ASM216 COVID-19

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well everyone there's no fancy theme song this week because we're in a special circumstance uh we have a pandemic spreading across the globe welcome of course to the podcast ask science mike this is a weekly program where we believe that every sincere question deserves an honest and non-judgmental response i'm your host mike mccarg the internet calls me science mike that started as a joke at a party i'm not a scientist though i am passionate about the sciences and studying and communicating them well and avoiding the media narratives and and pseudoscience that we so often fall into uh but more than being about science this show is about our relationship to ourselves to our feelings and to facts and information it's a place where all curiosity is rewarded and not shamed um we're gonna do a special episode today about facts and feelings about something very specific and that's covid19 this global pandemic that is impacting our society even right now and i've got to be honest this is my third attempt at recording this episode not because i thought the old episodes were bad gosh no i was actually really proud of them it's actually because the facts and the current events are changing so quickly that by the time i can record edit and release an episode it seems so far out of date so i've decided to shift my focus for this episode to make it be as evergreen as possible my hope is that if you listen to this whenever you hear it throughout the entire unfolding arc of covid19 anywhere in the world the information in this podcast is reliable and evergreen not attached to any particular moment but advice and insights that will remain useful and on that note if you'd like to stay up to date number one i'm going to be talking a lot about covid19 and taking questions on my various social media platforms including facebook twitter and instagram but also make sure you check out the show notes for this episode episode number 219 on asksciencemike.com where i will share specific links to sources that i trust for current up-to-date information about covid19 including some science driven blogs as well as official resources like the cdc now usually at this point in the program i talk with you about my events and well that's kind of a big deal and impossible to separate from the content of this episode we're going to talk in this episode about how events have to change in the short term to protect people's health to protect and literally save lives and that means gosh my events calendar is changing rapidly most of the events that i had on the books for the rest of the year have been canceled save one that would be the reimagining faith gathering uh in april i think april 25th and 26th if i recall correctly i haven't heard specifics on that but you'll be able to get updates there on my website with whatever i learned at mikemcart.com events or go to and just tap the events button i also have a book tour coming up we are definitely restructuring that it is not safe in april and may to get together in rooms for my book tour which gosh it makes me so sad because i was i was honestly really looking forward to seeing you all face to face so i want you to know that i'm working on a plan with booksellers to preserve the best parts of the event the face-to-face interaction the personalized copy of the book and the meet and greet we're going to try to migrate those events online instead of canceling if you want to help me do that and you have a ticket to one of my book events please reach out to your bookseller and let them know that you'd be interested in attending an online version of this event especially if it still includes the personalized copy that you paid for and i also want you to know my friends that i am working with the team that brings ass science mic to you every week and behind my events to cook up new ideas on ways that we can be together in online spaces that are meaningful and enjoyable and that's not just the people who work with me that's other people i know who create media for a living artists musicians authors speakers the kinds of people you listen to all the time believe me when i say that we are trying to think of ways that we can be together and of course this episode is brought to you by my friends over at kiwi co uh kiwico is a longtime sponsor of athletics mike and boy are their products helpful right now uh kiwi co provides on our hands-on opportunities for people to learn about science technology engineering arts and math they do that by sending you these physical crates they're boxes you get in the mail that are creative learning activities for people of all ages and gosh they are wonderful we get them in our house they are age appropriate opportunities to learn we get four every month and then me and the kids sit down and we figure out who's going to get which crate they are simply wonderful they're designed right here in california and if you're going to be home a lot right now they are something fun and participatory to do so if you'd like to learn more about kiwi co and sign up including 60 off your first month as a listener of our science mic simply go to kiwico.com ask sciencemike and again i'm so happy that they're sponsors of the program so as i mentioned right up top in the introduction i think an important thing to discuss that i don't actually see discussed much in our media is the impact of covid19 on our feelings and you might think well gosh mike why do you want to talk about feelings in regard to a global pandemic because i believe that the way we address our feelings will impact the way that we behave in response to the pressures and anxieties produced by a global pandemic if we don't focus on our feelings and on our mental health i think there's a real risk that we could behave in ways that ultimately cause this disease this pandemic to be more dangerous than it would be otherwise let's be honest this is a scary time i am often afraid i am often anxious and i'm a highly science literate person this is a genuinely frightening time we haven't had a global pandemic of this magnitude on earth in over 100 years and my friends this is so hard on our bodies this is so wildly difficult for our feelings we are grieving you might say well how could it be grieving it seems like this