You-Her-Them-Us...I So-Late.
My friend mentioned to me that what with all that is happening in today's world, it may be a good time to re-boot. Social distancing is forcing the issue. One older member of a congregation told his preacher, "I've been social distancing for over a decade;" something which the preacher said was done with humor on the outside but reflected a deep hurt within. To step back from our daily routines of heading out the door whether for work or school or the gym or shopping, we now have to wonder just how much have we paid attention to those people right in front of us? Our children or parents or friends or partner. "I see you," sounds great in a movie's tagline but as with that elderly man attending service, does that other person "feel" seen? The respected author and oncologist, Dr. Siddartha Mukherjee* wrote a piece in The New Yorker about the corona virus, who's getting infected and how it may be time to not only look at what's causing this, but what happens once it's inside of you. Said the tagline: We’ve counted the viral spread across peoples; now we need to count it within people.
Isolation seems doable in the short term, our staying at home perhaps helping us realize that we don't really need to be eating out or at a party or visiting with friends...or do we? Studies appear to show that resilience and "acceptance" might be tolerable only when we see an end in sight, or at least when we feel that an end is in sight. Fiscal stimulus from governments help to alleviate some worries about paying our rents and getting some food; but as this pandemic drags on and answers seem slow to arrive, doubts begin to embed themselves in us almost as if they were another virus. This being at home and working from home and schooling from home is making us see how prepared or unprepared we were for change and is forcing us to deal with new mindsets. How important is fighting and war, or election campaigns, or climate change, or recycling, or drilling for more oil? When infection and mortality rates ebb and flow with each day, our brains begin to return to survival. That cough or fever or difficulty breathing (or the chance of getting those symptoms) "trumps" all other concerns at this point. But when the money begins to run out or the Internet slows (that is, those who have the Internet) or the food supply drops or the order to not mingle with others and to stay on "lockdown" extends for another month, something else may start to enter the picture...the feeling of being alone.
A recent article in The New Yorker talked of this possibility in the U.S., mentioning that: ...In 2019, twenty-eight per cent of households were single-person...in 2012, sixty per cent of households in the Swedish city (Stockholm) had only one person...science shows us that anxiety and isolation exact a physical toll on the brain’s circuitry. They increase the vulnerability to disease—by triggering higher blood pressure and heart rates, stress hormones and inflammation—among people who might otherwise not get sick. Prolonged loneliness can even increase mortality rates. In 2015, Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a neuroscientist and psychologist at Brigham Young University, published an analysis of seventy studies, involving 3.4 million people, examining the impact of social isolation, loneliness, and living alone. The results were notable in light of today’s pandemic. The review found that loneliness increased the rate of early death by twenty-six per cent; social isolation led to an increased rate of mortality of twenty-nine per cent, and living alone by thirty-two per cent—no matter the subject’s age, gender, location, or culture.
"To feel pain is to feel alive," wrote author Anders Melin in a piece in Bloomberg Businessweek. In this case, the article talked of climbing Vermont's Stratton Mountain...up to the top, then back down, and once at the bottom start over and do it again, and again, and again, a total of 17 times which turns into the equivalent elevation gain of Mt. Everest. The cost to do this? A measly $4000. What??? The author states that such endurance events (on average only 2/3 of the ultramarathoners, Navy SEALS and white collar athletes will finish the feat within the 36-hour limit): ...disproportionately attract people with white-collar jobs and above-average incomes...But it also makes you wonder why people who work long hours to attain a comfortable lifestyle spend significant amounts attempting to get uncomfortable. The answer, at least according to a study of Tough Mudders in the Journal of Consumer Research, is simple: to escape themselves. One interesting trend that's emerging from this "stay inside" imposition is a spike in domestic violence as reported in countries from Australia to Europe to the U.S. (my own city has seen a 33% jump in domestic violence police calls in the last two weeks said our local station). Said the Mayo Clinic's site: Domestic violence can leave you depressed and anxious, and can increase your risk of having a drug or alcohol problem...Domestic violence can take many forms, including emotional, sexual and physical abuse, stalking and threats of abuse. It can happen in heterosexual or same-sex relationships...Abusive relationships always involve an imbalance of power and control.
