My experience has probably been different than what most people have experienced. My reality is that I've had it easy - very easy. I haven't had to worry about money, eviction, work, food, toilet paper, or anything essential to living. For this I am very grateful. I don't care to share my personal living details on this blog, but I can share more about where I live.
I am living in North Dakota, which has been one of the best states to live in during the pandemic due to being a rural state with a low population. We didn't need to go into a full lock-down and contact tracing has been our specialty. Our governor only closed certain businesses with high contact, such as movie theaters and salons. Most retailers were able to stay open. Online shopping, deliveries, and curbside pick up have been popular. The stores I buy my groceries at required their employees to wear masks, and they have been sanitizing carts and surfaces constantly. I have been able to stay home from work, and when I've had to go out to get food I've been able to get what I need as safely as possible. Thankfully I already had a stockpile of meat in my deep freezer before the pandemic started. My husband has been able to work and take classes entirely online, and there has been no concern about him interacting with people and bringing the virus home. The only income we've lost is mine, which is manageable for us since I only worked very part time.
Just because my experience has been easy doesn't mean it hasn't affected me. It has been very difficult to process my anxiety because the majority of my anxiety was not conscious, just irrational and reactionary anxiety, but a good portion of it was rational from thinking through the situation. The anxiety didn't hit me right away. About a week and a half into quarantine I noticed I was completely drained (on top of chronic fatigue), I broke out into hives, my sleep was very low quality with vivid stress dreams, my digestion was awful and at times hard to manage, and I felt extremely withdrawn. I may have been in social isolation from people physically, but I didn't want to engage with anyone online or over the phone. I wanted complete isolation. All news, social media, chats, etc were all too stimulating for me. In fact, I struggled with all noises, even music, radio, and TV. It wasn't a matter of fear, stupidity, or clashing opinions (that came later.) It was simply that reality was sucking my precious little energy dry and putting me into a state of constant recharging. The problem is that I wanted to stay updated on all the news, so I allowed myself to keep reading it even though I was feeling agitated by it. This anxiety fused with 1.5 weeks of strong PMS/ PMDD, which led to a few days of pain and exhaustion. I am just now coming out of that physical and emotional hurdle, finally feeling myself entering the post-anxiety stage of the pandemic. I am still socially exhausted, however, and still have little interest in interacting with people.
I have concerns about my health during this pandemic. I don't get sick with the common cold easily, but when I do catch something I get the worst version of it and it takes too long to recover. I've had too many examples of this in the past few years, especially with norovirus and "walking pneumonia." I don't want to get into details about that since that's what the rest of this blog is about, but I hope you understand that I have to protect myself and must take covid-19 seriously. I am not someone who should be taking risks. If I catch it I will be out sick for a very long time, I will get very sick, and since I have a long history of reacting strongly to most medications I've been given, I might not be able to take anything pharmaceutical to treat it. I'm being as cautious as I can be for my sake, but also for the sake of others who are like me.
I had H1N1 (Swine Flu) back in 2010. I was in my early 20's and was healthy enough to work out, work 2 physically active jobs, and hang out with friends. I have always had some health issues, but during that time nothing was holding me back except allergies (and I was taking Allegra-D every day for it) and endometriosis. I wasn't eating well back then, and I was living in a house full of black mold. Well guess what? It knocked me out very hard for 2 weeks, and it took a little while longer to feel healthy again. Very high fever (I didn't document it, but I remember seeing 103ºF for several days), extreme full body pain, extreme weakness and fatigue, lots of heart palpitations, unable to eat properly, and loads of bathroom issues. I remember questioning how it was possible to live if the symptoms continued to stay that strong. I was taking all the meds the doctors gave me and they didn't really help (if they did then imagine how much sicker I would have been without them), but apparently they were helpful for other people. I had to keep getting doctor's notes for work, because my employer's sick day policy didn't change during that pandemic. It was such an awful illness that when I finally recovered I felt like I had been to hell and back, and I was working with doctors. Well guess what? Covid-19 is worse than H1N1 because it is more contagious and causes more deaths.