is just starting well one we know psychologically people are capable of something called preemptive grief when you suspect or know something difficult is coming you often enter a grief more acute than you would if you didn't know about a loss ahead of time and so we look at signals in our world we look at newscasts and reporting we look at charts and graphs and our bodies begin to grieve fearing what will come and i think you can actually see the stages of grief in our public discourse and in our media do i see denial bargaining anger i do i do see all those things in our conversations together and so i think if we understand first that many most or perhaps all of us are in the stages of grief then we would also understand that now is an essential time for us to be patient with each other that if people are grieving our feelings are in a state of constant activation that we find ourselves more easily drawn into anger into fear into panic and into conflict than we would be at other times this is especially true on social media where we can't see each other's nonverbal cues and if we're going to be patient with each other my friends we also have to be patient with ourselves it's hard to be patient with our own feelings especially times right now when they seem so strong and you could hear me say that you need to be patient with each other and patient with yourselves and then feel guilt or shame in those times when you lose patience with yourself or other people and what i'm telling you is even then be patient with yourself and with others here's what i believe to be true i will make very few predictions right now in this recording because i think a lot of people are making predictions and they're making us more anxious no one knows what's going to happen as this pandemic unfolds not one person different people are making predictions at various levels of expertise and yes some of those predictions will turn out to be true and others will turn out to be wrong but right now the people making those predictions no matter what they say are not sure if their predictions are correct or not so the only prediction i'm going to make in this entire episode is this the coming days will probably be more frightening than the days in covid 19 we've had so far that the scariest things are yet to come and gosh i know even saying that i feel it in my chest i feel it in my cheeks i feel it in my hands but i think it's necessary to state this clearly things are going to happen that frighten us and that means we need to structure our lives in a way that give us the space to process and respond to that fear so that we're less reactive because reactions right now are dangerous even the news we've seen already is concerning governments and global health organizations are taking really disruptive actions and they're doing so for a reason the virus we're discussing really is dangerous the world health organization has declared a global pandemic a step they do not take lightly today the european union announced that it's sealing its borders to almost all international travel and the united states who has been relatively slow to respond is now officially recommending that people do not gather in groups larger than 10. and when we separate such news from the graphics on 24 hour news cycles and the bold headlines on newspapers what we're left with is a world that suddenly seems strange and uncertain and unfamiliar and for us people that's scary so here's a few things i want you to know number one this will be over one day and that day will not be too long from now i don't know if this this pandemic is going to to peak in a few weeks in the united states or a few months no one does but in the overall outline of your life the end of this crisis is very near you've been through things that have been more difficult and longer lasting than what we'll face with covet 19. we also need to understand that in this process we're going to lose people human lives will be lost to covid19 and we have to grieve that it's going to be difficult but we also our actions together will influence how many lives are lost to covet 19. here's something i know pretending that nothing is wrong will cause us to lose more human lives than necessary sticking our head in the sand and saying this isn't as dangerous as the flu or this is just like the cold or this is a liberal conspiracy or a government way to prevent voting or whatever ignoring the magnitude of the issue will lead to people dying pretending nothing is wrong will make us lose people but guess what panicking will also lead to a loss of human life the reaction we have in panic leads us to take actions that destabilize our society's ability to respond not only to this pandemic but the ways the pandemic will reshape our economy don't panic what does that mean people please stop hoarding and panic shopping you don't need that much toilet paper our food supply is stable that includes pet food that includes non-perishables our food supply is stable you don't need to go to the grocery store and clear out the shelves if you want to be responsible take a normal shopping trip and buy just a little more than you usually would likewise my friends you do not need masks unless you are a healthcare worker or are immunocompromised masks including n95 masks will not work to keep you from catching covet 19 instead hospitals need these masks to keep people who are already infected from unnecessarily spreading that infection to other people when surgeons wear masks it is for their patients to not catch the surgeon's germs not to protect the surgeon from the patient's germs you do not need masks hoarding bottled water hoarding masks and hoarding food are panic responses that will my friends result in the loss of human lives please hear me as a voice who you trust and who cares for you deeply and saying we cannot afford to panic if you're listening you'll notice you hear two things that seem contradictory one is we can't afford to pretend nothing is happening and two we cannot afford to panic and both are true at the same time and taking care of our feelings acknowledging our grieving process will help us to appropriately split the difference between ignoring and taking no action and panicking and taking actions that are counterproductive here is how we're going to do that in this