Our "power" is indeed shifting and not only that abusive power in such relationships but our own power to control and to leave our homes, to give hugs and to go to work or school, our power to hug one another and to gather around a picnic table, to stand close to someone or to feel comfortable sitting next to someone on a long flight. And while many are taking much of this in stride (for now, at least), for others the loneliness is beginning to bring on depression; after all, there are only so many movies and online classes to watch, and books to read, and calls to make, and time you spend on the computer doing whatever. Said Dr. Sue Varma, the founding medical director of the World Trade Center mental-health program at New York University in The New Yorker piece: Loneliness also increases the risk of clinical depression, which has its own statistical dangers. Just one episode of a major depressive disorder—meaning two weeks or more of a depressed mood, and five of nine known symptoms—increases the risk of a second episode by fifty per cent. Those symptoms include low mood, loss of interest in activities that bring pleasure, guilt, low energy, concentration problems, appetite or weight change, sleeplessness, or slowing down. Two episodes of depression increase the likelihood of a third by seventy-five per cent—and three episodes increase the likelihood of a fourth by up to ninety-five per cent. The cycle of depression becomes increasingly hard to break. And during these unique times it's difficult not to be depressed, even when it comes of this recent "stimulus." When Congress bailed out the banks in 2008, Wall Streeters gave themselves $20 billion in bonuses the next year and the airlines used 96% of that money to buy back their stock, said Bloomberg. And then there's our homes themselves...
About a year ago The New Yorker wrote a piece titled Home Smog in which studies showed some disturbing particulates in our homes and offices. Nitric oxide and carbon dioxide emerged just from everyday cooking ("particles small enough to reach deep inside our lungs"), toiletries (think deodorants and body sprays) and cleaning fluids, all coming: ...within the range that the Environmental Protection Agency's Air Quality Index defines as "very unhealthy." A Harvard biostatistician said this when told of the high particulate levels that were recorded from cooking a Thanksgiving dinner: Even short-term increases of just ten micrograms per cubic meter from one day to the next will increase hospital admission rates and mortality in the over sixty-fives. Marina Vance, an environmental engineer at the University of Colorado Boulder added: If all these studies have found an association between outdoor air pollution and a decrease in life expectancy, but we're not outside, how does that relationship still hold? If this is all sounding a bit far-fetched to you --after all, who doesn't enjoy a home cooked meal or standing around an outdoor grill or picking up that smell of garlic as we walk by a restaurant-- consider this part of the article: ...in America, we spend, on average, ninety per cent of our lives indoors. (By way of comparison, this means that humans spend more time inside buildings than sperm whales spend fully submerged in the ocean.) The statistic, from an E.P.A.-funded study conducted in 2001, might seem implausible, but it probably understates the case. More recent data, from the U.K., show that, on average, Britons are outside for just five per cent of the day -- an hour and twelve minutes. And as if that wasn't enough, we find that our homes are filled with those pesky, well, pests...
Our homes are full of "pests," and because we're now stuck at home we're having to face them. Ants, roaches, spiders, flies, and who know what else (and those are just what bugs we can see). So we throw all sorts of poisons and controls at them and fill our homes with even more particulates, all the while not realizing that our efforts may actually be doing more harm to ourselves, Here's one quick excerpt from a piece in Discover: Whether you like it or not, spiders are great at pest control. If you kill them in your home --and this is precisely what we do with many kinds of pesticide applications-- you do so at your own expense...Houseflies carry more pathogens than cockroaches, including many that cause diarrhea and are associated with more than 500,000 deaths a year. Houseflies also evolve rapidly. By 1959, those in South Africa were resistant to at least 15 major pesticides. Although the flies are largely invincible to chemistry, they are not invincible to spiders. It goes on to tell of a researcher who read about some early traditional methods of controlling flies with spiders, even placing spiders in windows and on screens in both home kitchens and hospitals. The result? -- The fly population declined by 60 percent in three days in the lab’s animal house. And then the article adds: But don’t spiders bite humans? Each year, tens of thousands of “spider bites” are reported around the world, and the numbers seem to be increasing. The truth is that spiders rarely bite us, and nearly all of the reports are actually infections due to resistant Staphylococcus bacteria (MRSA), misdiagnosed by patients and doctors alike. If you think you have a spider bite, ask a doctor to test you for MRSA. Those odds are much higher. One reason why bites are rare is that most spiders use their venom exclusively or nearly exclusively on prey rather than for defense. For spiders, it is nearly always easier to flee than to fight. One study even attempted to find out how many pokes it takes to get 43 individual black widow spiders to bite artificial fingers made out of congealed Knox gelatin. After one poke, none of them bit. Nor did any bite after 60 repeated pokes. Sixty percent of the widows bit only after being pinched between artificial fingers three times in a row, and even then, they released venom only half the time. Those bites would not have been problematic to a human, just painful. Venom is costly to spiders, and they don’t want to waste it on you; they are saving it for mosquitoes and houseflies.
