NOT GOING VIRAL – How to Survive a Pandemic

There’s a huge difference between a pandemic’s threat to a population and that to an individual. I might catch the virus, suffer for years, even die at its hands, while public health officials are declaring victory because mine was among a small enough number of cases so as not to overwhelm the health care system.

By the same token, even if my state or country is reeling from yet another COVID-19 spike, I can still celebrate my own personal triumph each morning I wake up free of symptoms.   

With success so tentative, so relative, I’m well aware that penning a piece with such a sanguine title as “How to Survive a Pandemic” might tempt fate. Let me be clear, I’m not crowing about a final victory. What I am recognizing, though, is a series of small victories—day by day.

(So far, my streak stands at 782. That’s two years, one month and 22 days since the pandemic first impacted Sally’s and my lives.)

One more disclaimer: As someone approaching two decades into senior citizenship, and who has chronic bronchitis, my definition of “survival” may differ considerably from that of a healthy thirty-year-old. That person, especially if fully vaccinated, can be quite sure they’d survive COVID. I see my catching it as a possible death sentence.

So if my tips seem a bit obsessive, understand that my goal is simply not to get sick…at all.

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WELL, WELL, WELL
Back in mid-March of 2020, I remember thinking—absurdly, I now realize—that if I just stayed in Mexico another two or three weeks, this COVID-19 thing would blow over. Yeah, right.

Since then I’ve learned that a pandemic doesn’t just blow over. I’ve learned that the prolonged, all-encompassing stress wrings out people’s true character. And I’ve learned that there’s far more to surviving than simply not getting sick.

It’s not just a matter of carrying a load from point A to point B. First of all, the road’s not always straight; there are detours, roadblocks, setbacks. Sometimes it’s not clear if there even is a point B. And, you’ve got to carry a lot of other shit too.

The answer, if there is one, is learning to balance it all: staying well yourself with staying well in your relationships; staying well against COVID with staying well against other health challenges; staying well physically with staying well emotionally and spiritually.

PHYSICAL / PRACTICAL FACTORS
You can’t very well survive a pandemic emotionally if you succumb to it physically. So the first thing is to avoid getting sick. You have to learn what you’re up against, understand how a virus infects and spreads, how it feeds on weaknesses inherent to the human condition.

Listen To the Science
There are many influential people and entities out there whose chief interests have nothing to do with your health, your kid’s schooling, the lifeblood of your small business, or your old Auntie Bess’s dying alone in her quarantined nursing home. And who will say literally anything to feed the ignorance of those who enable their ambitions.

So, to even know what’s true amid the flood of COVID “information,” you have to do your own vetting of sources. Do I trust some gaudy demagogue denying the obvious or pushing reckless quick fixes. Or a competent, soft-spoken doctor/scientist who’s devoted his whole life to discovering the truth and imparting it with integrity? You want to survive, you go with the latter—the Dr. Faucis, the Dr. Walenskys, the Dr. Guptars.

Do I believe Faux News, which has consistently trashed the venerated separation of news from opinion, and enabled right-wing propaganda? Or news sources with proven journalistic integrity. You want to know the truth, you opt for PBS, Reuters, the BBC.

            Some of us knew that breath produces much smaller droplets.

Understand How a Virus Works
For public health officials, faced with a new, largely unknown adversary, responding to the pandemic has involved lots of on-the-job training. They followed the data; they projected and made informed guesses; they adjusted, corrected and sometimes backtracked.

Still, between their guidance and simple common sense, some things have become quite clear:

This virus propagates in droplets. At first, epidemiologists saw the main culprit as larger droplets, of a size that, once projected by a cough or sneeze, would, subject to gravity, simply fall to the floor. Thus the popular “six-feet” social distancing guideline.

But some of us knew better. Knew, if from nothing else than the obvious, diffuse cloud of one’s breath when it’s ten below zero outside, that breath produces much smaller droplets: the so-called aerosols, which can spread much farther on a waft of air.

