Caring for Others

Caring for others is a resilience skill. When we take care of others, we build our own resilience. As I explained in an earlier post, this is a time when we need to be taking good care of ourselves as well as those around us, specifically our family and friends. If we care about the other people around us, we should wear a mask in social settings since this does little to protect us but does a great deal to protect those around us. Many of us have contracted the virus and are not aware that we are carrying it. We may have had very few symptoms. So this means we could be a super spreader. We can spread the virus to those around us if we are not wearing a mask.

Wearing one significantly decreases the probability that we will infect others. So wear a mask not for yourself, but for other people. And encourage those around you to do the same. Feel free to call other people on this. If they care about you or about having your business as a customer they should respect and help protect you by wearing a mask. This is certainly not a hoax and it is not or should not be a partisan issue. As I write this, over a quarter of a million people have already lost their lives to the virus and hundreds of thousands have been hospitalized. Wear a mask!

You can also encourage other people around you to care for themselves in other ways such as exercising (perhaps with you), avoiding junk food, not getting too carried away with take-out, and getting enough sleep, meaning seven to nine hours a night. Other examples include managing your finances, losing weight and practicing other basic resilience skills such as connecting with others, talking about how you are feeling, dealing with these strong feelings rather than keeping them inside or acting them out, and practicing flexibility, to name just a few.

And what about a vaccine? Hopefully, one will be developed in the next year, but I would doubt that it will be in time to save the tens of thousands who will likely die in the next few months. If a vaccine is developed successfully by the end of the year, it will probably not be distributed until the spring of 2021 or maybe even the summer. This virus is with us and will continue to be with us for a long time. Do not assume this is over and everything is going to go back to normal. It likely will not.

And around the issue of testing and having had the virus and survived, let me say first off that testing is the way out of this mess. We have far too little testing going on right now. We should be able to test the front-line people, the firefighters, the healthcare providers, and the police every day in every department, at the beginning of their shift and at the end. This is the only way we are going to contain the virus and know where it is and who has it. As I said earlier, a large number of people have the virus and are spreading it unaware that they have contracted it or recovered from it. Testing is the key to being able to reopen the economy and to convince people that they can go back to work and to the mall.

If you have survived the coronavirus, you may well have developed some immunity to it. However, we are uncertain as to how long that immunity will last. Don't assume that if you've had the virus and survived it or if you're young you have a pass. You are not 10 feet tall and bulletproof. Don't assume that you are. Unfortunately, a larger number of young people are apparently contracting the virus, and in many cases, they have died. Don't be too macho or too immature to assume that you don't need to wear a mask or practice social distancing and good hygiene by washing your hands frequently.

Yes, we do have all sorts of rights in this country. But we do not have the right to endanger others and that's exactly what you are doing when you refuse to wear a mask or practice social distancing. Unfortunately, many of us are too self-centered to realize this. Hopefully, this crisis will help us to realize that we have responsibilities to others, not just to ourselves.