For those of you seeking a different coping path through this pandemic, might I suggest walking, gardening, swimming or dancing. I say this because a new preliminary study suggests that people who do those things regularly have bigger brains.
Now that small respiratory droplets created by human speech have been found to hang out in the air for more than eight minutes, requiring masks in long-term care and any other setting where people congregate seems like a no-brainer.
Ed was only 16 years old, but when Pearl Harbor was attacked, he rushed to his local Navy recruiting office to enlist, only to be told he was too young to serve in the military.
While long-term care workers I’ve interviewed have been grateful and positive during the COVID-19 pandemic, my coping mechanisms could be considered somewhat less constructive and helpful.
To shake someone’s hand is to say, “I don’t know much about you, but I choose to embrace every bad hygienic choice you’ve made today.”
Facility staff have no idea if catching COVID-19 will be merely an annoyance or a life-threatening battle, a parking ticket or a death sentence. But still, they go.
I’m not an epidemiologist. Or a doctor. Or a calming Zen master, pastor, rabbi or priest. Unfortunately, I can’t create lifesaving vaccines in my garage, or turn my CPAP machine into an improvised ventilator.
Compared to shoppers tearing apart a pallet of toilet paper, our facility staff have been Buddhas in scrubs during the recent pandemic. But even they aren’t the most inspiring out of all of this.
Can you remember a public health directive than “don’t touch your face” that’s ever been more simple, clear and science-based, yet more difficult to execute? I can’t.
If I needed an object lesson in why seniors, long-term care providers and actually, all humans, seem to have such difficulty facing the inevitability of change, I got it recently — in the men’s wear section at my local dying department store.
