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You hear it all the time during flu season: wash your hands to prevent the spread of flu. You may have heard advice encouraging you to do the same to stop the spread of COVID-19, but do you know why this simple practice works so effectively? Washing your hands with soap and water breaks up the molecules of the virus and washes them away, preventing the virus from infecting you or others.
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In this age when you can search and surf to find every sort of weird imaginable thing on the interweb, a new layer of weird has surfaced. This time, it is the face mask. The masks have come out to prevent the spread of virus. And they have transformed our society from a friendly, smiling, “Good morning, how are you?” type of existence into an unrecognizable and expressionless set of eyeballs that look at you with a suspicion that you are about to infect the world. The masked masses have created the closest thing to a zombie invasion that I hope to ever experience.
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I’ve learned from experience that one of the first signs of crossing over into old age is a forced preoccupation with expiration dates. And I don’t mean yours or mine – I’m talking about the dates on what’s in the fridge or medicine cabinet! You know – sell buy, use by or best by?
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By now it’s safe to say that I have survived the first few weeks of not only “social distancing” but Daylight Savings Time. When I say “survive,” I mean I haven’t missed any meetings, real or virtual, thanks to my alarm clock, but my attitude has been less than perky because I start my day off tired. Frankly, I don’t care how much daylight we have in the evening, I resent this interruption of my circadian rhythm. To make it work, you have to adjust your bedtime schedule, and by the time that is accomplished, it’s time to “fall back.”
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I miss Christmas. As of this writing we were right in the heart of the Christmas season just three months ago. It was Christmas Eve, actually. Ahhh, those were some good times. I was very happily enveloped in all of it; the good tidings, the good cheer, the peace on earth.
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Last week I had a conversation prompted by the ‘run’ on items like toilet paper, paper towels but particularly, baby wipes. The person I was talking to was younger than me which means I have lived through different times and experienced life in a way that he has not. Because items like disposable diapers and baby wipes are commonplace now, he looked surprised when I told him there were no disposable diapers when my first child was born, and we wiped our children’s bottoms with washcloths. I also shared that I was privately insulted when someone gave me disposable diapers when my second child was born.
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I find it interesting that my first awareness about the coming virus situation was the run on toilet paper (pardon the pun). Visiting the grocery store and seeing the empty shelves made me wonder, was I missing something? Why did everyone want or need so much toilet paper? I couldn’t make the connection between the TP hysteria and an oncoming epidemic.
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In her 1969 book “On Death and Dying,” Swiss American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross introduced her theory that there are five stages of grief people experience when faced with a loss – denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Before her own death in 2004, she interjected shock and testing. I admit I’ve certainly experienced shock and anger but would like to add my own stage – forging ahead!
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