Not many of us really need or likely want to climb a ski run over and over to "escape themselves." Certainly we need to be cautious and instill a bit of fear in ourselves about this new virus; but it may also be a good time to educate ourselves and to give ourselves our own update...a re-boot, as my friend said. This time at home may allow us "the time" to get to know our children or our spouse or partner or even ourselves, to walk together and to not rush about, to face our fears and to recognize that perhaps we have simply misunderstood what it is that so scares us (spiders!). As Bruce Cockburn put it in his song, Lovers in a Dangerous Time: Don't the hours grow shorter as the days go by, you never get to stop and open your eyes. One day you're waiting for the sky to fall, the next you're dazzled by the beauty of it all...But nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight. Got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight. It all becomes a matter of seeing...seeing that lonely person, seeing that lonely you. Whether you're alone at home or alone in yourself, this period of "social distancing" may be a chance to reflect in a different way, to see things from a different angle and to view what's happening both near and far, to take the time, something we all so rarely do. There are times when the news can make us feel even more fearful, more worried about the unknown, more out of control, but now is also a chance to realize that we're more resilient and adaptable and stronger than we think. As Leonard Cohen wrote: The birds they sang at the break of day, "Start again", I heard them say. Don't dwell on what has passed away, Or what is yet to be. Ring the bells that still can ring; Forget your perfect offering...There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.
P.S. In the last post I mentioned that there are seven types of corona virus when I should have added, seven types that infect humans. The corona virus genetic "family" is actually much larger and I apologize for not clarifying that distinction. As an added note, Bloomberg Businessweek had this to say: ...since 1970, more than 1,500 new pathogens have been discovered, according to the World Health Organization, and "epidemics in the 21st century are spreading faster and farther than ever."
*His book on the history of cancer, The Emperor of All Maladies, won the Pulitzer Prize; but perhaps more difficult than the book is the thought of a person trying to tackle and write about such an extensive disease and its history (Ken Burns turned the book into a PBS series), and all while still continuing to work and study as a biologist and oncologist. My brother and I jokingly say "pie" in referring to such people, the feeling that the majority of us are given just a tiny sliver in life while others seem to have a much larger portion...ah, such is life.
Isolation seems doable in the short term, our staying at home perhaps helping us realize that we don't really need to be eating out or at a party or visiting with friends...or do we? Studies appear to show that resilience and "acceptance" might be tolerable only when we see an end in sight, or at least when we feel that an end is in sight. Fiscal stimulus from governments help to alleviate some worries about paying our rents and getting some food; but as this pandemic drags on and answers seem slow to arrive, doubts begin to embed themselves in us almost as if they were another virus. This being at home and working from home and schooling from home is making us see how prepared or unprepared we were for change and is forcing us to deal with new mindsets. How important is fighting and war, or election campaigns, or climate change, or recycling, or drilling for more oil? When infection and mortality rates ebb and flow with each day, our brains begin to return to survival. That cough or fever or difficulty breathing (or the chance of getting those symptoms) "trumps" all other concerns at this point. But when the money begins to run out or the Internet slows (that is, those who have the Internet) or the food supply drops or the order to not mingle with others and to stay on "lockdown" extends for another month, something else may start to enter the picture...the feeling of being alone.
A recent article in The New Yorker talked of this possibility in the U.S., mentioning that: ...In 2019, twenty-eight per cent of households were single-person...in 2012, sixty per cent of households in the Swedish city (Stockholm) had only one person...science shows us that anxiety and isolation exact a physical toll on the brain’s circuitry. They increase the vulnerability to disease—by triggering higher blood pressure and heart rates, stress hormones and inflammation—among people who might otherwise not get sick. Prolonged loneliness can even increase mortality rates. In 2015, Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a neuroscientist and psychologist at Brigham Young University, published an analysis of seventy studies, involving 3.4 million people, examining the impact of social isolation, loneliness, and living alone. The results were notable in light of today’s pandemic. The review found that loneliness increased the rate of early death by twenty-six per cent; social isolation led to an increased rate of mortality of twenty-nine per cent, and living alone by thirty-two per cent—no matter the subject’s age, gender, location, or culture.
