Love in the Time of COVID

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It feels like so long and yet somehow also no time at all. As we think about navigating social connections—like dating—this new landscape, I want to share a little about some conversations I had with my new friend Missy Modell—the genius behind such internet classics as that Dr. Fauci song love song.

Last week, Missy had made a comment in an instagram story about wanting to continue wearing her mask and I shared that I’m still wearing mine too. As we kept chatting, I drew a parallel between establishing boundaries during sex and establishing boundaries with meeting up during COVID. Missy loved the idea and suggested we have an instagram live to talk about it more. If you’re interested, you can watch it here. We cover a lot of ground, including this similarity between healthy communication while Normal Human Dating and healthy communication navigating social connections in a pandemic.

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Testing, Tracing, Containing: COVID Response Strategies are Anything but New

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For many people, COVID may be the first time you’ve thought about public health beyond things like the existence of vaccines. You may never have known that some diseases have to be reported straightaway to health authorities and that someone calls you if you’ve tested positive. You may never have heard of an epidemiologist or thought that we do something with skin.

Since COVID, though, you’re likely hearing terms like “contact tracing,” “quarantine,” and “isolation” all over the place. You may have heard about PCR testing and serological surveys using antibody testing. It’s possible you’ve even become a bit of an armchair epidemiologist. It might be the first time you’ve heard these words, but they’re far from new to public health. Below I talk a little about some terms you may have heard related to public health and some of their history.

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We Live in Each Other’s Shadow: Social Distancing is Our Social Responsibility

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As you may know, a new coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2 has been spreading, causing a disease that epidemiologists have named COVID-19. The disease is new (so the majority of people aren’t immune), spreads easily from person-to-person, and can cause severe illness in the elderly and medically fragile. The spread of the disease to so many people in so many places has led the World Health Organisation to declare the spread COVID-19 a pandemic.

The situation is very, very serious, but there are lots of steps you can be taking to keep yourself healthy. At this stage, Public Health is also needing us to keep our communities healthy through actions we call “social distancing.”

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Preparing not Panicking: Finding Good Information in a (Potential) Pandemic

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COVID-19 is a respiratory illness caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. Coronaviruses are a family of viruses (like influenza viruses are a family of viruses) and circulate in our communities every year. They usually cause mild, flu-like illness. Notable exceptions to this were SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and MERS (Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome). This coronavirus is new to humans and so public health scientists are still learning a lot about it. Like other coronaviruses, this one seems to be a zoonotic infection and crossed into humans from an animal—likely bats.

COVID-19, like its coronavirus brethren, causes fever, cough, and breathing difficulty. Public health scientists estimate 80% of people who come down with COVID-19 would experience mild symptoms and not need hospitalisation. Several cases in Washington State alone have managed their own illness without hospitalisation. While most people will have very mild illness, some people may get quite ill. Public health scientists expect that most of the severe illnesses will be in patients who are older. They also expect that most deaths will occur among older individuals.

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