The fact is that my health was never the same after I had H1N1. Doctors have suggested that it triggered my chronic fatigue, but there's no solid proof. Doctor's have also noted that I had very high levels of mycotoxins from mold in my body, also known to trigger chronic illnesses. I also have some genes that are not working in my favor, along with some family history. Nothing is certain in my case, but other people with H1N1 were studied and many people did develop chronic illnesses as the result of having H1N1. And... There is already research being done on Covid-19 leading to Chronic Fatigue/ ME.
I wouldn't wish my health challenges on anyone else. Chronic fatigue is no joke. It ruins lives. I am witnessing that most people are concerned about dying from covid-19, but one of my greatest concerns is surviving it and then being left too sick to ever function normally again. Are you successful in your full time career? Imagine never being able to perform well at work again because your body feels like sludge, you can't remember things accurately and get confused easily, you can't always find the strength to get out of bed, and doctors don't know how to help you. If that is the result of catching covid-19, would you try harder to avoid catching it and spreading it? But Covid-19 could cause problems beyond my experience too: permanent lung, kidney, nervous system, and brain damage. Any of these potential complications are too much for anyone!
Keeping in mind that this is just opinion based on my experience and perspective, this is why I'm skeptical of the idea to let covid-19 naturally spread through the population to build up herd immunity. Not only do I think it could create too much chronic illness and kill too many people until we have a treatment available for it, I also worry about the fact that we don't know if we can develop immunity to it. It seems very reckless to me to allow people to get sick with it when we may not develop long-term immunity, and it might become a new virus that circulates every year like the flu does. If we allow this virus to circulate around the world every year when we don't have any way of treating it, unlike the flu that has treatments available, are we doing too much harm to the global population? We don't know enough yet. While the lock downs do harm the economy and mental health, I think too many deaths and people with new chronic illnesses would also harm the economy and mental health. It's a balancing act, and no solution will come without harm to people. We simply need to keep people safe long enough to learn how to effectively treat patients with the virus. If this becomes a treatable virus that circulates around the world every year like the flu, then we can return to normal because it will be treatable. Right now it's not treatable.
The greatest problem with Covid-19 is the fact that we don't know how to treat it yet. All the drugs we have been testing have created too many side effects, and the drug was not better than the virus it was trying to treat. Science takes time! We can't rush the process of learning and studying, sorry. People are dying on ventilators. We do know that people are improving on vitamin C IVs, but is that enough for severe cases? Can we make enough vitamin C IVs? A few years ago there was a shortage. So what is the option to combat a deadly virus we can't treat? Try to prevent it from spreading. We know that wearing a breathable (so many are not due the fabric type used) cloth mask greatly reduces the risk that you will spread it to other people. We know that soap kills the virus, so wash your hands. Sanitizer does work if you can't wash your hands. The only sure way to avoid spreading it? No contact with other people outside of who you live with. I am in full support of shutting down the economy as much as necessary to prevent spreading this virus, because this allows essential businesses to remain open with less risk than if parts of the economy were not shutting down. Again, I know this hurts people. Every solution hurts people.
I have no hope in a vaccine. I'm not against spending the money on researching one, because I believe we have to try for every potential solution. I'm not putting any energy into hoping for one that will be effective, however, because I look at history. We haven't been able to develop an effective vaccine for other corona viruses. SARS did not get a vaccine before it died out. Covid-19 is mutating too quickly, how can we keep up? We struggle too much with guessing the flu strains every year, how can we guess covid strains when we know a lot less about it? If a vaccine ever is successful, it won't be any time soon, and it might come with complications. So what other solutions are available? Lockdowns or partial shut downs are still the best defense we have. Every solution that involves returning to the public is all based on theory that we don't have enough information to prove yet.
On the vaccine point, let me go back to the topic of herd immunity in order to drive this point home, because I believe this is the most important thing for people to understand. If the only way to control the virus is to develop herd immunity, then there are only two ways to do that: naturally or by vaccine. Rather than put this in my own words, let me quote this article from Johns Hopkins University:
What will it take to achieve herd immunity with SARS-CoV-2?
As the numbers above demonstrate, herd immunity is still a long way away. But in the long run, as with any other infection, there are two ways to achieve herd immunity: A large proportion of the population either gets infected or gets a protective vaccine. Based on early estimates of this virus's infectiousness, we will likely need at least 70% of the population to be immune to have herd protection. There are a few ways that might be achieved.