episode we're going to look at two things the first thing we're going to look at is the virus and our bodies and the second thing we're going to look at is the pandemic and our society there's two separate issues that intersect but they help us explore the nuance and the things that we need to take action on and the things we need to be aware of but before we do that i'd like to check in with our feelings one more time as you listen to this program i will say things that frighten you in fact i may have already said things that frighten you and i want you to know that i trust you and that i am here to help you and equip you with good information and i want you to know that i've worked very hard at finding trustworthy credible information to share with you please know that anything i share with you is not to be alarmist that i i don't want to frighten or upset you i don't make extra ad dollars for ratings i have no incentive to be sensational or alarmist i'm in a fortunate position because so many of you pitch in every month through patreon to pay my bills that i have the luxury of just being honest and present with you all and that means i don't actually want to arouse a fear response in you i don't want to make you disregulated what i want you to do is you listen to me share is regularly check in with yourself and your feelings i'm gonna give you three questions that you can use to guide that process number one what do you feel what physical sensations do you feel in your body heat cold tingling tightness tension what sensations do you feel in your body the second question where do you feel those sensations in your belly in your chest and your shoulders and your neck and your face and your hands and your arms where in your body do you feel what sensations and how big are those sensations if you're like put a circle in the air in front of your body would it be tiny like a couple of fingers apart or would you spread your arms and say i have a tightness in my chest and it feels it feels five feet big those sensations are your body's way of telling you what you're feeling and what i want you to do as you listen to my voice is if at any point it seems too much and it seems too scary i want you to pause this episode and take a break i want you to take care of yourself there is no gold star for rushing through this program and making it to the end without stopping if we're going to have a show that's about a healthy response to a pandemic i also want you to have a healthy response to this podcast episode and most of all friends remind yourself that this like all things is temporary if there's one thing i know it's that things in our world and in your life will get better than they are today this is temporary now let's talk about the virus and our bodies the virus we're talking about the disease is covid 19 that's the name of the disease the virus has a name too and that name is sars cov 19. in the past sars cov19 has been called 2019-ncov as well as the coronavirus you may have heard the name sars before as this is not the first viral outbreak that had pandemic potential to be called sars which is why this is sars cov2 um sar cov2 sar stands for secute severe acute respiratory syndrome and this is the second such disorder to bear that name and what you have to understand is there is no one coronavirus in fact you've probably had a corona virus before many of them are responsible for some of what we call the common cold coronaviruses make up as much as 20 of colds in a given cold cold season coronaviruses are usually very contagious and not life-threatening you've probably had one before what makes this one special is it's a new or in the medical lineage a novel coronavirus now here's why that's significant coronaviruses based on their their family relationship the way they behave as a disease is they change and mutate all the time new strains appear every year and this strain of coronavirus sars cov2 is significant because it is both highly contagious as coronaviruses tend to be but unlike most coronaviruses has a higher than normal mortality rate so the disease presentation you're more likely to have what's called a severe presentation of sars cov2 the normal coronaviruses and death is more likely among almost every age group other than perhaps young children what you need to know and this is a fact is because this virus is new this strain is new we don't know the exact value or or the exact uh contagion rate or mortality rate for covid19 the virus is too new we don't have a complete set of data for a virus that just appeared on this planet we don't know the exact numbers but we don't need to know exactly how contagious or exactly the mortality right of covid19 to understand the need for immediate and meaningful action what we know already and this is not up for debate is that covid19 is both more contagious and more deadly than influenza for every age range except perhaps perhaps very young children below 10 years of age once you get above 10 years of age covid19 is more deadly than flu for every age range so you may have heard that people in their teens and 20s you know aren't affected they are the mortality rate although relatively low for those groups compared to other groups is still much higher than common infectious diseases this is a significant disease now here's the part that is scary and friends the number i'm about to share with you is frightening so i'd ask you to take a moment and prepare yourself especially if you happen to be operating a motor vehicle or in some situation where your cognitive focus is important i might even pause the podcast here if divided attention could be harmful for your safety based on the mortality rate we have already seen from this virus official cdc estimates for the potential loss of life in the united states alone are between 200 000 and 1.7 million people those numbers are staggering there's no other way to look at 200 000 deaths in the united states other than staggering and 1.7 million lives lost is unimaginable i say this not to frighten you i know many of you are concerned and prepared and want to know how to take action and i wish i could skip over the numbers for you but for those of you who are wondering if this is significant or how much disruption in your life is warranted let me ask you what are 200 000 lives