ASM233 How do we do this?

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well hi friends and welcome to another episode of ask science mike this is a weekly podcast where we believe that every question deserves a sincere and non-judgmental response i'm your host mike mccarg of this long-running program and it's good to talk with everyone today um and it's gonna be another episode where i just talk about one question because i'm getting this question so much and the question i'd like to talk with you all today about is um how do we do this and by this i mean survive coveted 19 together when i look at the message from people on social media the questions you're sending in using ask sciencemike.com the questions that i'm getting from my patrons and my patron inbox on patreon and then the cards and letters that you are sending me to my p.o box the theme across all of those messages for the last several weeks has been i just don't know if i can keep doing this how do i keep doing this and so i thought it would be helpful to make today's episode about that and only that because it's scary out there right we have an ever-growing number of cases in the united states in countries that have done a better job which is frankly almost all of them of controlling the spread of covet 19 there are still regular outbreaks things start to reopen and they close back down people will think they've got a handle on the disease and then it shows up somewhere else we're seeing that in hong kong we're seeing that in europe we're seeing that all over every time a given culture thinks they've really got a handle on kovid 19 they don't and the united states isn't even trying to get a handle on covet 19 we're having some kind of strange culture war and well let's talk about that for a moment i saw this amazing picture it was a picture of a woman wearing a mask and a sign a sign on her jacket and that sign said wear a mask or go to jail and as i saw that picture i thought how great a symbol of our moment in history that was and it was only moments later i realized i was looking at a picture from 1918 102 years ago there's this picture of a woman in california wearing a mask and a sign that says wear a mask or go to jail and i looked up the origins of that picture and i found uh that it was not fake or photoshopped it's a real picture it's a very evocative image of seven people standing on a platform next to a train tracks i assume it's a train platform they're all wearing masks they're all wearing actually pretty cool outfits 1918 had it going on but um you know uh as i looked into the history of that photograph i learned that in the 1918 pandemic there was an incredible debate about wearing masks in 1918 to the point when spanish flu killed more than 50 million people state started to quarantine citizens and then others started making face mass mandatory now what did that tell me in 1918 in the u.s the states didn't agree on how to control or contain the 1918 flu pandemic they had different strategies and when we look at the death rates over time in different cities and states across america what do we see the same different timelines and same different mortality rates then that there is now fascinating anyway in states that passed a mask ordinance requiring it with fines and up to 10 days imprisonment for non-compliance it was an incredible pushback even in california and despite public uh advertising and campaigns uh there actually was formed and i'm not kidding an anti-mask league an organized group designed to push back on mask ordinances i am not talking about 2020 i am talking about 1918. and in response to the pressure of the anti-mass league mask ordinances were loosened and death rates returned there was a third wave of the 1918 flu pandemic in california which brought back mandatory masking in the state that i currently live in in 1918 now i have broadly and deeply studied the 1918 flu pandemic and never heard this story but we have to be careful we don't want to over uh rely on the 1918 pandemic to tell us what could happen now why because influenza and coronaviruses are very different their mutation rates are different the way they replicate is different which is why their rates of mutation are different but what was interesting to me about that story is the viruses behind these pandemics might be very different but human beings and their motivations haven't changed that much in a hundred years not at all and this has its own impact on our current situation because we not only face a deadly virus and as you remember from my last episode it is a deadly virus and it's also a harmful virus people who don't die can face serious impairments from covid19 but we also struggle with humanity we struggle with people we struggle in the different ways that we process information and conflicts in our value systems my native home state of florida has reopened disney world all while case rates have reached records there there are more people being diagnosed a day in florida with sar cov2 than there were at the peak of the pandemic in new york and its first wave which seems like very strange decisions to me and so we grieve our differences we grieve our inability to organize into meaningful collective action and what we also struggle we struggle from conflict with friends and family and other members of our society and for people who are following the rules doing the right thing staying home as much as possible under safer at home orders this has been a lot of isolation for a very long time i've said on this program a couple of times now the nutritionist that treats my daughter for anorexia told my family that it was our job to do our very best c plus work during the pandemic that phrase has stuck with me i repeat to myself 10 times a day because the expectations