Five Tips To Cope With More Contagious COVID Variants
Five Tips To Cope With More Contagious COVID Variants
Accept And Adapt: Pre 2020 Living Is Gone For Good
Welcome to the web version of Need to Know: Science & Insight, a new form of personal journalism. Learn more.
Hello again. The pandemic isn’t going away and with the new COVID variants, it’s likely to get worse before we all get vaccinated. We’re not helpless. I’ve researched 5 tips to better protect ourselves such as double masking. We can also push governments for much stronger measures immediately until majority of people are vaccinated.
I want my pre 2020 life back but know it’s not going to happen. Like many of us I’ve been forced to make a major change in my life before. Here’s my somewhat surprising story.
I quit because sleeping with ice packs and gobbling handfuls of pain killers wasn’t worth it anymore. And I never touched it again, well except for that pathetic attempt one time.
Accepting I had to make a major change in my life was difficult. But I did learn to adapt to my new situation and I’m the better for it. What am I going on about?
Basketball, of course.
Yes, I was a basketball junkie. Not the fan type of junkie, the player type of junkie. It started when I was 15 and for the next 40 years I played and practiced nearly every day. I played in YMCA’s, high schools, big stadiums, elite universities, schoolyards, housing projects, prisons, driveways, church basements, and parking lots in most of Canada and a lot of places in the US. If there was a hoop I wanted to put a ball through it.
Basketball got me into college. Basketball got me into journalism.
Basketball remained a big part of my life even in my creaky 50s. I never had a serious injury just hundreds of little ones. However, nursing and rehabilitating those accumulating injuries took up so much time and energy, they prevented me from living other parts of my life. Eventually I had to accept that part of my life was over and learn to live differently.
This is my clumsy way of saying the lives we lived in 2019 aren’t returning this year or next or ever. It’s over for lots of reasons. COVID was just the tipping point. Learning to live our lives differently is our project now. How well we learn to live differently will determine whether those differences make our lives better or worse. The change I made was for the better: The ice packs are at the back of the freezer and pain-killer prescriptions have long expired.
Previously in Need to Know:
We the People Declare Climate Change IS a Global Emergency
Majority of the world says climate change is global emergency — 50 country poll
Public supports sweeping and ambitious climate action by governments
Overwhelming support for renewable energy in biggest CO2 polluting countries
Far more women and girls in wealthy countries want urgent climate action
Right now we need to learn to live with COVID because it’s not going away any time soon. And it’s likely to get worse in the coming weeks. The vaccines are unlikely to be the silver bullet — the cure we want. Viruses are survivors, they mutate readily to keep on doing their thing which is replicating inside hosts.
COVID-19 is mutating and at least four variants have been identified: the U.K, South Africa, Brazil and California. The Need-to-Know is that they all appear to be more contagious but so far not more lethal. Be aware that the UK and South African variants are 50% more transmissible. That’s bad. An unhappy Need-to-Know is that a much worse third wave is likely on its way. Vaccines won’t be in time.
Ashish Jha, Dean of the Brown University School of Public Health concluded:
“This demands an urgent rethinking of our current policy responses.”
These more contagious variants, and the many cases of people with long-term impacts on their health, means we have to up our game to protect ourselves until the majority of people are vaccinated. I’ve combed through various sources to find the latest advice on how to best protect ourselves against the COVID variants.
Five COVID variant protection tips
1. Two masks better than one
2. Safe socializing and bubble/pod life
3. Keeping your distance - 6 feet may not be enough
4. Mask up outside
5. Let local case rates determine your activities
First let me be 100% clear: I’m fxxxx fed up with having to think about this damn virus all the time! And I sure as hell don’t want to write about it. But this is where we are. Either we accept and adapt to our reality or else it grinds us up.
1. Two masks better than one
Wearing two masks could increase protection from virus particles by 50% up to 75% found a recent study. It adds an extra layer of protection but also made the mask fit snugger around the face said the researchers. I personally find this to be true. I’m wearing a cloth mask with a KN95 mask underneath these days. It feels more secure on my face, doesn’t need to be adjusted and it isn’t harder to breathe in.
Here’s some Need-to-Know information about masks:
KN95 masks are China’s version of the better-known N95 non-medical grade mask. Both are good masks but they can vary in quality depending on the supplier. They’re disposable and intended for wearing 6 to 8 hours. I wear mine 30-40 minutes at a time and re-use it after carefully storing it. (There are also medical grade N95 masks but they’re not usually sold to the public.)
Other mask options are KF94 masks from South Korea and the FFP2-type used in UK and Europe. All offer about the same level of protection. Fit is most important part of a mask: a good tight seal while being comfortable so you don’t have to fiddle with it.
Today’s important Need-to-Know: Two masks are better than one.
2. Safe socializing and bubble/pod life
Safe socializing is the hardest part of pandemic living. Here’s a scenario:
You have a tight family bubble but for the kids mental health (and yours) you let them hang out with their friends. And then also let your kids bubble with their grandparents, for the latter’s mental health. See the problem?
Unfortunately it’s a good way to infect the grandparents.
Another socializing problem is that people won’t say they have symptoms or don’t know they’re infected a US study found. Covid stigma is a thing. People are also likely to exaggerate or even lie about how careful they’ve been about social distancing and mask wearing.
3. Keeping your distance - 6 feet may not be enough
If you can smell someone’s perfume or what they had for lunch you are too close. The six-foot distance rule is a guideline not a guarantee. You can be infected at 3, 6, 9 feet or even greater distances depending on the circumstances. Ventilation reduces this risk, i.e. a good draft from wide-open windows, or being outside.
4. Mask up outside
Given the increased infectivity of the variants, some experts suggest masking up when in public places be they outside or in. All the more reason to find a comfortable mask combo so it’s like wearing your favourite socks.
5. Let local case rates determine your activities
If your community has lots of active cases, then avoid non-essential trips. For grocery shopping consider doing a curb-side pickup or delivery until active cases are low. In the US there’s an updated county map of cases. It’s a bit complicated but what you want is number of cases in last 14 days to see the trend.
I haven’t found something similar for Canada. Alberta has a county by county listing with detailed breakdown for cities. Ottawa has a nice neighbourhood version. Generally either provincial or regional public health units publish similar data.
To summarize:
We’ve just entered a potentially more dangerous third wave of the pandemic.
Everyone’s had enough of the lockdowns and warnings. Governments too.
We’re all kicking back waiting for a white-hat vaccine to ride to our rescue.
To make sure we’re around when that slow-poke gets here, requires us to up our game and go for hard lockdowns.
Why not go for ZERO infections as New Zealand, Australia and other places have?
This involves brief and decisive localized lockdowns followed by an aggressive program of find/test/trace/isolate and support for people so they can isolate. The objective is to eliminate the virus town by town, county by county. Yes, travel restrictions would have to be enforced as it is in the largely successful Atlantic Bubble.
To repeat the Brown University School of Public Health Ashish Jha’s assessment:
“This demands an urgent rethinking of our current policy responses.”
There’s little chance most governments will make this happen without lots of public pressure.
We’re only six to eight months away from mass immunization. We’ll have to live a little differently in part because some version of the virus will still be around. However, by late this year things will be a whole lot better than this no-where land we’re stuck in now.
Until next time, please stay strong and stay safe.
Stephen