- In the worst case—for example, if we do not perform physical distancing or enact other measures to slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2—the virus can infect this many people in a matter of a few months. This would overwhelm our hospitals and lead to high death rates.
- In the best case, we maintain current levels of infection—or even reduce these levels—until a vaccine becomes available. This will take concerted effort on the part of the entire population, with some level of continued physical distancing for an extended period, likely a year or longer, before a highly effective vaccine can be developed, tested, mass produced, and administered.
- The most likely case is somewhere in the middle, where infection rates rise and fall over time. We may relax social distancing measures when numbers of infections fall, and then we may need to reimplement these measures as numbers increase again. Prolonged effort will be required to prevent major outbreaks until a vaccine is developed. Even then, SARS-CoV-2 could still infect children before they can be vaccinated or adults after their immunity wanes. But it is unlikely in the long term to have the explosive spread that we are seeing right now because we hope that much of the population will be immune in the future.
There will always be problems with the solutions. There is no perfect answer, all we can do is manage. But I do think it's worth explaining personal problems I have with the solutions I'm advocating for. I have Multiple Chemical Sensitivities, so when I breathe in fragrance and cleaners I "react." This means my body gives me lots of symptoms in response to something it didn't like in air I breathed: headache, sudden major fatigue, widespread muscle pain, heartburn, swollen tongue and throat, brainfog and stuttering, blurred vision and/or vertigo, digestive complaints, and more. I am more mild than most with MCS, but I am still impacted. So imagine having this condition and learning safe places to go in public over the years, but then suddenly every business that used to be fairly safe because they didn't use fragrances are now using harsh cleaners and fragranced hand sanitizer. Suddenly, there is no safe place to go because everyone is covered in very smelly hand sanitizer that triggers health problems. They are protecting me from the virus, but they are triggering health problems. This is a massive problem, because many types of people with other conditions are triggered by cleaners and fragrances too.
What helps so much is the fact that I now get to wear my filtered face mask in public without scaring other people. Before Covid-19, if I wore my mask to protect myself from fragrances people usually assumed I was sick and they avoided me. I wasn't sick, I just wanted to avoid getting sick. The mask filters out at least 50% of fragrances. It helps a little. It worked out that people avoided me though, because even if the filter was protecting me from breathing in the fragrances, they could still irritate my eyes and ears. The more distance between me and fragrances the better. I didn't like being the weird repulsive one, though. That didn't feel good and made me feel like some sort of monster.
The solution to these problems would be using fragrance-free hand sanitizer and soap. I can personally tolerate some essential oils, but not citrus oils. For my sake it would be fine if you used a natural brand like Dr. Bronner's Peppermint hand sanitizer. I do best with fragrance-free, but with low exposure to certain essential oils I am fine. For so many people with MCS, however, it's not fine, essential oils are just as damaging as synthetic fragrances. Essential oils do produce VOCs that trigger the reactions, and many people are much more sensitive than I am and will react to essential oils as if they're artificial fragrances. Just keep this in mind. If you have the option of using a fragrance free sanitizer, know it's by far the best choice for everyone on the planet.
Clean with non-chlorine bleach, which is just a concentrated form of hydrogen peroxide. It has been approved by the CDC to kill covid-19. (I linked to a news article about this, not the CDC's website, because the information pages from the CDC are actually very convoluted and it's difficult to find the straight answer.) It has no odor at all, and it's not full of cleaning chemicals that harm people's lungs. How stupid is it that people are being told to clean with synthetic harsh cleaners during a pandemic with a virus that damages our lungs, when they are known to damage the lungs?
Back to the issue of wearing masks in public. Keep in mind that there are people who are unable to wear masks because they have a condition that worsens when their air intake is limited. People who can wear masks should wear masks because they prevent you from spreading the virus to other people. Also, wear them for the people who are unable to wear masks. The more people wearing masks, the less it will spread. This is very much like how herd immunity works - a vast majority of people need to be immune to protect the population from the disease.