worth what are 1.7 million lives worth at those kind of mortality numbers friends everyone would lose people near and dear to them again i do not say this to scare you but so that you will understand the gravity of our situation and the necessity of taking action that prevents such a loss of life the people most at risk of being in that number are older people people especially in their 60s 70s and above 80 although people in their 50s do have higher risk than other groups also people with other medical conditions people with heart disease people with pulmonary conditions people with hypertension diabetes obesity and people who have some kind of immunosuppression or are immunocompromised stand a much much higher risk of a severe disease presentation and death than other people and you might think well i'm 40 or below and i don't have complicating health conditions i'm okay please do not think that way that's how people will die and i'll explain how that works in a moment but it's actually most important it is actually most important that the younger and healthier people take precautions immediately to avoid loss of life we don't have to see even 200 000 people die in the united states it is not medically necessary we can avoid those numbers if everyone and i mean everyone takes immediate action to slow the spread of the virus now with a novel virus we have little ability to reduce the total number of affections there simply aren't enough people who have a natural immunity to a brand new disease our goal instead is to do something called flatten the curve and i've noticed some confusion about what it means to flatten the curve so without the ability to use graphics in a podcast i won't even try instead i'm going to offer you an illustration that gives you some sense of the scale don't over fixate on these numbers these are for accessibility and not for statistical confidence but let's imagine for a second that there are 100 people in the united states of america 100 that's a number we can all understand we can all visualize 100 people and based on what we understand about covet 19 we understand of those 100 people 80 of them are probably going to get coveted 19. so what does that mean well of the 80 people who get coveted 19 we can expect that say 40 of them will need to visit a hospital at some point during the disease in order to survive now here's where the problem comes in if there's a hundred americans let's say that we have eight hospital beds if we have eight hospital beds 40 people can't fit in eight hospital beds right it means the best chance of keeping people alive through this pandemic is to make sure that no more than 16 people at a time have coveted 19 so that the hospital beds aren't all full right because 16 half of them eight would need to go to the hospital now but even in that example we're assuming every hospital bed is available to people with covid19 and that's the problem the reason we have to slow the spread of the infection is hospitals are already full of people we don't have that much extra hospital capacity it's very easy for our healthcare system to get overwhelmed and if all the beds fill up that's when we get closer to that 1.7 million people dying number we've got to keep hospital beds available and we can only keep hospital beds available if everybody works together to slow the spread of the pandemic and i have wonderful news for you my friends we already know how to slow the spread of covet 19 that is not a mystery to science i'm going to tell you in this podcast everything that you yes you can do to save people's lives gosh what a wonderful opportunity that is how often do we wish that we had the opportunity to save lives and you have the opportunity to save lives right now and here's how you do it one hygiene two sanitation and three social distancing now unfortunately this is complicated because social distancing has its own costs it puts people in other risks that involve having their material needs met and mental health and so we're gonna have to work together to face those things these fallouts from social distancing as we social distance we also have to work together to handle the fallout from social distancing i'm not saying it's easy i am saying it's possible so we'll start by talking about what we should be doing to prevent the disease and then i'll talk about what we can do to help mitigate the fallout from us slowing the spread of the disease so here's how you slow covet 19 and save human lives number one hand washing good old-fashioned hand washing is an essential component of protecting people from covet 19. kevin 19 is absolutely messed up by good old-fashioned soap and cold running water now a lot of people don't know how to wash their hands well and that is a public health challenge when you wash your hands it should take 20 seconds or the amount of time it takes to sing the happy birthday song twice and your hands need to be rubbed together rigorously i'll have a link in the show notes here in a video i made about how to wash your hands well there is an art to it you want to wash your hands often you want to wash your hands before and after eating after you use the restroom after you touch potentially contaminated surfaces after you touch other people you want to do that hand washing is important and no matter how recently you've washed your hands you want to touch your face as little as possible because your eyes your nose and your mouth all have mucous membranes that viruses pass through easily so anytime you touch your face you risk spreading the disease to you and which is tough i get it i've got a beard and gosh do i love to stroke my beard i'm tempted to do it even right now and i also understand that i have to recondition myself to avoid those impulses the other thing that happens to me it's kind of funny when i talk about not touching my face i start feeling little itches all over my face it's like i want to touch my face so bad that it starts to itch so i'll do that and i'm learning to just kind of sit and roll through that so we're going to wash our hands well we're going to avoid touching our face we're also going to sanitize surfaces this is a great time in your life to declutter so that it's easy to frequently sanitize your common work surfaces door knobs light switches anything that people