The Calm Before the (Next) Storm

Fighting quarantine fatigue with yet another newsletter. I love all of your emails, links and memes –you can find them in my past newsletters. I’m also thrilled to hear that people are forwarding this along – if you’re new, join my mailing list. And, as always, thanks for protecting yourself and others by staying home when you can, washing your hands slightly obsessively, and masking up!

My last dispatch was on the eve of Memorial Day weekend. After pressing send on the newsletter late in the afternoon, I drove my son down to the beach. The plan was as follows: my son would meet up with his good friend while the mom and I would take a walk. The two boys were fully prepared to wear their masks down to the water, only ditching them while bodyboarding in the waves. Meanwhile, the other mom and I would walk up and down the beach, each with an eye on the boys and masks on our faces. The rules in LA have been advertised widely – you can go to the beach but only for exercise, not for lounging, and masks are a must.

Hiccup number one came early in the adventure when we tried to park but found every parking lot closed and every street space marked “Tow Away.” Parking closures seemed a wise move, the other mom and I agreed as we spoke by phone while caravanning in search of spots, since they should discourage crowds from gathering throughout the weekend. We drove a couple of miles south and eventually found parking in Venice, two blocks from the ocean. Police cars blocked the entrance to the beach, and officers sat in their cars watching people walk past. By the time our feet hit the sand, it was 5:30pm. The sun still sat high in the sky, the temperature a perfect LA 73-degrees.

That’s when hiccup number two came roaring into focus. The beach was packed. Not slightly busy. Not surprisingly crowded. Packed like sardines in a tin. So much for the deterrent of no parking, And it was packed with people lounging on blankets, hanging out in large groups, no one six feet apart, no one – literally, other than the two of us, almost NO ONE – wearing a mask. Occasionally police cars drove back and forth on the sand, but I have no idea what they were looking for. Certainly, it wasn’t people breaking social distancing rules.

Had the boys not dashed ahead into the ocean, I would have turned around and gone home then and there. But watching them frolic in a vast sea with lots of space between people, I decided to let them be. My job for the next hour was to weave through a maze of humans while maintaining my six foot bubble – it didn’t take long to move down to the waterline, away from the blanket of blankets covering dry sand.

Over the weekend, my newsfeed delivered pictures from across the country just like the scene I had witnessed. Venice Beach was not an outlier, but rather just one example. Had I not seen it with my own eyes, I might have written off the news coverage as an inaccurate representation of how people are currently living, but I actually lived the experience. And as the holiday weekend unfolded, a sinking feeling took over, our short-term destiny increasingly obvious to me: after weeks and weeks of distancing, people are done, a fact that will inevitably result in a viral surge in another three weeks from now, just in time for Father’s Day.

It feels important to say that I get it – I completely understand the frustration, fatigue, and need to get out. Particularly for people living in cramped spaces, it’s not human to remain inside indefinitely. We all crave social interaction; we clamor for the outdoors. It’s too much to ask everyone to lock themselves indoors, particularly when the space is small and there’s a beach or a hiking trail or a park near enough by. And yet, if we don’t follow guidelines – keeping six or more feet of distance, wearing masks, keeping our hands off our faces, and washing them like crazy – we will find ourselves right back where we started in early March.

In case you’ve hit your own wall, I just want to remind you why we started sheltering at home and physically distancing in the first place: with a new, deadly virus circulating around the globe, if it spreads too quickly our hospitals will be overrun. People in New York have lived this and the consequences. The entire reason why we all shifted away from “normal” life was to flatten the curve of illness, allowing for the people who do get sick to be able to access care. Just because we are tired of staying put doesn’t make the virus go away, nor does it multiply the number of hospital beds, ventilators, or health care providers.

I rarely write a long intro in my newsletter, but this feels like the right moment to do so. Thanks for reading… thanks for doing what you can do to keep yourself and others safe… thanks for recognizing that fatigue is normal but there’s a middle ground here, a way to begin interacting with others that’s safe. This virus is much smaller than we are, but it’s much bigger, too. Okay, enough of me. Now you get this week’s links.

Cancel culture has officially hit summer camps. Some camps, particularly sleepaway camps, that had thought they would open now say they won’t, and I personally think that’s the right call. So do these ER doctors who double as camp doctors over the summer and wrote about why sleepaway camps should be cancelled this year.

One of the arguments against camps opening is the lack of robust coronavirus testing. It’s not just access to tests that remains problematic, but the tests themselves are literally failing to pick up evidence of disease – as in the title of this article: Antibody tests for COVID-19 wrong up to half the time. This one breaks down the specific problems with antibody testing.

The testing fiasco has fueled a lack of confidence in many recommendations about coronavirus. What should you believe? For instance, last week the CDC said that touching objects or surfaces contaminated with coronavirus is not a very effective route of spread, so you don’t have to do things like wipe down groceries anymore. But shortly after, they released a second statement dialing back the reassurance. This article helps you understand your risk of picking up coronavirus on your hands.

Not everything has to be about coronavirus these days. Here’s an interesting piece on why we feel Zoom fatigue. And on a completely unrelated note, here’s one about the first non-hormone birth control gel that just got FDA approval. You read that right – it’s not a pill made with hormones, not a condom, and it’s not a spermicide either.

And now for your meme…