The Future Of Social Distancing And You
It’s now been several months since we all learned the coronavirus that had devastated parts of China had made it our shores. In that time, we’ve learned new words and phrases, such as “COVID-19”, “PPE”, Social Distancing”, and “Shelter In Place”. We learned to wear masks, stay at least six feet away from strangers, and stay in or near our homes as much as possible.
Many of us have had to learn to work from our homes. Far too many of us have had to learn to live without any job at all, as unemployment has spiked to levels not seen since the Great Depression. Uncertainty and worry have become a daily way of life for all of us.
After a month or so of sheltering in place, our anxiety levels have shot through the proverbial roof. And now we hear government officials at all different levels talk about “reopening” the country, resuming businesses, and trying to get the economy back on track.
Naturally, this news has been met with a wide variety of reactions. Some have reacted with joy, exhausted from being cooped up in their homes, watching local businesses teeter on the brink of failure, or seen their jobs go away without any promise of return.
Others have reacted with renewed worry, fearful that the COVID-19 virus, of which there is still no vaccine or effective treatment options, will find a greater number of victims as people move back into society in larger numbers.
So what should we do?
While I can’t make that decision for you, a little perspective on what the purpose behind social distancing and shelter-in-place was designed to do in the first place might help. The first thing to remember is that none of these measures were ever meant to stop the spread of the virus. Despite what some of those in media and government may have led you to believe, it was only meant to slow down the spread of the virus to keep our health system from getting overloaded.
And it has worked.
We aren’t seeing stories of hospitals overwhelmed with coronavirus patients, as had happened in other countries that didn’t adopt social distancing and shelter-in-place soon enough. This is true especially here in our area, where our initial fears of a much larger outbreak thankfully did not come to pass.
And the effects of the slowdown in the spread of the coronavirus has given us time to get testing centers up and running, allowing our hospitals and medical centers the time to stock up on PPE and needed equipment to treat those who have contracted the virus, and kept our healthcare professionals from having to make impossible decisions on who gets treated and who does not.
That doesn’t mean everything is perfect. Far from it, but it could have been so much worse, and we can all agree that we are in better shape than we were just two months ago. But that doesn’t mean the danger is past and we can all go back to the way things were. Because there are still some hard truths that we need to face, whether we want to or not.
First and foremost: there is no vaccine. And there won’t be one for quite some time. Even the most optimistic timeline doesn’t have a safe and effective vaccine becoming readily available to the public until at least this time next year. In the meantime, medical researchers around the world are devoting all of their time to try and develop treatments in the hopes of lowering the death rate from the virus or making the symptoms far less destructive to the body and the long-term health of those who have (or will) contract COVID-19.
The trade-off of “re-opening” society is increasing exposure to those who have COVID-19—and remember, you can have it with no symptoms for days before you feel bad—and a resulting spike in cases. The best case scenario is that the inevitable exposure is controlled and stays under the “danger curve” that would otherwise overwhelm our healthcare system.
For the other truth is that we cannot continue as we are for very much longer without our economy suffering even more severe damage. Whether you agree or not that Tennessee and Georgia is re-opening “too soon”, we all know we need to get things started up again at some point in the not too distant future. We just need to make sure that we don’t move too fast or too recklessly that we end up worse than we are now. For this virus will be with us for some time. It’s not going away tomorrow, or next week, or next month, and even next year. But that doesn’t mean we need to hide away from the world doing nothing until it’s gone.
So what should you do?
The honest answer is: make the best decision for you and your family. Don’t let others pressure you into doing something you don’t feel is safe for you and your loved ones. And on the same token, try very hard not to pass judgment on others who may have made decisions that are different from yours. No one person has all the answers. There are just too many unknowns. The best thing we can all do is be patient, be smart, be cautious, and decide the level of risk (both healthwise and financially) we are comfortable in taking.
And in the meantime, please remember to wash your hands. A lot. And then one more time.