible airborne illness! Our first priority is now to avoid going to 1. Pharmacies 2. Hospitals and 3. Grocery stores as much as possible. I would be mad as heck if I ran out of toothpaste and this led me to be exposed to some gnarly virus. This is why our goal was to stock up in such a way that we could comfortably lock ourselves into our apartment for weeks at a stretch. We are experienced backpackers, so, weirdly, we are better prepared for extreme situations than we are for hanging out in our own home! We have two separate water purification systems, two types of portable stove, and of course the ability to hike ten miles a day if we need to evacuate on foot. We have training in advanced first aid. We’d be fine living in the bushes, if that were the scenario. The irony here is that we have no space for a pantry in our apartment. We’ve trained ourselves to deliberately avoid stocking up on anything, because there’s nowhere to put it. We would have had to spend an extra $1000 a month or more to rent a two-bedroom, and even if we had chosen a $250/month storage unit, what good would that do us in this scenario? We keep all our extra food in the fridge, with the single exception of canned soup. We have half a shelf for that. Let’s face it, half a shelf of canned goods could vanish in two days. What we elected to do was to buy a kit of freeze-dried backpacking food. Actually, we reconsidered and bought two. While we have a dehydrator, it would take us weeks to prepare this quantity of dried food ourselves. With this thing constantly in the news, this creepy coronavirus, we really wanted results on a faster timeline. Where this strategy can backfire is that people want to throw money at a problem, rather than thinking their way out of it. We like the idea that we can buy a piece of equipment or a box of supplies and then “check the box.” Okay, good, that’s done, time to sit back and forget about this particular stressor. This makes us sloppy. The result of sloppy thinking is default behavior. The default of having supplies on hand is that they eventually expire. Usually people do not notice while this is happening. You know I work with hoarders? One constant among my crowd is that they like to stockpile vast quantities of food, almost all of which winds up being expired. I have seen a lot of rusted-out cans that are unsafe to use. You think zombies are scary; how much do you know about botulism? The other thing that food hoarders tend to have in common is that we (yeah, recovering food hoarder here) tend to stockpile a completely different kind of food than what we actually like to eat or know how to cook. We’ll buy either what was on sale or what looks like what our family kept on hand. Because there is almost no overlap between Food I Buy and Food I Consume, all these cases of green beans and packets of gravy are just sitting in there getting old and funky. This is why my husband and I felt fine about buying freeze-dried backpacking food: We actually go backpacking and eat backpacking food. It is useful to us to have lightweight foods like this. We even have a trip planned. Because we are frugal by nature, the ownership of a small stockpile of backpacking food is going to lead us to think continuously about backpacking. This leads us to two possible outcomes:
OR
The horror movie alternate ending of this is that some lucky survivors find our supplies and it cheers them right up. We ordered our supplies on Friday. They were supposed to arrive on the following Wednesday. To our surprise, they arrived on Saturday, the day after our order. Hooray! On Sunday, we had some visitors on their way between the port where they got off a cruise ship, and the airport, where they are heading home to a small semi-rural town. This will be interesting, considering that they just visited no fewer than four countries during their trip. They’ll have a lot to talk about. One topic of conversation will be where exactly he picked up that nasty cough. Time to go. I need to double-check our inventory of cough medicine. Coronavirus COVID-19 is as good a reason as any to pitch your boss about telecommuting. If not now, when?