"To feel pain is to feel alive," wrote author Anders Melin in a piece in Bloomberg Businessweek. In this case, the article talked of climbing Vermont's Stratton Mountain...up to the top, then back down, and once at the bottom start over and do it again, and again, and again, a total of 17 times which turns into the equivalent elevation gain of Mt. Everest. The cost to do this? A measly $4000. What??? The author states that such endurance events (on average only 2/3 of the ultramarathoners, Navy SEALS and white collar athletes will finish the feat within the 36-hour limit): ...disproportionately attract people with white-collar jobs and above-average incomes...But it also makes you wonder why people who work long hours to attain a comfortable lifestyle spend significant amounts attempting to get uncomfortable. The answer, at least according to a study of Tough Mudders in the Journal of Consumer Research, is simple: to escape themselves. One interesting trend that's emerging from this "stay inside" imposition is a spike in domestic violence as reported in countries from Australia to Europe to the U.S. (my own city has seen a 33% jump in domestic violence police calls in the last two weeks said our local station). Said the Mayo Clinic's site: Domestic violence can leave you depressed and anxious, and can increase your risk of having a drug or alcohol problem...Domestic violence can take many forms, including emotional, sexual and physical abuse, stalking and threats of abuse. It can happen in heterosexual or same-sex relationships...Abusive relationships always involve an imbalance of power and control.
Our "power" is indeed shifting and not only that abusive power in such relationships but our own power to control and to leave our homes, to give hugs and to go to work or school, our power to hug one another and to gather around a picnic table, to stand close to someone or to feel comfortable sitting next to someone on a long flight. And while many are taking much of this in stride (for now, at least), for others the loneliness is beginning to bring on depression; after all, there are only so many movies and online classes to watch, and books to read, and calls to make, and time you spend on the computer doing whatever. Said Dr. Sue Varma, the founding medical director of the World Trade Center mental-health program at New York University in The New Yorker piece: Loneliness also increases the risk of clinical depression, which has its own statistical dangers. Just one episode of a major depressive disorder—meaning two weeks or more of a depressed mood, and five of nine known symptoms—increases the risk of a second episode by fifty per cent. Those symptoms include low mood, loss of interest in activities that bring pleasure, guilt, low energy, concentration problems, appetite or weight change, sleeplessness, or slowing down. Two episodes of depression increase the likelihood of a third by seventy-five per cent—and three episodes increase the likelihood of a fourth by up to ninety-five per cent. The cycle of depression becomes increasingly hard to break. And during these unique times it's difficult not to be depressed, even when it comes of this recent "stimulus." When Congress bailed out the banks in 2008, Wall Streeters gave themselves $20 billion in bonuses the next year and the airlines used 96% of that money to buy back their stock, said Bloomberg. And then there's our homes themselves...
About a year ago The New Yorker wrote a piece titled Home Smog in which studies showed some disturbing particulates in our homes and offices. Nitric oxide and carbon dioxide emerged just from everyday cooking ("particles small enough to reach deep inside our lungs"), toiletries (think deodorants and body sprays) and cleaning fluids, all coming: ...within the range that the Environmental Protection Agency's Air Quality Index defines as "very unhealthy." A Harvard biostatistician said this when told of the high particulate levels that were recorded from cooking a Thanksgiving dinner: Even short-term increases of just ten micrograms per cubic meter from one day to the next will increase hospital admission rates and mortality in the over sixty-fives. Marina Vance, an environmental engineer at the University of Colorado Boulder added: If all these studies have found an association between outdoor air pollution and a decrease in life expectancy, but we're not outside, how does that relationship still hold? If this is all sounding a bit far-fetched to you --after all, who doesn't enjoy a home cooked meal or standing around an outdoor grill or picking up that smell of garlic as we walk by a restaurant-- consider this part of the article: ...in America, we spend, on average, ninety per cent of our lives indoors. (By way of comparison, this means that humans spend more time inside buildings than sperm whales spend fully submerged in the ocean.) The statistic, from an E.P.A.-funded study conducted in 2001, might seem implausible, but it probably understates the case. More recent data, from the U.K., show that, on average, Britons are outside for just five per cent of the day -- an hour and twelve minutes. And as if that wasn't enough, we find that our homes are filled with those pesky, well, pests...