we usually place on ourselves right now simply cannot be allowed to be there that's true for people who are essential workers that's true for people who are protesting and organizing against police brutality and white supremacy in this country and that's true for those of us who are doing our best to contribute to all of those things by staying home we have to do our very best c plus work now is not the time to let our inner overachievers out and as always friends i am speaking with you from a place of experience i have had my own struggles and stumbles in the face of this pandemic and the reality that we find ourselves in right now i've been very frustrated with my marketing background and my understanding of science that i haven't been able to more meaningfully drive us towards collective action or come up with ways of public messaging or organizing that could destigmatize or depolarize the notion of wearing masks and i've personalized that failure i've thought well with the audience i have i should be able to start some kind of a campaign it makes a meaningful difference and don't hear me wrong i know i've made a difference but i look at those deaths every day and i think what could i have done that i did not do and so i start to internalize this notion that i can't help other people and then i'm in a in the events business that's how i make my living is selling tickets to live events live events don't exist anymore so my business has really struggled to the point that it's been hard for us to pay rent that's getting better i'll talk about that in a moment it doesn't fit this story but when i can't make a living that i feel like i can't provide for my family so that i feel like i can't help my family so now i can't help others and i can't help my family which gets me very depressed and when i get very depressed and i start feeling defeated the rituals i use to create grounding in my life both in a pandemic and not start to fall apart and then i start thinking i can't help myself and when i believe all those things i can't can't help others i can't help my family i can't help myself then i lose all hope and i got into a period for weeks where i was in that state of hopelessness uh i stayed off social media so you wouldn't have gotten a hint of it there but if you were listening to the podcast i was still putting the podcast out um i'm sure you could hear a sadness in my voice i'm not good at hiding my feelings from people and i'm talking about weeks and weeks and weeks basically since after the book came out in april and i went on tour and there was some adrenaline there virtual tour but about halfway through that i just felt the wheels come off y'all [Music] and i've just been so down i've been so down and all the advice i would offer you on how to get out of that difficult place wasn't working i couldn't find the motivation to do the things that i knew would help me now things are getting better again how are things getting better again for me you might ask i've returned to some very old habits or some old work i'm doing some corporate communications work i'm helping a company i care about make a really cool product and launch it and the energy boost i got from having a client and knowing i would be able to pay my rent and buy groceries y'all i just can't describe it i cannot describe how big a difference it made because i thought well at least i can help my family if i can help my family i have to help myself because i have to get out of this rut i'm in so i do a good job for this client of mine and then with that energy things kind of coming back i picked up another couple of clients and so suddenly you know it's a different situation for me i'm no longer thinking each science mic is going to be the last episode or anything dark and difficult like that here's why i tell you that it's not because your path to your best c plus work will be the same as mine it will not it means i tried a lot of things that experts recommend and they didn't work for me but one of them did and so i'd like to tell you about some of the things that mental health experts recommend to us in difficult times like this in fact advice from experts you know for this exact moment in history and the one i tried last the one i least wanted to do is the one that helped and that is reach out for support i stopped talking to people i stopped not only being on social media i stopped texting people and emailing people i cut myself off from everyone because when i feel sad i feel like i'm a burden on everyone else i don't want to be a burden on people because i'm really codependent and i care what people think about me and i'm afraid if i'm a burden they won't want to be around me anymore and i mean this is a feeling in my heart not a thought in my mind in my mind i know i'm a popular person with many friends and great affection from an audience but you try convincing your inner child that some time you know it's different and so i reached out for support i started telling people how sad i was mainly because i felt guilty about not talking to people who reached out to me that i cared about i would finally say i'm sorry i haven't been calling back or texting back i am very depressed and then a strange thing would happen people would say i'm sorry you're feeling depressed and i care about you and that was nice and then some people would realize well what are you depressed about and i would kind of run through the things i was depressed about i was experiencing situational depression not clinical depression meaning my sense of malaise and hopelessness was tied to a specific circumstance and two of my dear friends reached out and said you know we got a project we're working on we'd love to work with you on it and i'm pausing here because my eyes feared filled with tears because