Know That Vaccines Work
One thing you hope to learn during a pandemic is how amazing vaccines are. You realize that a highly effective one—which typically takes ten to fifteen years to develop—that’s rolled out in eleven months is a bona fide miracle.

But vaccines aren’t perfect. No one ever promised that one will stop you from getting sick. From a public health official’s point of view it’s not about individual protection; it’s about rates and averages, as observed across a population. If jabs dramatically decrease the percentage of people ending up in ICUs or dying, that’s a slam-dunk.

And one learns that vaccination is about more than just protecting yourself. It’s about protecting your loved ones, your community and the entire public health system.

So, instead of insisting it’s a personal choice or that mandates encroach on your “individual liberties,” you get the damn vaccine.

Keep Your Distance
Familiarity breeds…well, viruses. Anyone who’s ever distanced oneself from a guy with horrible B.O. on a crowded bus should understand how a virus spreads. The farther away you get, the fainter the smell. Cupping your hands over your nose doesn’t stop the smell. And if you don’t get away from it, the reek could make you sick…and then you’d reek too.

                …you might as well walk right up and kiss him.

“Social distance” isn’t the only factor. You can move six feet away from that malodorous dude on the bus, but if you end up downwind from him, you still smell him. Public health researchers, once they understood the role of aerosol spread, looked at so-called “super-spreader” events to study how those smaller particles spread. 

They found, for example, that at one Boston conference, the building’s ventilation system was the culprit. When one man brought the infection with him, asymptomatically, into to a large dining hall, more people people at his table or sitting down-wind from him—much more than six feet away—caught COVID, while others sitting right next to him—up-wind—did not.

In light of that air-flow study—if not by simple common sense—one’s spatial awareness calculations should factor in the wind. You figure that, even outdoors, if you pass six feet from a sweaty, heavily breathing runner, and the breeze is coming your way, you might as well walk right up and rub shoulders with him.

Sometimes you have to take the matter of air flow into your own hands. When I absolutely had to get close to people—like getting my first, long-overdue haircut, or sitting with relatives in the garage—I’d bring a small table fan and set it up to blow gently across the space between people.

Careful What You Touch
Though touch eventually got relegated to a distant second place as a way of spreading COVID-19, it remains a gateway to infection. To stay safe, you still have to be aware of what and whom you touch: You touch a door handle or the gas pump nozzle and you may be just fine. But then absentmindedly brush your nose or rub that incessant eye itch, and it’s in you.

So when you reach for that door handle, you grab it with a tissue, a paper towel or your sleeve. If you must touch it, you use the back of your hand, a knuckle or anything but your fingertips.

To better your chances, you wash your hands—more often and longer than you ever did a few years ago. And you sanitize…all the time, especially after you’ve touched any “public” surface.

   If it doesn’t fit, it’s barely better than holding one hand in front of your face.

Mind Your Masking – Both Fabric and Fit
One factor alone, if more people had understood it and acted on it, could have made a huge difference in how severe and long-lasting the pandemic has been: proper masking. Don’t get me going on the crazies who incited rebellion, turning masks into an emblem of their misplaced “personal liberty” movement. Whatever victory they might claim has come at the cost of countless deaths.

Even millions of the folks who did comply with masking mandates failed to understand the basics of how masks work. No matter how sold you are on the ability of yours to filter the air you’re breathing, if that mask doesn’t fit, it’s barely any better a defense against COVID than holding one hand in front of your face.

A human being projects millions and millions of small droplets, most of them invisible. Not just while coughing or sneezing, but also while talking, laughing, singing…or just breathing. A decent mask catches most of them, but if there are gaps, or, worse, if you wear your mask below your nose, you’re a walking cloud of infection.

It’s so easy to forget that if your mask is working, any virus it’s stopped from getting into your lungs is now sitting on its outside surface. I doubt the CDC or anyone else has studied how many folks have caught COVID from this oversight, the assumption that blocking the virus is the same as killing it.