Working when ill is the biggest hole in the classic Protestant work ethic. Come in and cough and sneeze all over everyone, yeah, great, and prove to us how dedicated you are. Meanwhile, for every five people who have the flu, six more will catch it. That’s how this stuff spreads. Maybe you got in one low-energy extra day to peck away at a project, in between blowing your nose and sipping tea. Because you valorized physical presence above actual productivity, half your department got what you had and then spread it to their partners and kids. Do we ever even find out what we were sick with? Probably not, not usually. Cold, flu, whooping cough, how would we really know unless we hacked up some goo into a petri dish? This is part of what’s so scary about COVID-19, that it basically has the same symptoms as any other cold or flu, except that now thousands of people have died from it. We’re all worrying about it, and we’re all continuing our regular commutes and schedules. Coming to work, even with a sniffle or a sneeze, and isn’t that the beginning of every other disaster movie? My husband and I have already talked this out. It’s of particular concern to him because he often flies for work. He loves his job but he’s not in any real hurry to be at any airport anytime in the next couple of months. Like many people, my husband could easily do at least 90% of his job remotely. He’s mainly there in person to maintain the dominant culture, which is, Look at us all busily typing away! Think how funny this scenario is. The software has been available for at least twenty years to track every single keystroke. For people with data-centric jobs (and many others), it is technologically possible to know exactly what each person is doing, right down to the microsecond. You can track what files they open, what they change, how fast they type, what websites they use, EVERYTHING. Showing up in person is not about productivity. Even stranger, commuting back and forth and being physically present in the office is often considerably less productive than working remotely. This is part of why people like working from home, because we can get so much more done! It’s often close to triple speed! A lot of companies have found that closing the building an extra day every week produces cost savings. No light, no heat, no staff, just send everyone home. Some people work four-tens, or ten-hour shifts four days a week instead of eight-hour shifts five days a week. This saves on commuting costs for the individual, makes childcare cheaper, etc. Some companies never have a central location or office in the first place. They start out with a distributed workforce and simply continue that way. Virtually no overhead. Imagine how much it would revolutionize the workplace to grade people on their productivity, rather than on which hours they did or did not sit at a desk. This is likely one reason why we haven’t put this into practice as a culture. As soon as it became obvious that some members of staff are as much as 5x more productive than others, a great wordless cry would rise up from the cubicles. Why are we getting paid the same when that guy sleeps at his desk every afternoon, when the thing he is best at is napping with his hand on his mouse so he can twitch awake at the same time as his monitor? It has long been obvious that trusting employees to work from home can save money, increase productivity, and improve morale all at the same time. Maybe not for every job - not for me as a receptionist, not for a mechanic or a construction worker or a nurse - but for most people with desk jobs, this is definitely possible. We could start tomorrow. Why haven’t we already done it? We haven’t done it because it shakes up the status quo too much. Nobody is willing to be the first to make this executive decision: try it and see what happens, with the option to of course revert back to normal if it doesn’t work. This novel coronavirus is a great opportunity to talk it over again. What if we tried having people work from home, so we can all stay away from the germy microdroplets being sneezed out all around us? What if we avoid giving each other colds and flu this season as well? How this pitch would work probably depends a lot on the individual workplace, your personal reputation, and your relationship with your boss. It might be smarter to bring your pitch to someone else who has a better shot at a yes. This is also a good method of testing support for a new idea. Let me run this by you. What do you think? Sometimes your colleague’s interest and investment in a new idea may exceed yours. Another person may benefit from your plan even more than you would. You may have a coworker who has a longer commute than yours, someone who has more dependents or responsibilities at home, someone whose partner has been traveling a lot, someone who will hear your idea with great delight. This person will be coming up with new reasons to support your idea before you are even finished explaining what you had in mind. Another trick, when pitching a radical new policy, is to ask on behalf of someone else. You can use me as an example. So-and-so is having a bunch of oral surgery, therefore how about testing out a trial run on a telecommuting policy? What would happen if everyone who could work from home, did work from home? What if people got fined for coming to work sick? What if that fine increased for each additional person who caught the bug? I wonder how quickly these things would spread then? |
AuthorI've been working with chronic disorganization, squalor, and hoarding for over 20 years. I'm also a marathon runner who was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and thyroid disease 17 years ago. This website uses marketing and tracking technologies. Opting out of this will opt you out of all cookies, except for those needed to run the website. Note that some products may not work as well without tracking cookies. Opt Out of CookiesArchives
January 2022
Categories
All
|