Sort Through the Facts, and Take Only What you Need
Sheesh what a week!
It was an emotional rollercoaster with a sprinkling of great news (vaccines for everyone by June!), scary news (the variants are spreading!), and news that you have a hard time even believing (Texas is mask-free and wide open!)
How do we make sense of this mishmash of hope and fear, caution and recklessness, risk and responsibility?
A gentle suggestion: read my article about Coronaphobia in Huffington Post! It’s about the mental health toll of the pandemic. I hope it’s helpful and that you share it widely!
Another idea: mute your phone, turn off the TV, delete your Twitter app—even just for the weekend.
Right now the news doesn’t contain any real actionable information regarding COVID-19, so you might as well tune it out for a bit. (That is my personal plan—in addition to sipping my favorite bourbon and romping outside with my kids, not necessarily in that order.)
The general gist of the pandemic is unchanged: we still have two fundamental and highly effective ways to protect ourselves against coronavirus:
our own behaviors (masking, distancing, avoiding crowded spaces, etc.), and
getting vaccinated.
That’s it.
And the big contest—virus versus human—hasn’t changed much either. We’re in a hot and heavy race between viral ingenuity (aka coronavirus’ ability to mutate) and our human ability to vaccinate wide swaths of the population.
Right now we are winning the race. Hallelujah.
Of course that could change. Indeed the coronavirus will continue to mutate. That’s what viruses do. Coronavirus continues to delight in its opportunities to spread: among unvaccinated people and when risk mitigation elements lapse.
And until we achieve herd immunity, the only way to reduce community spread is to continue masking and distancing and to BLANKET the country with the vaccine.
The bad news is that some elected leaders are inappropriately lifting restrictions before we’ve got the cat in the bag. At some point, we will be able to appropriately and gradually relax the precautions. But resuming normalcy won’t happen in a flash. It will be more like an off-ramp, where we gradually adjust our behaviors as more and more people are vaccinated.
The pandemic doesn’t have an on-off switch. Nuance is critical, and understanding it saves lives.
The good news is that vaccines are marvelously effective. To remind: the Pfizer, Moderna, and J&J vaccines de-fang and declaw the coronavirus. After you’ve been vaccinated, you won’t die or need hospital care from COVID-19. It means that if you are in the small percentage of people who do get COVID-19 despite vaccination, you’d have a cold or mild flu—and even that risk is low.
So do we preserve our mental health during this time of transition?
Take time off from the news. Without any actionable information, it’s only added noise.
Maintain hope (because we can). When hope is shrouded in false promises, it does serious harm. But when hope is rooted in science, it is healthy.
Know that help is on the way. The vaccines are coming, and we should be in an entirely different place this summer.
Recognize (or imagine) the physical and mental health benefits of vaccination. Once we’ve been vaccinated, we can socialize with other vaccinated people without fear. Vaccinated people together are not a danger to one another. (The CDC delayed their scheduled announcement of this today not because it isn’t true, but because of enormous political pressure that’s unrelated to science.) To be clear: in PUBLIC, vaccinated people still need to mask and distance from others because a) no one knows who’s been vaccinated, b) in my humble opinion it’s our moral responsibility to stand in solidarity with unvaccinated folks, and c) because of the tiny risk that vaccinated people can still get infected with the virus, not know it, and transmit it to others. But this risk is small. I hope my graphic here helps.
Know that even people who are unvaccinated are safer in the presence of vaccinated people. For example, kids surrounded by vaccinated teachers or grandparents are safer than when surrounded by other unvaccinated people. This is the beginning of herd immunity. We’ve got miles to go, but we’re on the way to the finish line.
Remember that our bodies work hard for us, even when we’re sleeping. Our immune systems are incredible. And it’s not just about antibodies and the B cells that make them. We’ve got TWO arms of the adaptive immune system to crush invaders like corona. T cells are the unsung heroes of immunity. This week my friend and Professor of Infectious Disease at USCF Monica Gandhi, MD, MPH, tweeted: Everything rests here on the fundamental understanding of immunology:
Main arm of immune system that fights viruses: T cells
T cell responses to vaccines unfazed by variants
T cells turn variant disease into mild
Variants will not deter progress
Know that science has our back. The amount of brain power going into crushing COVID-19 is astounding. Instead of worrying about the variants, practicing armchair epidemiology, or running a clinical trial in your living room, I gently suggest you figure out who you trust and then follow their lead. I myself have tried to maintain sanity over the past year by hitching my caboose to people who follow facts, adhere to science, understand nuance, and consider our broad human needs with humility, decency, and flexibility of thought.
Get some rest, wander around in nature, and trust that we’ll be ok. I believe it. You can choose to, too!
I will see you next week. Until then, be well.