Meet Outdoors When Possible
Here in Minnesota we get only about five months of weather most folks find warm enough for outdoor activities like concerts or patio dining. But you adapt. In the dead of winter, families huddle outside nursing home windows bringing cheer to quarantined loved ones. Friends gather on sidewalks or in open garages. Restaurants install infrared heaters on their patios.

(And year-round sales of everything related to outdoor sports, camping and entertainment go through the roof.)

                            Sally and I even played charades on Zoom.

Rethink Shopping
I’d been gradually channeling much of my shopping to Amazon in recent years, but COVID made the advantages of robotic wish fulfillment even more attractive. I also started ordering online from Cub Foods and Target too, and did curbside for liquor and take-out food.

When I absolutely had to be inside a store I kept my eyes and ears open. If I heard someone in my aisle cough, I turned around and headed for the next aisle. I used hand sanitizer often. I even wore disposable gloves sometimes, especially at the gas pump.

An example of how imperfect public health experts’ understanding of the virus was during its first year, is the recommendation of some that people disinfect their groceries after shopping or delivery. I did this religiously—nearly bleaching the skin off of my hands—until sufficient evidence showed that transmission on surfaces is much less a threat than airborne spread.

Zoom!
Another way we used technology to cope with COVID-19 was to hop aboard the Zoom train. Thanks to virtual meetings my men’s group, having met in person every two weeks for nearly 45 years, never missed a beat. The pandemic also took office visits with my shrink and most doctors and squeezed them through the 15-inch screen of my laptop.

Beyond its practical benefits, Zoom also helped folks maintain a semblance of a social life, allowing “get-togethers” with friends now and then—a poor substitute for real hugs, but still far better than isolation. Sally and I even played charades on Zoom.

Plan Ahead
A pandemic earns its chops by being shifty, crafty, relentless. You learn that it feeds not just on the weak and stupid, but on the inattentive. So you remember your mask. You anticipate situations where you might find yourself crowded with others into a small space. You avoid venues you suspect might attract the COVID-deniers and anti-vaxxers.

Stay In Shape
Deadly viruses love flabby bodies, weak muscles and overworked organs. Why waste their time climbing trees when they can just grab the low-hanging fruit? Even if the virus does get to you, if you’re in decent shape your chances of surviving it are much higher.

So you watch your diet, avoiding the overeating/under-exercising malaise that’s so easy to fall into when you’re confined and under stress. You take time every day for a walk or any exercise that burns calories and gets your heart pumping.

PSYCHOLOGICAL / EMOTIONAL FACTORS
Honor and Invent Rituals
Maintaining a sense of control over one’s time and space has been vital to surviving COVID emotionally. In some cases that means hanging onto your existing routines; in others, it involves creating new ones. Just one example for Sally and me, during our separation that awful first spring, was our regular meetings at a certain park bench. Walks, meditation, regular phone chats, ordering flowers once a week…whatever it takes to keep feeling alive.

Maintain Self-discipline
Many people have gotten sick because their everyday work or living conditions put them in harm’s way. Others got sick simply because they inadvertently let down their guard—forgot their mask; got too close to someone; scratched a nose or rubbed an eye. To outlast a pandemic, you remain mindful.

The downside of discipline is that it’s often seen as simply being selfish. Your partner asks you to attend a grandkid’s hockey game. You see red flags at the prospect of sitting indoors with a bunch of people, some of them unmasked—or poorly masked—whose main concern is yelling encouragement to their kids. She feels your avoidance is an indictment of her.

She points out that you’ve gone to some event or other with your friends. You argue. The tenuous balance among being careful, being loving and being consistent makes you feel like someone’s standing on your chest. But you swallow the stress, reminding yourself that pleasing loved ones just might cost you weeks of utter misery—or worse.

                             Instead of being a victim, you’re now calling the shots.

Embrace Crisis As Opportunity
Many, many people, at least in prosperous, developed countries like ours, have seized the pandemic’s disruption of their easy routines as motivation to make long-avoided changes to their lives. Retirement, career change, a physical fitness program, a new hobby or just a healthier lifestyle.

