There seems to be two reactions to the whole coronavirus thing. The first is sheer panic, the second is to make fun of the people who are panicking.
Neither response is appropriate. According to Peter Sandman, a Risk Communications consultant, people generally overreact when they first hear of a risk. “They have a temporary short-term overreaction,” he says. “People pause what they’re doing, become hyper-vigilant, check out the environment more carefully than they normally would and—this is perhaps the most important characteristic of the adjustment reaction—they take precautions that may be excessive, may be inappropriate, and are certainly premature.”
Which is we’ve seen exhibited by people hording toilet paper and hand sanitizer. While neither of these is the most effective reaction in this case (diarrhea is a secondary symptom of the coronavirus, and washing your hands with soap and water is better than hand sanitizers for reasons that are too complex to discuss here, but utterly fascinating), it isn’t actually a bad thing. “The knee-jerk reaction of overreacting early to a potential crisis is extremely useful,” says Sandman. “Like other knee-jerk reflexes, it protects us.” By over-reacting at first, most people soon figure out what’s happening and are better able to cope as time goes on.”
Now, some of those overreactions are bad, like the London student who was beaten up because he was Chinese, or the mom in Edmonton who had—well, let’s not call them rednecks, but…Edmonton—racial slurs tossed at her and her two kids, but it allows us to process things better if they get worse. As long, of course, as you do process.
The other extreme is just as bad: denial. “We are equipped with a circuit breaker and when we’re about to panic, we go into denial instead,” says Sandman. Denial is not useful in that people in denial don’t take precautions.”
While denial might seem to be a less harmful reaction (as people who panic can harm themselves and others, or buy the store out of toilet paper), it can also be a bad one (not having any toilet paper, accidentally catching and spreading the disease).
The appropriate reaction is to avoid both extremes. No, buying up all the toilet paper and hand sanitizer and locking yourself into your house to avoid the zombie apocalypse is a bad idea, but so is walking around licking door handles to prove there’s nothing to worry about. Not only are you putting yourself at risk, but if you get infected, you are also now at risk of infecting anyone who comes in contact with you or anything you touch.
The target here is to know the risks and know how to reduce the risks.
One of the best is to do something I’ve been advocating for years: covering your mouth when you cough or sneeze with something other than your hand.
Covering your mouth with your hand is the worst of all possible outcomes. Better to cough into empty space, though that’s a theoretical better, as it can survive up to three hours airborne. The most common way diseases spread is by contact, either direct or indirect. Let’s say you cough on your hand than open a door. If you are carrying the influenza virus, it can live on that door handle for two days. Other things (like E.Coli, can live on a hard surface for more than a year). Current research shows the coronavirus is able to survive for two or three days on hard surfaces
Of course, the virus is now on your hand, and it won’t infect you, because of that wonderful disease barrier you’re wrapped in called skin. Well, won’t infect you until you touch a break in that barrier, like rub your eye, or pick your nose. Try and go even an hour without touching your face. It’s hard.
So, if you must cough, do into the crook of your arm, or flip up your shirt or something.
Back to our scenario. Since you can’t prevent opening doors or coming into contact with surfaces that other people have touched, you are now transferring whatever you coughed up to all the other people who come into contact with that door handle. So wash your hands regularly and properly. Waving your hand under running water? Doesn’t do anything. Soap and water for 30 seconds, people.
Neil deGrasse Tyson says that we are currently in a massive worldwide experiment. Which is simply this: Will people listen to scientists? Will people listen to medical professionals? It seems to me if we all listened. Don’t freak out—a life lived in fear is a life half lived. ”
By some odd coincidence, one of my best friends is a medical scientist at the University of Saskatchewan, who works with colleagues who are developing the vaccine for Covid-19.
She says she’s getting really tired of hearing people with no medical experience or science background mocking her for saying we as a society have no immunity to this virus. “I don’t mean you have no immune system,” she says. But we as a society have not developed the herd immunity—from both exposure to the disease and from (gasp) vaccination to stop it from spreading like wildfire without taking the appropriate steps. “And no, you do not know more than the entire medical school of doctors and scientists I work with, my master’s degree in pathology. Nor do you know more than the CDC and PHAC or every logical person with any degree of medical knowledge. No, it’s not a clever ruse to force you to get immunized or a political tactic to alter the American election. It’s a virus.
“I could just let this go and say “fine—you get what you asked for—Darwin’s Law” …but I just can’t on good conscience. If you contract the virus, you may be lucky and have minimal symptoms but know this: even the “minor” cases of this virus commonly result in pneumonia. People you love and even people you’ll never meet, some with compromised immune systems (like people in cancer therapy, or transplant patients, people with asthma and diabetes), are at serious risk here…if we don’t take action to isolate ourselves and ask responsibly we could very quickly max out our health care system end up like Italy where they’re having to triage people and choose who gets a ventilator to live. This is serious people. Please, stop thinking just about yourself and be responsible for your community. Stop mocking the people who are trying to keep you and your loved ones safe and healthy. Stay home and practice good hygiene.”
