Coping with the coronavirus
© 2022 Gwen Dewar, Ph.D., all rights reserved
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The coronavirus that causes COVID-19 was unknown to science until tardily last year. By mid March, life has inverse dramatically for people throughout the earth.
Our daily routines have been upended. We're worried about making ends meet, preventing hospitals from becoming overwhelmed, keeping safe, and protecting the almost vulnerable among us.
And if we're parents, everything is intensified.
- We take more to practice — more mouths to feed, more family members to manage, more than conflicts to juggle.
- We have to deal with new hardships every bit school and daycare centers close.
- We as well accept the added psychological strain that comes with existence a parent.
And so I'g writing a new fix of articles for Parenting Science — posts aimed at helping us cope with these hard and worrying times.
And to begin? I want to start with basics — crucial messages we need to share with our friends, neighbors, and coworkers.
1. Nosotros need to "flatten the curve" — dull downwards the rate of infection and so our hospitals don't get overburdened.
About people who contract this virus won't feel astringent symptoms. But some people are going to become critically ill and require hospitalization. If too many demand assistance at one time, they will overwhelm the medical organization.
Hospitals volition run out of beds. There won't be enough respirators to meet need. There won't be enough specialized health care workers to provide care.
That's what will happen if we do nothing to slow the spread of the disease. It'southward illustrated by the cherry-red curve below — a rapid fasten in the number of people infected — exceeding the capacity of the wellness care system.
By dissimilarity, await at the yellow bend. It shows what will happen if we can seriously slow down the rate of manual. Lots of people eventually get infected. Merely it happens much more than gradually, and so we avoid crashing the system.
Epidemiologists say we can "flatten the curve" in this way — but it volition require that we do more than wash our hands ofttimes, or employ sanitizer.
We'll demand to become serious well-nigh social distancing : keeping abroad from crowded spaces, fugitive social gatherings, and (when possible) maintaining a altitude of least 6 anxiety from other people.
And information technology goes without proverb — stay dwelling house if you lot are showing signs of COVID-xix.
NPR has published opens in a new windowthis guide to symptoms, along with advice about when to consult your medico. Just proceed my adjacent signal in listen (#2 beneath).
2. You tin accept COVID-nineteen and never feel a cough or fever. Indeed, you might be infectious correct now and not realize it.
We're ofttimes told to scout out for "a dry cough, fever, and shortness of breath."
Only in the World Health Arrangement'southward assay of coronavirus cases in China, people didn't e'er experience these symptoms.
About 88% of confirmed cases had a fever, and 68% had a dry out coughing. Simply most 19% experienced shortness of breath (WHO 2019).
Other "typical signs and symptoms" included
- fatigue (38%)
- a productive coughing (33%)
- musculus or joint aches (15%)
- sore throat (14%)
- headache (14%)
- chills (11%)
- nausea or vomiting (5%)
And many people may not experience whatsoever symptoms — not during the kickoff few days after contracting the virus.
The takeaway? If nosotros're serious about flattening the curve — and protecting vulnerable people in our communities — we should err on the side of caution.
three. Kids can get it likewise.
Equally I explain in this commodity, near children with laboratory-confirmed infections have experienced balmy-to-moderate symptoms. And substantial portion of these children experienced pneumonia.
4. The number of reported cases tin be misleading.
The truthful spread of the virus profoundly exceeds the official tallies of confirmed cases.
That'south partly because testing has been and then limited, especially in the U.s.a.. But information technology'southward too because it takes 5-6 days for an infected person to become symptomatic, and people aren't usually tested until they become symptomatic. Cases diagnosed today reflect events that happened last calendar week…or fifty-fifty earlier.
So if your local wellness dominance is reporting (for example) 30 cases, it's likely that many more than people in your community are currently infected. And nosotros should expect to see the numbers climb — even after we've begun social distancing.
Sal Khan of Khan University has released this first-class video explaining how this works — and why information technology's so crucial that we come up together to boring the spread of the virus.
v. You should stay at abode if y'all can.
When you stay at abode, you help reduce transmission of the virus. Those people who must continue to work in public spaces will have more room to spread out, making manual less probable.
6. Stuck at home with the kids, and feeling inadequate? Go easy on yourself.
Here are my thoughts on opens in a new windowhow to cope.
7. Don't feel helpless either. Lots of people demand our support. Permit's lend a mitt, and pressure level government officials to act.
This is the time to work together — to protect vulnerable community members, aid families in financial crisis, and support everyone on the front lines. Here are some of the people who need our back up.
- Medical workers need adequate protective gear. As schools close, they also need child care for their kids.
- People in high-run a risk groups (like the elderly, and those with pre-existing opens in a new window medical conditions) need deliveries, medications, and groceries.
- Record numbers of people are losing work, and they are about to run out of the money they need to pay for the bare necessities. Hourly workers are being laid off. Gig workers, freelancers, and small business owners are facing financial ruin.
- Low income families need help in the wake of school closures. They are scrambling to find child care. And they need help with food. Many were depending on schools to provide their kids with free or subsidized meals during the mean solar day.
- Many people lack crucial wellness benefits. For instance, many Americans lack paid sick leave. They have high deductible health insurance plans, and tin't afford to pay out of pocket for medical intendance.
Find out what's happening in your local community, and see what you can do to pitch in. And put force per unit area on government officials to provide crucial financial back up to people in demand.
It's easy to sympathize why and so many people are in problem. They weren't financially secure in the starting time place.
Nearly 40% of American adults lacked the savings to cover an unexpected, $400 expense (U.Due south. Federal Reserve Board 2019). More than half the population was living paycheck to paycheck, and most small-scale businesses had very low cash reserves — only enough to get them through a month and a half without income.
Want to blame the victims? Contend that people should have saved more than money in anticipation of a crisis? Some policymakers and pundits may want to try, merely skillful luck with that.
The Usa has the highest level of income inequality among all affluent countries. The top 1% of households own more than wealth than the bottom ninety% of households combined (U.S. Federal Reserve 2020).
And lots of people take been working hard — doing work that gild requires to function — simply getting paid too lilliputian to achieve fiscal security.
For example, the years leading upward to the coronavirus outbreak, approximately 42% of American workers — including cashiers, nursing administration, janitors, warehouse workers, child care workers, and construction laborers — were making less than $fifteen.00 per hour (Tung et al 2015).
So allow's stop the income-shaming, and forbid a huge portion of the population from sinking into poverty.
References: Coping with the coronavirus
Board of governors of the Federal Reserve System. 2019. Report on the Economical Well-Being of U.Southward. Households in 2018. Can exist downloaded from this link: opens in a new windowhttps://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/2018-study-economic-well-being-us-households-201905.pdf
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Arrangement, United States. 2020. "Distribution of Household Wealth in the U.Southward. since 1989" Table last updated March 20, 2020. Accessed iii/25/2020 from https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/table/
Tung I, Lathrop Y, and Soon P. 2015. The growing movement for $fifteen. National Employment Police Projection.
World Health Organisation. 2020. Report of the WHO-China Articulation Mission on Coronavirus Disease 2022 (COVID-19). Downloaded 3/16/20 from https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who-china-articulation-mission-on-covid-19-final-written report.pdf
Image credits:
Paradigm of coronavirus by the Center for Affliction Control (public domain)
Graph of flattening the curve by Johannes Kalliaueropens Prototype file
Content final modified 3/25/2020
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Source: https://parentingscience.com/coping-with-the-coronavirus/
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