i got so excited and as i share some tips from different mental health experts right now on what we can do in times like these i tell you my story so you'll know sometimes the one that seems the hardest is the one you need to do to start getting some grounding and some perspective back in your life the one that scares you the most might be the one that's the most needed and because i'm me and because i care about mental health i'm not gonna tell you any uh anything that's exploited here i'm not gonna tell you anything that's dangerous i'm going to tell you things that have been vetted by mental health experts that i trust so here's a few ways that we can stay grounded and centered or fine ground and fine center during a pandemic and social distancing number one is move your body move your body i hate that one [Laughter] i absolutely hate exercise that's not true i greatly enjoy certain forms of exercise once i am doing them but i hate starting them i hate to get started in an exercise routine but it is completely undeniable that moving our bodies has an impact on our mental health and i want to be clear moving your body can mean something different for different people we all have different circumstances with our body we have different body shapes we have a different number of limbs or hands or feet we have different senses so i'm not i'm not telling you how you move your body i'm telling you in a way that's appropriate for your body move that thing okay yeah however that looks like you know for my friends who have total mobility uh limitation um use the mechanisms that you have from your support group to find a change of space and a change of scenery however you can move your body move your body for me to move my body sometimes i need help my daughter invites me to go for a walk every day and i'm trying to say yes more than i say no because i feel so much better once i'm out the door but somehow it just seems like putting on my shoes is impossible moving our body is proven to have a positive impact on our mental health and you say oh my gosh but with my body there's a pandemic i'm so afraid if i go outside i'll get coronavirus and remember we're bad intuitive assessors of risk in germ theory going outside distance from other people is not a very high risk situation we have seen already it's getting pretty definitive in our research people marching with masks on our protest did not bring back the virus uh a curve in a significant way people gathering in much smaller numbers indoors at bars and restaurants and gyms and clubs is what started to move the needle again started to make that curve steep right going outdoors is great for your body especially if you keep six feet away from people and everybody wears a mask okay so you can move your body outdoors but you can also move your body indoors it doesn't take that much room there's all sorts of body movement exercises youtube is a a great resource that costs nothing you'll find experts on moving your body there okay moving your body here's another one take breaks from the news we need to be informed that's important but we can get like hyper focused and obsessed with news media even right now we don't need to know minute by minute updates of what's happening in the news media on a heavy news day i look at the news twice in the morning and the late afternoon most days i look at the news once and sometimes i take days off from news media if i need it for my mental health so taking break from news media will help taking the time to unwind scheduling leisure activity now i want to be clear so here's what happens we're at home all the time many of us and the lines between leisure and work and exercise and eating all these things are getting really blurry really blurry is it day is it night what day is it what meal is this all of these things are lost so as we move our bodies and as we take breaks from news media is appropriate to de-escalate our nervous systems then we want to start instilling some sense of normalcy and routine again as i got more and more depressed my sleep got more and more erratic and before i reached out for help and support to find the energy to do that i started putting myself on a regular sleep schedule again going to bed about the same time getting up about the same time and let's be honest for a week and a half it took all my energy just to go to bed and get up on a predictable schedule but over time that started to help my body when i started to get eight and a half hours of sleep again every night i started going to bed at a reasonable time i was getting up at a reasonable time that sense of structure started to create a flow in my life where i started getting more and more structure back again i started setting aside time on my calendar that was time to work and time on my calendar that was time to eat and time on my calendar that was time to move my body and time on my calendar it was time to unwind i have found a great rhythm for me is i work on a project for a few hours and then for 30 minutes i don't i put some leisure time there then i work again then i do some leisure time then i work a third time and then leisure time again you see what i mean but by having that more regimented relationship between task flow and leisure flow it lets me actually focus on one as opposed to being like wait am i writing right now or am i youtubing is this youtube research what is happening wait a minute what day is it so creating that routine lets us create the time to unwind do you see what i mean to take the time for self-care that means we have to have time that's like not self-care and our we tend to thrive with that little bit more structure that's really important and then connecting with other people is essential now physical distancing is still important we can get