I would now like to go over my concerns about how lay people (citizens) are reacting to covid-19. Each of these points makes the exact same point, but I approach the point from different angles.
1. We don't know enough about the virus for non-experts to make demands about how other people should react. I understand why people want to develop strong opinions, but the fact of the matter is that we just don't know enough about it to form such strong opinions. Physical distancing, quarantine, and contact tracing have been useful. In hindsight we could see we over reacted, but we might also see that we didn't react quickly or strong enough. We must learn and adapt as we go, there is no choice. Preventing the spread of a virus we don't know much about and we don't know how to treat is prudent and we must make decisions based on current information. Since we don't know much about it, but we do know it's killing people and possibly causing permanent health problems in recovered people, we really have to listen to the experts who know the most about pandemics. We need to be united if we're going to get past this. We can't have some people obeying a lock down while others think it doesn't apply to them - we all need to unite under a plan of action for it to be effective. I don't care if you don't trust medical experts (you know I've had plenty of trust issues myself). We all need to obey the plan of action for it to have a chance of working, no one is exempt. The alternative is anarchy, which isn't organized enough to protect lives during a pandemic.
2. Misinformation is spreading like wildfire, and people who are spreading the misinformation are extremely stubborn about it. Like I said in my last point, you're entitled to your opinion. That doesn't mean it's factual or up-to-date with current information. That doesn't mean your opinion is helpful. If you cannot back up your opinion with scientific facts and theories, statistics, or proven solutions then it's probably best not to post it on social media. If your opinion is politically driven, not science driven, then it's not helpful. If your opinion is only about how to help yourself, not your whole community, then it's not helpful. Spreading misinformation gives people a false sense of security, creates anxiety, causes people to make potentially bad decisions, and makes it so much harder for our experts to lead us. What you post on social media does influence people, and if you're influencing people to ignore our leader's efforts then you are creating anarchy. If people are not listening to and obeying our medical experts and scientists then we will not be united. Unity will protect lives and our economy. Unity now will mean we can safely reopen the country sooner.
I am, however, seeing that it's helpful to share facts. Facts often come with interpretation (this blog post is an example.) Interpretation can easily turn into misinformation full of logical fallacies. Just think about what you're saying, or at least make it clear that you're only offering interpretation that could be wrong. But people need to be exposed to facts in order to be educated, up-to-date, and less anxious. Facts, not opinions, will help us get through this pandemic.
3. You don't know other people's situations, and so we need empathy to guide us. A small business owner might be begging to reopen businesses so that their small business doesn't go bankrupt and permanently close, because they were unable to secure a small business loan before the funding ran out. That person isn't wrong to be worried. A mother and father might be begging to reopen schools because they're both essential workers who cannot get time off work to home school their children. These parents are not wrong to struggle. An immunocompromised person might be begging their governor to extend a lock down because they cannot trust people to not spread the virus. This person isn't wrong to fear for their life. A healthcare worker might be begging people to stay home because they can't keep up with all the patients in their hospital. This person isn't wrong to be anxious about their ability to treat everyone who needs treatment. People are not wrong to be in their situations, and what they need to make their situation ideal might be the opposite of what someone else needs to make their situation ideal. We have no choice but to compromise and be united under a plan that protects the most people. My opinion is that health and lives should be a priority over the economy, but I do think we need to protect the economy as much as possible so that poor quality of life doesn't lead to suicide, homelessness, hunger, and other poor health issues. This is extremely tricky. I don't have the answers, so I'm going to obey our science experts who are leading us through this. I have been very happy with North Dakota's leadership because we were able to keep most of the economy open while doing as much as we could to prevent the spread of covid-19. Yes, people were financially hurt, but there is no solution that won't involve people being hurt.