By reassessing your habits and values, you deny the plague its control over your life. Instead of being a victim, you’re now calling the shots.

In my case, I decided I’d journal my pandemic experience, starting with that very first day Sally and I, in Mexico for a month, heard that some virus, originating in east-central China, was quickly hopping to other countries around the world. I’ve stuck with it, through all its transmutations, and through all the other deeply troubling events intermeshed with it, for nearly 500 pages.

Look For the Helpers
Among the many sources of encouragement and solace Americans have tapped into during this awful time has been Public Television’s late Mr. Rogers, who would urge children under stress to “look for the helpers.” In a pandemic you learn to listen to strong, quiet voices like this and tune out those too enslaved by their own fears to acknowledge COVID and/or do their part to control it.

You don’t engage in denial. You look for news sources that have demonstrated their commitment to reporting with integrity, voices you can trust to deliver verifiable facts, not partisan tropes.

BE a Helper
I’ve always heard that the best way to get through a period of suffering is to turn one’s thoughts from one’s own misery to helping someone else. So I’ve taken advantage of the endless hours of semi-isolation to step up my volunteering.

I started regularly calling loved ones just to see how they were faring. I adapted my hospice volunteering to the lockdown of many nursing homes by mailing weekly notes of companionship and encouragement to patients. I wrote over six hundred personal letters to potential voters in key districts encouraging them to vote.

Survivors turn to helping in countless other ways, one as good as the next in reclaiming one’s sense of purpose.

Welcome Humor
Even before the plague, too many people—and I include myself—have taken life too seriously. During a plague, that affliction intensifies. If it’s not simply the constant threat of catching COVID; it’s climate change, racial tensions, an assault on democracy and now a war in Europe. To make it through you have to find ways to lighten it up a little.

If you can’t find that lightness in your own disposition, you look to others who know how to put dark news into perspective without discounting it. You read the funnies, you stream Schitt’s Creek, you watch Colbert.

Your attitude, your behavior, she said, is all about not dying. Mine is about living.

SPIRITUAL FACTORS
Summon Your Higher Power
When you’re constantly worried about your own health and that of your loved ones, when you see your community and your country reeling under the weight of it all, it’s enough to bring anyone down. When it gets to be too much, sometimes all you can do is fall back on your faith.

People do this in many ways. If you pray, you have plenty to pray about. If you’re a church-goer, you get the benefit of personal support (albeit virtually these days). Pantheists like me are lucky; we get to worship everything, including Nature, which we do with minimal risk of spreading COVID.

Meditation is another risk-free, quasi-spiritual coping device. Setting aside 15 or 20 minutes every day to quiet your mind and open your soul covers all the pandemic survival bases: physical, psychological and spiritual.

Maintain Balance
One issue that keeps coming up for Sally and me is the difference between our two overriding philosophies about the pandemic. After a number of little spats about what she sees as my excessive caution—verging on paranoia—about the virus, she finally captured the nub of it perfectly. “Your attitude, your behavior,” she said, “is all about not dying. Mine is about living.”

A clear and profound difference, and one anyone living through a pandemic must consider. And one of the great challenges of survival is how to find balance between the two.

Be Grateful
To be a survivor you must avoid the traps of self-pity and resignation. You make gratitude part of your daily spiritual practice. No matter how bad it gets, you do your best to focus not on what you’ve lost, but on what you still have. Those who love you, occasional moments of comfort, the beauty in yourself, in others and in all that’s around you.

You don’t discount your own suffering, but you do acknowledge that millions upon millions of others around the world—certainly some on your own block—are suffering far more. 

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IVORY-TOWER COUNSEL? – I SUPPOSE
It’s one thing to talk of survival when you live in a place and a condition where that’s possible. It’s another when COVID-19 has actually caught up with you or a loved one. And if the virus has inflicted permanent scars or, God forbid, has taken someone from you, my ivory-tower counsel must strike you as awfully presumptuous.

I can’t begin to understand your pain. Perhaps sharing my experiences here will spare someone else that kind of pain. I sincerely hope so.