Our homes are full of "pests," and because we're now stuck at home we're having to face them. Ants, roaches, spiders, flies, and who know what else (and those are just what bugs we can see). So we throw all sorts of poisons and controls at them and fill our homes with even more particulates, all the while not realizing that our efforts may actually be doing more harm to ourselves, Here's one quick excerpt from a piece in Discover: Whether you like it or not, spiders are great at pest control. If you kill them in your home --and this is precisely what we do with many kinds of pesticide applications-- you do so at your own expense...Houseflies carry more pathogens than cockroaches, including many that cause diarrhea and are associated with more than 500,000 deaths a year. Houseflies also evolve rapidly. By 1959, those in South Africa were resistant to at least 15 major pesticides. Although the flies are largely invincible to chemistry, they are not invincible to spiders. It goes on to tell of a researcher who read about some early traditional methods of controlling flies with spiders, even placing spiders in windows and on screens in both home kitchens and hospitals. The result? -- The fly population declined by 60 percent in three days in the lab’s animal house. And then the article adds: But don’t spiders bite humans? Each year, tens of thousands of “spider bites” are reported around the world, and the numbers seem to be increasing. The truth is that spiders rarely bite us, and nearly all of the reports are actually infections due to resistant Staphylococcus bacteria (MRSA), misdiagnosed by patients and doctors alike. If you think you have a spider bite, ask a doctor to test you for MRSA. Those odds are much higher. One reason why bites are rare is that most spiders use their venom exclusively or nearly exclusively on prey rather than for defense. For spiders, it is nearly always easier to flee than to fight. One study even attempted to find out how many pokes it takes to get 43 individual black widow spiders to bite artificial fingers made out of congealed Knox gelatin. After one poke, none of them bit. Nor did any bite after 60 repeated pokes. Sixty percent of the widows bit only after being pinched between artificial fingers three times in a row, and even then, they released venom only half the time. Those bites would not have been problematic to a human, just painful. Venom is costly to spiders, and they don’t want to waste it on you; they are saving it for mosquitoes and houseflies.
Not many of us really need or likely want to climb a ski run over and over to "escape themselves." Certainly we need to be cautious and instill a bit of fear in ourselves about this new virus; but it may also be a good time to educate ourselves and to give ourselves our own update...a re-boot, as my friend said. This time at home may allow us "the time" to get to know our children or our spouse or partner or even ourselves, to walk together and to not rush about, to face our fears and to recognize that perhaps we have simply misunderstood what it is that so scares us (spiders!). As Bruce Cockburn put it in his song, Lovers in a Dangerous Time: Don't the hours grow shorter as the days go by, you never get to stop and open your eyes. One day you're waiting for the sky to fall, the next you're dazzled by the beauty of it all...But nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight. Got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight. It all becomes a matter of seeing...seeing that lonely person, seeing that lonely you. Whether you're alone at home or alone in yourself, this period of "social distancing" may be a chance to reflect in a different way, to see things from a different angle and to view what's happening both near and far, to take the time, something we all so rarely do. There are times when the news can make us feel even more fearful, more worried about the unknown, more out of control, but now is also a chance to realize that we're more resilient and adaptable and stronger than we think. As Leonard Cohen wrote: The birds they sang at the break of day, "Start again", I heard them say. Don't dwell on what has passed away, Or what is yet to be. Ring the bells that still can ring; Forget your perfect offering...There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.
P.S. In the last post I mentioned that there are seven types of corona virus when I should have added, seven types that infect humans. The corona virus genetic "family" is actually much larger and I apologize for not clarifying that distinction. As an added note, Bloomberg Businessweek had this to say: ...since 1970, more than 1,500 new pathogens have been discovered, according to the World Health Organization, and "epidemics in the 21st century are spreading faster and farther than ever."
*His book on the history of cancer, The Emperor of All Maladies, won the Pulitzer Prize; but perhaps more difficult than the book is the thought of a person trying to tackle and write about such an extensive disease and its history (Ken Burns turned the book into a PBS series), and all while still continuing to work and study as a biologist and oncologist. My brother and I jokingly say "pie" in referring to such people, the feeling that the majority of us are given just a tiny sliver in life while others seem to have a much larger portion...ah, such is life.
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