Now I want to address specific common comments I'm seeing on social media, the comments are copy-and-pasted in red quotes:
"Covid Deaths are Inflated"
" Wording is very important. Not all of those deaths were caused by Covid. The health department and Burgum himself have announced quite a few as “dying with Covid” not “dying from Covid”. "
" dying with means you died from something else and you just tested positive for Covid. That should not count as a Covid death. "
" So 4 more have died you cannot assume it the virus! This is BS all older people, maybe it was their time. Every time you do this and count it as virus, we get closer to mandatory vaccination! I want to see real numbers! not everyone passed because of covid! "
" It's not deaths because of covid, it's deaths with covid folks, if you were dying from kidney failure, contract the disease and then die... Because if your kidney failure, you get added to the covid death total, covid might be speeding things up but it's not the cause if death, the news needs to do a better job of clarifying this, but facts don't make good news stories.....fear does "
This infuriates me! This idea is that people with underlying conditions are going to die without covid anyway, so therefore we shouldn't count their deaths as from covid-19 because it inflates the numbers and creates fear mongering. I'm screaming "WTF!?" First of all, these people have no idea how medical coding works, and so their point about distinguishing "dying with covid" and "dying from covid" doesn't actually apply to medical codes. Primary cause of death will always be recorded as what caused the death. If a cancer patient dies from the flu, the primary cause of death was the flu since they would have lived longer with cancer if the flu didn't kill them. If someone with a flesh eating bacteria that was slowly eating them to death was struck and killed by lightning, lightning is the primary cause of death. Second, they're saying that a person with underlying conditions are not worth saving? They're saying that a person with underlying conditions should die? Having an underlying chronic illness doesn't mean that person will die soon. Many, if not most (need to look up the statistics depending on the type of chronic illness), people with chronic illnesses live full lives until old age. If they have covid-19 at their time of death, it was very unlikely they were going to die then without contracting covid-19. If a person's underlying condition is old age, that doesn't mean they're going to die anytime soon. A 90 year old person could still have 10 or more good years left to live. Who are you to decide? Stop treating old age as if it implies a low quality of life not worth living. If a person dies with covid-19 then it needs to be counted as a covid-19 death. This isn't fear mongering, it's data, statistics, and fact. This is a great example of how spreading your uninformed opinion causes harm. It's trying to teach people to value other people less!
"Stay At Home If You're Afraid"
" Enjoy Freedom, Use common sense, If you don’t feel your ready STAY HOME... But some of us don’t have your feelings "
" This crap needs to stop. If your sick stay home. If your weak, stay home. Let the rest of us go to work!! "
On the surface this way of thinking seems logical. If you're afraid to go out into the world, then stay at home and don't participate in the world. Until you really think about how this "solution" applies to reality. Unless these stay-at-home people can work full-time with benefits online from home, how do they manage their finances when the rest of the world has gone back to "normal"? What if they are an essential employee and their job does not make them feel safe because they have to work with customers who are not taking the pandemic seriously? It isn't exactly possible to keep participating in a world that returns to normal, but you don't return to normal. The stay-at-home people suddenly become like disabled people, who are ignored and forgotten since the rest of the world only looks at the "normal" they see around them.
I can paint you a picture of what this looks like. I have been avoiding most public places for about 7 years now because of how sick I can become in public. I have had to "stay home" because if I go into places like Target or Walmart I'll develop a nasty flare from reacting to all the fragrances, dirty air, artificial lights, and stimuli. I had to choose a job where I could be active enough to keep my blood pressure high enough to perform well, while limiting my exposure to artificial fragrances and dirty air, that also would work with my limited energy and allow me to work shorter shifts. I can't just go work any job like most people, I'm too disabled. When the rest of the world won't adjust its "normal" to be safe for most people, people like myself have to adjust our lives to stay healthy, which means being very cut-off from "normal." I understand that people with my illnesses are in too great of a minority to change the "normal" without years and years of science, advocacy, and government care. People who want to stay home to stay safe during this Covid-19 pandemic, however, may not be a minority, and if they are they are still a very large group of people. This many people staying at home will mean the economy won't just go back to normal - businesses will still have to work with many at-home customers.
Thank you for reading my long blog post. I feel the need to offer my perspective. Even if you do not agree with my concerns, I feel it is very important to understand each other. If I don't say what my concerns are, how can you understand me? I am actively reading other perspectives, which is what influenced me to write this post. Please feel free to comment with your blogs, or even share articles to help you express your perspective. I want to participate in a constructive educational conversation. I hope to contribute to a culture of critical, rational thinking that can create ideas to help manage this pandemic with the least sacrifices.
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