touch a lot needs to be regularly sanitized right now because we understand coven 19 is is pretty tough and we'll talk a little about that further in the episode we also as part of hygiene and sanitation it's important that people stay home when they're showing any symptoms of being ill this is an essential part of presenting the spread of the disease and this is where covent 19 gets a little complicated because it doesn't have a consistent set of symptoms covet 19 presents differently with different people in every case the most common symptom that you have covid19 is a persistent high fever lasting for a week or more that's in 88 of cases and studies we've seen so far the only symptom that consistently shows up in more than half of cases is this persistent high fever but it doesn't show up in all cases a dry cough is another relatively common symptom of covid19 as is shortness of breath in general if you start displaying flu-like symptoms or even cold-like symptoms it's time to call in sick at work and stay home when someone in your house is sick you should take extra precautions anyone who is living with other people while they're sick you should try to limit your movement through the home stick in one room as much as possible and whenever you're handling personal items and laundry from someone who's exhibiting cold flu symptoms you should wear gloves you should wash your hands after handling those things hygiene and sanitation play a huge role in limiting the spread of coven 19 but they don't play the biggest role they're just the easiest things for us to handle personally the best tool we have in our public health arsenal the thing that we can work together that will really make a difference in this disease is something called social distancing and social distancing friends is very very important here's why sars cov2 this virus this coronavirus is very resilient when it's out of our bodies and in the environment some studies are showing us that sar cov2 may be able to survive for three or more hours as it floats through the air in micro droplets of saliva that happen when we cough when we sneeze or when we speak loudly three hours is a long time for something to float in the air and if you're an epidemiologist or a virologist you're like wow that's a pretty tough virus we're also finding that sarcia v2 may survive on surfaces for 72 or more hours that's a very long time for a virus to survive on a surface so because of this environmental resilience if all we do is personal hygienic precautions that won't do enough to prevent the spread of covet 19 to slow it enough to prevent overwhelming our health care system it means unfortunately social distancing is the most essential tool we have to slow the spread of covet 19 and some studies are telling us right now that the virus infection rates are highest among people in their 20s the very group who is the most reticent to engage in significant social distancing because they often feel fine if you're in your 20s and you get coveted 19 you can have a very mild symptom presentation that feels maybe like a mild cold you can keep functioning just fine you can keep moving through your life and guess what you're doing you are shedding a virus that may have a one in five chance of killing science mike not to over personalize it but if you're listening i assume you care about me and if you care about me you know that i suffer from heart disease and early studies tell us that people with heart disease and other complicating factors can have a mortality rate as high as 20 percent so as you move through your life enjoying spring break going to bars going to clubs continuing with your activity you are potentially spreading a disease that will lead to the end of my life and let's be honest i don't say that for me i say that because i can stand in hopefully in your psychology for people you don't care for as much as you care for me everyone deserves a chance to survive this pandemic and they will only get that chance if you even you young and healthy people start engaging in social distancing right now you should not be going to a bar you should not be going to a club you should not be gathering in groups larger than 10 people at all does that seem harsh i'm sure does it seem like an overreaction i assure you the experts tell us it is not that's exactly what social distancing is social distancing means interacting with fewer people in person and increasing the physical distance of any in-person interactions that you have to have when you must be around other people and when i say other people i mean outside your home you want to keep a six foot bubble all around you at all times that's a three foot if you wanna be able to put your arms out and not touch anybody in any direction that means unfortunately right now handshakes and hugs need to wait until this disorder has passed until this disease is no longer a pandemic and i'm a handshaker and a hugger i love physical contact it's as hard for me as it is for anyone i if you follow my work you know i literally stand and let people hug me for hours during meet and greets and i love it i absolutely love it this is a hard habit for me to break but i'm breaking it because i care about human life one thing i found as a neat alternative to hugs and handshakes is the good old star trek vulcan symbol live long and prosper that way we can acknowledge people we can show them that we care about them without spreading a pandemic so when we have to be around others we go for this constant six foot bubble if you can now is the time to telecommute if you are in charge of an organization this is the time when you yes you should be investigating the options that allow your employees to tell a commute as many people as possible need to be removed from daily interactions with each other and work so often acts as a petri dish when telecommuting is impossible and in some lines of work it is i understand there needs to be an extra emphasis placed on regularly sanitizing common surfaces everyone should be washing their hands often and we should be keeping our bubbles wherever possible this six foot space around you clear of other people if everyone's coming to the office that's fine but don't call a meeting handle it in an email if you have to have a meeting allow people to spread out and sanitize the