together virtually but i'm here to tell you it is also possible to be reasonably safe and get together physically here's what i've done i have one of the smallest backyards in the world i live in california so my backyard is like a large porch it's not a porch but if you imagine the size of a porch like i have been to homes where the porch is bigger than my yard do you see what i mean but i will take a chair or chairs and i'll arrange them in a way that feels kind of organic and say it's my family and another family are getting together i'll arrange the chairs so the two families will all sit together and there'll be a natural separation of six to ten feet between those two seating arrangements but i try to set up in a way that like you know we're all it's like two half circles and it feels kind of natural to our brains because you have people close to you it's your own family you're seeing other set up like a available right so people have bladders platters get full we understand that we're not going to make people pee in our yard so people come inside we have taken all the soft textured things out of the bathroom we set up paper towels by the sink we do a deep disinfect when people before people arrive and deep disinfect once they leave so there's access to facilities in that situation if you keep it to two family units your risks are quite low we had we had friends over for dinner the other night dear friends of ours and you know eating and drinking are higher risk activities because of droplet production so i took two tables and i put like a no man's land or no person's land i suppose in between those tables of about seven and a half feet it was outdoors again where risks are much lower and ahead of time we were having um i'd say hamburgers but they were they were vegetarian vegan hamburgers there's no meat in them they're delicious but um so before we got they got there we washed our hands deeply we put on our face mask and we prepared like a condiment and buns and all these things tray for each table got those staged cover the saran wrap right so we we followed the cdc guidelines for food preparation in our home and so then everybody got there we don't have to have like a shared buffet each table has their own serving then i grilled the burgers took those right off the grill i'm wearing my mask i'm wearing gloves and i stitched the burgers out to each table separately so we have hot hamburgers i'm pretty sure a grill kills covet 19 anyway but and we had some sense of normalcy we all ate together socially distanced so i'm not saying we can't get together we should connect with people so when we have people in our life we know that they are taking reasonable precautions against the disease and we are as well um i encourage those those situations what i'm not talking about is a lot of family units getting together indoors or even outdoors we know i'm sorry friends house parties are a major part of the spread of coven 19 right now they really are so we gotta we really gotta buckle down here because the fact that we're not buckling down is the reason we're stopping so much bread is the reason we're still isolated is the reason we're having a mental health crisis and remember stress really affects us anxiety it can change our sleep and heat patterns cause fatigue cause chest pains headaches it can intensify chronic health conditions affect our emotional stability so we really do as we find the energy within ourselves do these things and if you can't find the energy to do them just try one at a time work on your sleep just work on your sleep work on connecting with one person this week work on moving your body work on eating one nutritious food item try something new anything that is curious that could be watching something you haven't seen yet on netflix at a very low threshold or higher playing an instrument learning an instrument something like that this is hard so the last thing i'd say to you today is if this feels difficult and overwhelming it's because life is difficult and overwhelming right now there is nothing wrong with you if you feel sad in fact there's nothing wrong with you if you feel depressed that is a very very natural normative adaptive response to the situation we find ourselves in now my friends who are mental health professionals tell me they've never struggled so much in their life and work as they are struggling right now those are the kinds of experts who come up with the kinds of activities i just shared with you just now and they are struggling too because this is incredibly difficult we are social primates who are in this period of isolation so can i tell you something my friends you might be like me you might feel helpless and hopeless and as you all started to realize i was feeling helpless and hopeless you sent me so many messages of hope and encouragement saying mike we need you take all the time you need but we need you and if you're listening to me right now can i just tell you that's true of me to you i need you i believe it's also true with the other people who listen to this program we all need you because right now our circumstances have forced us into this isolation right now we all live on our own little microscopic planets alone but one day we will all come back together and we will have to put things back together and so like my friend gloria says i need you to do your best see plus work today and tomorrow and all of this week in all of next week i need you to be more patient and gracious and kind with yourself than you have ever been because we're going to have to put society back together after this pandemic and we're going to have to fix some things that were problems with our society before the pandemic even began and we will have to do those things together and that means dear friend we need you