The Emergency COVID-19 a public awareness

To avoid corona virus   15 thoughts borrowed largely from sources  — that it is hoped to help you behave with love and wisdom in the face of a global pandemic. Solution to a global problem can not be offered but some inspiration for solution-oriented thinking can be kept in mind. 1. Kids don’t seem to be much affected by COVID-19. The concern is that this might have to do more with age-based social practices than with the physiology of children. There is a dearth of data, and what public health experts do have comes largely from China. Medical professionals are beginning to operate under the premise that the disease is particularly severe in older people — and particularly old men — because of physiological changes caused by aging, notably hypertension. There are receptors throughout the body that mediate high blood pressure. Many of those receptors are in the lungs. There seems to be a correlation between dysregulated or downregulated receptors, common in people on medicine for hypertension, and the severity of symptoms associated with COVID-19. This makes sense because those same receptors regulate fluid balances in the lungs. (And, yes, we fact-checked that with an epidemiologist.) 2. Almost 1 in 3 American adults suffers from some form of hypertension. That number is a lot higher if you’re just testing men over 70. In other words, Grandpa is at particular risk. That risk will be compounded if you succumb to the temptation to circle the wagons. There are ways to be together without being together. Video chats are good. Phone calls are good. Now is probably not the time for a family reunion. 3. Do what the scientists do. When we spoke to David Quammen, the National Geographic science reporter and author of the 2012 book Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, which predicted a novel corona virus would trigger a global pandemic. 4. Honey has been proven to help with coughing and sore throats. 5. Doing nothing can be something. 6. When in doubt, it’s best to empower kids — especially young ones. They can help wipe down surfaces. They can put stuff away. They can cook. They can’t do any of these things particularly well, but it’s a kindness to let them try. Action, as you’ve likely noticed, is a powerful treatment for the pain of powerlessness. 7. Pediatric emergency rooms are running at or over capacity. Given that there is no specific treatment for the novel coronavirus, that it seems to pose little medical risk to children, and that children carry other types of corona viruses at higher rates than adults, this is largely unproductive. Children in these settings are being exposed to more pathogens with little potential upside. Very sick kids need medical attention, but there is not a clear value proposition in diagnosing the sniffles. "If your otherwise healthy kid has a low-grade fever, you should call your doctor," says Dr. Daniel Greissman, a pediatric critical care specialist at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Florida. "List the symptoms your child is experiencing, and inquire as to whether or not you should come in." 8. The economic cost of the disease will be real both on a global scale and at a household level. Some politicians are trying to help. 9. We play games in order to live. And they don’t have to be complicated. Bored at home? Turn a chair upside down. Now try to throw a hat onto one of the legs. You just played indoor horseshoes. It’s not much, but it’s a hell of a lot better than pawing through a Twitter feed. 10. There’s a reason they call it public health. If they are sick, we are sick. 11. Spring is coming. It’s not much comfort, but time out of the office affords us the chance to watch the crocuses come up or pick cornflowers with the kids. There’s nothing — well, maybe a deadline or six — keeping you from taking your family for a hike. 12. Predicting the scale of an epidemic is incredibly difficult. Epidemiologists use a basic reproduction number (R0) — called “R naught”— which represents the mean number of new cases caused by an infected individual, to estimate the potential impact of a single infection on a population. Consider this a way of gauging how infectious a disease is not based on pathology but on population — generally averaged, as different populations pass infection at different rates due to socio-behavioral, biological, and environmental factors. 13. The effort to fully understand a subject is a distraction from engagement with it. We knew as much long before the era of “Fake News.” In the 12th century, Moses Maimonides, the pre-eminent physician in Egypt and maybe the world, said the following: “A sensible man should not demand of me, or hope that when we mention a subject, we shall make a complete exposition of it.” 14. Structure is a thing you can make. We asked a super-successful freelance reporter we know about how he keeps his head down. His answer was a look into the kind of discipline that becomes self-care. Working from home can sometimes cause hyper-focus. When you’re removed from the rhythms of the office you might forget you need to get up and eat. Set an alarm. Have lunch away from your laptop while looking out the window. 15. You don’t have to sing a song while you wash your hands. You are also welcome to consider that you are loved. Behave accordingly.