space before and after every meeting which meetings every meeting this is the time in social distancing when we need to cancel large events at our understanding today a large event is an event that involves more than 10 people 10 human beings you don't want to be in a room with more than 10 people that means whenever you can shift events to an online setting we'll talk about that more in the economic section but if we cancel too much outright our economy is going to crash and we'll have to deal with that as well so we're talking about not ending events but shifting them online conferences can be done online concerts can be done online a lot of events can be done in an online format where we still share value we still exchange ticket prices this is important so i i want to understand that when i say telecommuting cancel large events i know there's an economic impact and we are going to talk about in this episode and why that's important especially because the people who are marginalized economically stand to suffer the most from social distancing we have to take intentional actions to mitigate that okay i get it i also understand that moving things from physical space to online space is hard because we're creating a surge in internet traffic today the server that i do dungeons and dragons on with some of my friends uh from the audience of the literature's podcast went down because so many people were on discord all of a sudden it's going to take time for internet engineers to accommodate these shifts in demand and still we need to move events from in-person spaces to online spaces if you have a wedding planned march or april you probably need to reschedule it this is this is significant you also want to eliminate all non-essential travel travel is simply an opportunity to be exposed to more people and has more opportunities for covet 19 to spread from person to person again i know these numbers are changing quickly they're changing quickly for a reason because we're seeing that this virus is spreading much faster than we thought now this raises an essential question that gets to the heart of who we are as a social species what about smaller gatherings what about a dinner party with six people what about all these kids who are now out of school having friends over and there are no hard and fast rules i can offer you right now every family's gonna have to make their own decisions i will tell you that less interactions means there's less disease transmission opportunities which creates less of a strain on the health care system you should be very selective with who you spend in person time with right now and when spending time with someone who doesn't live with you in your home you should avoid physical contact and you should maintain this six foot bubble perimeter around you it's up to you to decide how many people you see and how often in what context i'm doing a lot of face time calls i'm doing a lot of text threads and that's going to be necessary for more people to do and i'll say this if you're determined to see people to drive around town and even see people one or two at a time even in small numbers please do me a favor and avoid people in high risk groups until further notice if you're seeing a lot of people even one-on-one don't come to science mike's house don't go to your grandparents house don't go to people who have compounding health factors or a 50 age of 50 or older because you are putting their lives at risk and i know isolation is hard on us psychologically if you live with other people this is an opportunity to get close to them we're doing lots of family hugs in my house and if you live alone maybe form a fixed web a small group of people in whom you all interact with each other and and don't do physical interactions outside of that i'm not saying that we have to lock ourselves away which by the way this voluntary quarantining the self quarantining the social distancing you can walk outside it's pretty easy to find a bubble this size in a park i'm not saying we have to lock ourselves indoors now when i talk about social distancing it inevitably raises the question for people how long will we have to do this and here i just want to be honest with you no one knows we don't know how long this phase of social distancing will be necessary precisely it could be a matter of weeks it could be a matter of months remember the reason we're doing this between 200 000 and 1.7 million people could die in the united states alone and the degree of social distancing we do starting right now helps determine how big that number is or technically how large that number is you might say months how are people going to survive for months if they can't telecommute where are we going to get income how are we going to pay our bills and that's a that's a really necessary question that leads me to the second part of this podcast which is the pandemic and our society now everything i've shared with you so far is grounded in really good science there are easier answers to how we slow the spread of covet 19. when we talk about how to respond to the economic and societal disruptions caused by covet 19 the answers are less certain here's what i know covid19 is causing and will continue to cause economic disruptions and there is a possibility that these disruptions could be severe remember what i said about checking in with your body and with your feelings earlier it is possible that these economic disruptions are severe and we can survive economic disruptions especially if we work together the fact is public gatherings and being in public spaces are a huge part of our economy the food service industry alone is five percent of america's gross domestic domestic profit product it's not just that you know we've got concerts and book tours pubs and clubs places we gather are places that power our economy restaurants weddings other industries that involve being together play an outsized role in the flow of capital that makes an economy function and let me be honest social distancing is already impacting people economically this particular author podcaster you're listening to now has already seen his income drop more than 50 percent and i'm fortunate i can try to shift to online formats i have options to try and continue to make ends meet i'd like a moment for us to think of people