This post is by Chelsea Chisholm. I (Andrew) saw it on Facebook and felt it had important implications for us all. Hence, I asked Chelsea if we could tweak it for the blog.
This is a post I wrote on social
media in order to try to address the rampant misinformation that I saw
spreading throughout my networks back home in Canada. Full disclaimer- I'm not
a disease expert, I'm a postdoc working in the domain of ecology and evolution
based in Switzerland. This post was never meant as a commentary on research
around Covid. It was meant to provide a personal example of my experience with
Covid after being in one of the worst-hit zones in Europe two times now. The audience
was people I know, particularly young people who are excellent at both ignoring
health advice and being vectors for the pandemic. I hoped it would cut through
the lies and confusion and convince a few people to start taking precautions
while providing them with some resources they could look to for information. As
far as Facebook rants go it's a long one. Nevertheless, I have had nothing but
calm and generally positive comments in response, even from people who had
previously posted conspiracy theories about this pandemic. So for once social
media doesn't suck.
Covid update 2.0: Masks & Small
Gatherings
This post was initially aimed towards my
friends and family back in Canada, as I see a lot of confusion and anger
running riot on social media back home. For those of you who don't know,
Michael (my husband) and I contracted Covid back in February/early March. I
wrote a social media post then, detailing what it felt like to go through it
and asking people to consider others' safety during the pandemic. I experienced
some fever and chest pain, which disappeared after a week. Michael had only a
slight dry cough, but soon after developed a case of pericarditis, or
inflammation of the pericardium, the sack that surrounds the heart. He spent a
month with chest pain akin to a mild heart attack, a lot of this time in bed,
and was then put on strict orders not to stress his heart for another four
months after his inflammation kept returning. Our doctor's main concern was
that he would develop myocarditis, an inflammation of the muscle of the heart
which can cause permanent damage. We slow biked our way through spring and
luckily his heart healed. Michael ran an ironman in September after his
recovery. I say this not to show that you can bounce back from Covid, but
simply to point out that the man was fit. He was not in an at-risk group for
Covid. He had no pre-existing conditions. He was 34.
Fast forward 7 months to October.
Throughout the summer Michael and I needed to socially distance as much as
possible to prevent catching another cold or flu that could trigger his
pericarditis. But as he started to feel better, and as the summer had seen such
low case numbers in our region, we made the decision to start seeing a few more
people. This was around the time that weather was cooling off, sending more
people indoors and cases skyrocketing, so I would say this was a poor decision
on our part. Keep in mind that "seeing a few more people" meant
expanding our bubble from ~2 to 6. Because a few of those extra people were not
limiting their interactions with others, our bubble actually went from 2 to
many, and they showed up for dinner at our place infectious (but not yet
showing symptoms). We caught Covid again, and for those of you who are
wondering, it was not easier the second time around. Michael had a raging
fever, was in bed for a week, and after eight weeks now his smell and taste are
still gone. His heart rate has been all over the place, making normal things
like a short run difficult. And as for me, I was diagnosed with pericarditis,
the same thing Michael had during our Covid 1.0. I've been told to lay off
strenuous exercise for 6 months and I've yet to go for more than a short
walk/run since my diagnosis 8 weeks ago (it still hurts, and simple things like
walking uphill are physically exhausting).
Cases this past week in Switzerland
were in the top five worst in the world per capita, and we've now entered a
second (soft) lockdown. Doctors will start triaging patients, choosing who gets
to have an ICU bed and who is sent home because there simply isn't enough
space. My family doctor has had to move to the hospital to assist the ICU
doctors. This is in one of the richest countries, with one of the best medical
systems, in the world. I've watched debates around the pandemic rage back and
forth in Canada. It's the same thing that happened here and continues to happen
through the lockdown. Cases are rising steadily in Canada, just as they did
here. The funny thing about exponential growth is that things seem under
control until they are not. It will get much worse in the coming weeks. I am
not a medical doctor, but I am a scientist, and the stuff I do know a little
about, the data, is troubling. I'm going to ignore the usual arguments, that
this is the same as the flu (it is definitively not) and that it only affects
the elderly (sorry grandparents?), and focus on the demographic that seem to
vocalise the most around the pandemic. Studies vary but thus far suggest that
5-10% of people aged 18-50 who contract coronavirus will suffer long-term
symptoms. This ignores other categories of people who are more at risk due to
pre-existing conditions or age, in which case the probability would be higher.
You might look at that and say that's quite a low risk. Think of it this way.
If cases continue to rise, as they did in Switzerland, one or two (young)
people who catch Covid out of every twenty are likely to experience long-term
symptoms. That means someone in your friend group, a few people in your family,
a few people at work. We've seen this happen already as a lot of our work
colleagues and friends have been laid out with Covid, with some still not back
to work or working at half capacity. A few of these people may even go on to
have permanent damage that they will have to live with for the rest of their
lives. It could be us. We don't know, and that's even scarier.
From what I read online, people are
upset about the infringement on their rights and freedoms, either through the
cancellation of social activities or the requirement to wear a mask inside. The
worst is when I see people calling the pandemic a hoax. I don't want to get in
a screaming match over social media, I've seen enough of that already, and
honestly, it's heartbreaking (no pun intended). For those of you who have
questions about what Covid is like, or whether it is real, or whether it is
indeed worse than the flu (yes), I'd be happy to talk about our own personal
experiences, if only to put a face to this. I am also happy to share resources
about what measures appear to be working to reduce spread (see the bottom of
this post).
The pandemic is hard, and some of us are
luckier than others, as I'm sure a lot of struggling small business owners will
attest. But I would say almost all of us reading this post are pretty well off
compared to the rest of the world. We have access to medicine or live in a
place where self-isolating is possible. And many of us are being asked to do
our part through very simple actions, like limiting our gatherings and wearing
a mask to the grocery store so that elderly people can feel more safe shopping
for food. While masks are not 100% effective (neither is birth control, I might
add), they help to reduce the risk of spreading the virus from you to others.
These things are not that hard, and are the least we can do to help reduce the
load on the many doctors and nurses who are working tirelessly to save others
during this time.
And if this feels like too big of an
ask, I'd suggest reflecting on how good you must have it, that wearing a mask
in a store is your biggest hurdle in life right now...
For those of you who want resources,
here's an excellent graphic on how masks can work to reduce spread: https://www.nytimes.com/.../wear-mask-covid-particles-ul...
Here's a dashboard created by Nat Geo
which does a really nice job of illustrating your risk of Covid in different
environments (public transport, bars, restaurants, etc.). This shows that
mask-wearing during your day to day (transport, shopping) can really help to
protect you and others. It also shows that the longer you are in a room with
someone (public/private gatherings), the more likely you are to catch it, even
if everyone is wearing masks, so limiting indoor gatherings is really
important.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/.../how-to-measure.../
A recent paper that suggests limiting
small gatherings, shutting schools and increasing availability of PPE are the
most effective measures that governments have taken thus far to reduce the
spread of the virus.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-01009-0).
