As a man in my mid-forties, I have lived through a number of "this is going to kill us all" events. So far, none of them have amounted to much.
For my entire life, and probably longer, the popular media has been the proverbial "boy who cried wolf." SARS, Bird Flu, Swine Flu, Ebola, and on and on and on. It seems like every other year, there is some new plague that is going to devastate humanity. That is why when Covid19 began to pop up in the news, I like most people, shrugged my shoulders and kept going about my daily business.
Covid19, however, has not faded in the news. Instead, it has steadily risen in our collective consciousness. Now, it seems, there are no unrelated news stories. Outbreaks have begun, seemingly, everywhere. Italy is now in a total quarantine.
You read that correctly. I am not talking about the Little Italy district of some large city. The entire nation.
Medical workers, as near as Washington State, report the devastating effects. Elderly patients, struggling for their lives, surrounded by doctors and technicians in has-mat suits. Family members, unable to be at the bedside of loved ones near death. It seems that a general consensus is emerging that the number of infected people is vastly being under-reported.
And in the midst of all of that, we have a beautiful little boy who is taking immune system suppressing chemotherpay every day.
I want to be the tough guy, who laughs as other people panic and stockpile disinfecting wipes. I want to be the level headed person who stands on the sidelines, observing, waiting prudently. But, more and more, I find myself obsessively watching. Waiting for some indication that the time has arrived for us to begin "social distancing."
"Is it now?"
We have six children. Four of them are in school. From everything I have read, it appears the virus is very efficient at spreading. An infected person with a light case, might not even know that they are sick. All the while, their body is shedding an enormous amount of virus. Here is what one German study found (cited in a UMN.edu paper)
The findings contrasted starkly with those from the 2003 outbreak of SARS in terms of viral load. "In SARS, it took 7 to 10 days after onset until peak RNA concentrations (of up to 5x105 copies per swab) were reached," the researchers wrote. "In the present study, peak concentrations were reached before day 5, and were more than 1,000 times higher." Throat swabs were much more sensitive with COVID-19 than with the SARS virus, and the virus was easier to isolate. Seven of the nine patients had upper respiratory infection.
So, this thing comes on fast, and the viral load is 1000 times more than what was found in the previous SARS outbreak.
If this Covid19 begins to spread in the community, the chance of one of our kids unknowingly bringing it home seems likely. They carry everything else home. So, if social distancing is the only way to protect Ben from it, what do we do with the other kids? Don't they have to social distance as well? The only way to do that would be to pull them from school, and at this point, that sounds a little too crazy. The problem is that due to the compounding nature of infections, it is probably going to look crazy until it is too late.
I read this example in an article previously, and it made an impact.
There is a lily pad in a pond. The lily pad doubles in size every day, and after 30 days, it completely covers the pond. On what day does the lily pad cover half the pond?
The answer is that it is covered half the pond on day 29. On day 28, it would only have covered a quarter of the pond. And if you had checked on day 10, you probably would not have taken note of anything unusual.
The fear is that if we wait until it is evident that we need to take some precautions, we will be on day 28 or 29, and for a kid like Ben, that is just too scary. So, right now, we are on high alert. We are watching and hoping that it is all much ado about nothing, while at the same time preparing ourselves to do what we have to, even if it looks ridiculous at the time.