I distinctly remember asking my dad and grandfather once the movie was over what it meant to be quarantined. They said it meant that they couldn’t leave the house because they might get other people very sick.
To a child who grew up when the Chicken Pox vaccine was just coming out (I actually did catch the Chicken Pox because the vaccine hadn’t come out just yet), the idea that an illness could cause an entire group of people to be trapped inside (even if they didn’t have the disease) was tough to comprehend. I only ever heard about Measles because my parents would mention how lucky it was we didn’t have to worry about it. I knew about Polio from history books and knowing a nice older lady who had contracted the illness as a child.
Epidemics and pandemics were for the history books. My childhood understanding of the world insisted that doctors could cure anything.
This, of course, isn’t true in the slightest.
It wasn’t until I became interested in zombies (of all things) that my understanding of diseases began to change. The early to mid-2000s were all about the zombies. I read the Zombie Survival Guide, watched all of the zombie movies, and started researching the “what if” situations that might occur if a zombie outbreak did happen. This research lead me down a rabbit hole into the general spread of diseases and then into pandemics. To my adolescent brain, a zombie apocalypse wasn’t that dissimilar to what happened during the Black Death.
Fast forward several years and I’m in college taking a class called Mathematical Biology. It was one of the few biology classes I enjoyed, probably because it was all systems of equations and differential equations, but that’s not the point. There was some discussion of a zombie apocalypse during the class - predator/prey models are much more interesting if zombies are involved, but what really caught my interest was the SIR model or the Susceptibility, Infection, and Recovery model that is used for modeling the spread of highly infectious diseases.
A year later, I’m in my Numerical Analysis class and picking my final project. I chose to attempt replicating the spread and death rate of the 1918 pandemic. This required some manipulation of the model on my part (the most simplistic version of the model doesn’t take into account death rates and instead categorized them as “recovered” - logic being that if you’re dead you no longer have the disease).
I did a ton of research for this project and fell down several more rabbit holes into why certain cities in the US had different death rates (the flattening of the curve model wasn’t something I found, but the number of doctors in different cities because of World War 1 was - more doctors equaled more people living). My model wasn’t perfect, but I learned a lot.
The most interesting thing I learned during that project was just how likely a pandemic actually was. I’ve already lived through Swine Flu, Bird Flu, Ebola, SARS, and a few other potential pandemics, but the one we’re facing now is definitely a taste of what is likely to come in the future.
Don’t get me wrong. COVID-19 is deadly, dangerous, and should be taken seriously.
However, with climate change, over population, and the general nature of viruses - things could be and possibly might get worse. It might not be COVID-19 - though there is still potential for it to mutate a second time like the 1918 pandemic and have a worse mortality rate.
There’s also the human response we have to factor in. Already panic shopping has caused stores to run out of essentials. Schools are closing and people are being told to work from home (if they can). People who are homeless or suffer from food insecurity are going to be hit the hardest and it might not be the disease that hurts them most.
There are reports of people stock piling resources to sell at jacked up prices. Hospitals are concerned about the number of cases they’ll be able to handle. There’s a shortage of face masks and the entire country if Italy is on lockdown.
For people like me - financially secure, healthy, and can easily work from home - this is a minor inconvenience. Even if I were to catch the disease it might not be that bad for me.
But this situation isn’t just about me. There are millions of vulnerable people who are no where near as luck.
Here are some things I ask for people to do (if they are able) during this crisis:
1) Wash your hands - Soap and water are designed to remove the virus from your skin. Use hand sanitizers in between or if you can’t get to soap.
2) If you feel sick for ANY reason - stay home. It might not be the COVID-19, but no chances should be taken. If you need to see a doctor, call in first. Even if you don’t have the virus, if you are sick your immune system is weakened and you could catch something worse. On the flip side you could also spread your illness to someone else.
3) Don’t panic buy, but if you do please donate some of your abundance to local shelters and food banks.
4) Keep tabs on your family, neighbors, or friends who may not be able to prepare or protect themselves as well. I’ve heard numerous reports of older people being scared to go shopping for fear of catching the disease. If you are healthy - see if you can help out.
5) Not everyone can work from home, please be respectful of people who are required to be present to work. See if you can help them by watching their kids or walking their pets.
Please stay safe everyone. I never imagined that I would live through a pandemic, though I always knew it was possible. Our world is not a me, it is a we.
Until next week.
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