who are servers in restaurants people who are baristas people who are sound engineers people who are sanitation workers in facilities that serve a public function many of these people are hourly employees with very little benefits in their job like sick time or health insurance and they're effectively now on forced unemployment so the recession we talk about eventually coming on a macro level is already here in spades for many people on an individual level this is significant and this can lead to a second loss of life because people already at the end of their road economically now aren't making any money it means the intervention of governments and charities is an essential part of our response to covet 19 because otherwise we will face in addition to a health pandemic an economic epidemic as evictions and foreclosures lead to a spike in homelessness a crisis which is already out of hands think of as well of what closed schools mean to children who rely on school lunches to meet their basic nutritional needs those children are in immediate duress right now meals they expected to get at school are no longer available right now children are hungry because of this pandemic it means we have to work together to respond in meaningful ways and we need to do so immediately so when we talk about our feelings and how we respond to a pandemic gosh our nervous systems are really in to fight or flight or freeze we can't run and there's no one to fight and so we end up freezing and that can show up in the ways that we participate in the economy now is not the time to freeze all your personal spending we've got to keep our economy alive and i don't mean this in some way of protecting the stock market or the flow of capital or presidential administrations i don't care about any of that i care about people who are on the margins of our economy who are going to need our help in the coming hours days weeks and months so here's a few ideas on how you can restructure your personal economy to make the biggest different difference in these days number one is to support the work of marginalized voices people who lead on how to serve marginalized communities because they share the identity of those communities some of my friends in particular are deeply involved in this work and you could support them and in doing so hear their advice on how to support these communities at large people like andre henry austin channing brown robin henderson espinoza tori douglas sandra van opstall shannon dingle and stephanie tate these are all people doing real work that has always been essential and always been necessary but now is even more so the first thing you could do is help fund them to get the word out and the second thing you could do is follow their recommendations about how to immediately provide economic relief to people who are already marginalized in our society you can also continue to shop there are still opportunities to go and buy things even out of your home you've got to get out that's okay just don't go in a shop that's too crowded there's plenty of shops locally owned stores that are selling things and you can go in and pass the time for a few minutes by picking something up as always buying something more local is more good for your local economy you can still order food from restaurants to go options are still available and i suspect right now restaurants are really going to need to staff up on food delivery services as an author i'd love to tell you books are great entertainment i actually just got a mock-up of what my hard back book is going to look like i was really excited to see that today as i uh prepared to record this podcast and local bookstores are seldom crowded i bet if you need some time out of your home you could find one of these six foot bubbles in a local bookstore and on that note in your own personal vitality there are spaces where you can find that six foot bubble that allow you to get out of your home even if the gym is closed we have ample parks in most cities outside spaces are not necessarily one we're at high risk of catching the disease if you walk around you don't touch anything you don't get too close to other people in terms of also not freezing your personal economy remember every writer performer musician and artist that i know is in the process of dreaming up ways to entertain and educate you in online formats so as you see those opportunities by all means show up buy tickets be a supporter it's something for you to do while you're stuck at home and something that keeps our economy moving but like so many significant issues we face in life our personal actions are not enough it will also take collective action to make a difference and that means it's time to tell our elected representatives that simply rescuing banks and wall street is not enough the government found 1.5 trillion dollars to try to prop up the stock market and that's not going to do a lot of good for people who are hourly workers who can't pay their rent tell your elected officials that we expect direct stimulus towards citizens and consumers tell them you expect eviction protections and mortgage relief at the federal state and local level there is so much to do and as we close pay attention to this we have hard work to do right now we all have to process our feelings we have to take actions to slow the spread of a dangerous disease that qualifies as a pandemic and we have to protect the people whose ability to earn a living is disrupted by the very precautions we're taking to protect human lives this is a moment where we have an opportunity and that opportunity is to remind ourselves that society is something that we create together and because we are all creating society with our actions every day we can work together right now we could work together right now by taking this threat seriously and not panicking by taking responsibility to slow the spread of this infectious disease and paying attention to those left behind and as we do those three things we may find that this scary and frightening time helps us to imagine together ways in which we could make a society that is better for all of us we're going to be okay and we're going to be more okay if we work together thank you for listening to another episode of asklandsmike and i can't wait to speak with you again next week