The COVID pandemic in the USA and globally is not over. It is hidden. And i’t th’t t will be back in its current form or others. Don’t throw away your N95 respirators (masks).
Follow highly credible health and medical experts with decades of experience in infectious diseases to make sure that you are approaching the covid pandemic correctly. Don’t just pick-up the TV remote and assume any old pundit that wants to talk about the covid pandemic knows something. Most governors of US states know little about health issues.
And even if those giving you information about what you should do in the upcoming new stages of the pandemic.
Do you really want the bozos on Fox TV and its ilk to provide information that is incorrect and can put your family and you at high risk for covid?
Let’s face reality. Very few people will come out of the pandemic enjoying good mental health. And over many years many will recover only partially.
It’s been a difficult time for most of us.
The diagram shows some of the things we have all been exposed to since late 2019. One key central issue is that most of us are not experienced with dealing with these issues. Stay inside your house for two years? Be unable to attend the funeral of a family member? Go to a friend’s house for dinner? Thanksgiving?
As we re-establish healthy lifestyles after the pandemic, it is quite important that shift many of our treatment and public health resources from COVID hospitalization into mental health services.
Get vaccinated. Your risk of getting Covid-19 is going way up if you are unvaccinated. If you do not have access to vaccine, wear a mask, stay six feet away from others, stay out of crowds, and wash your hands.
Variant Delta (D or the Indian variant also well-established in the UK) is the most severe of all variants to date, and is becoming the dominant version of Covid-19 in many countries. Many public health professionals predict that within a few months Variant Delta will the dominant strain globally and in the USA, much as it is currently dominant in India and the UK..
If you want to see the most current information about Covid-19, Variant Delta, search with Google or an alternative search engine. As I write this on June 19, 2021, there is a huge amount of news stories available. CNN has had good coverage on Variant Delta.
Current information is that Variant Delta is the most problematic and deadly Covid-19 variant yet.
In the next 20 years, the world will experience significant change. After the shock of the coronavirus pandemic and its consequences, everyone alive knows that significant changes must be made in the next 20 years to our governments, distribution of services and wealth and opportunities. We must integrate all global development with a restoration of the global environment as it was before the industrial revolution.
It’s a hard job. The change itself will provide numerous opportunities. The creative destruction of what is wrong and the creative building of what is right will be fun to observe and participate in. Hope will spring out as we get a lot of the things right that we screwed up the first time.
Here’s what we gotta do. It’s possible. It will be fun and rewarding to fix.
Click on the mind map to expand the start of a plan and an emerging roadmap.
This is what we have to achieve this time. The inclusion of all. The distribution of services to all. A high-quality of life for all.
The United States has not been able to control the covid pandemic. Amazingly to many epidemiologists and physicians, when you tell people to wear a mask and socially distance themselves from one another they do not do so.
This is not a surprise to mental health professionals.
With all of the chaos and psychological trauma and fear from coronavirus and the loss of one’s income and job, it is fairly obvious that people facing so many catastrophic stresses are going to find it difficult to change their behaviors with out support, training, and motivation to do so. Telling people to wear masks and stay home (even when the speaker is America’s favorite grandfatherly, world-famous physician Dr. Fauci) becomes an impossible task when you are worrying about where to get food tomorrow or pay rent or homeschool your child or the health of your aging parents.
Part of a successful response to a pandemic is not only developing a vaccine but also helping people deal with stress, get needed resources to repair their lives, and feel better about themselves and their futures. And then many of them can move their focus to wear a mask and social distance and accept the vaccine when it is available to them.
You know that. The immunologists and epidemiologists and administrators are not people-people but rather laboratory people. We need to get mental health and nursing and social work professionals on the side of those needing interventions to help them deal successfully with the covid pandemic.
As the assault of the pandemic contiunues unabated, I find that I am getting increasingly numb to the causes and the effects. Some call this pandemic fatigue. Others call it trauma. Or overstimulation or shutdown on sensitivity to the continuing clatter. Yeah, I know a vaccine is supposed to save us, but I am so screwed by up by thoughts of what it means that 250,000 souls have been lost in 10 months, I casnnot even envision what it will feel like when 500,000 have died, a marker I think we will hit before the US population has all be vaccinated.
NUMB. No Understanding of the Many Battles.
Why do we fight about whether to wear a mask? The scientific research unequivocally shows masks save lives (including that of the wearer). Will we fight in a few months whether to get vaccinated? Probably so many will refuse that the overall protection for all of our citizens will be limited.
Why do we fight about dealing with the economy? We have far too many people crushed by unemployment. We can create millions of useful jobs that would improve the infrastructure of the country.
Why do we ignore the mental health and psychological processes injured by the ongoing pandemic? I feel crummy from the pandemic, your family and friends do, and you do. We should be able to agree it is a high priority to repair the damage the pandemic is doing to all of us. And, make even more jobs to achieve this.
Why are we so divided as a society? We have brutual political divisions affecting the healthcare and financial systems. We have racism, the denial of equal opportunity, gender and sexual orientation bias, and many other problems that are growing almost as fast as the virus spread.
I am trying hard to get over my own feelings of being NUMB. Maybe you should also try to stop being NUMB.
No covid vaccine yet. Even if one were to be fully tested and proven safe and effective tomorrow, you probably could not get a shot until 6-9 months later.
Mask use seems to be topping out at around 70% in the United States and even conscientious mask wearer and social distancers are getting pandemic fatigue and less conscientious about always using protective behaviors.
The USA is not using behavior change and social support methods to help deal with unhealthy and potentially virus-spreading behaviors.
Instead of promising a vaccine and telling me to wear a mask, how about some social support methods to help with people feeling the depression and anxiety and hopelessness and fatigue and loneliness that comes during a pandemic. Most Americans could use some support in dealing with the balance between working and providing childcare/homeschooling. Or the frustration of being alone at Thanksgiving.
How about promoting behavior change and showing people how to get a mask to fit comfortably and correctly, or showing people how to judge they are six feet away from others. How about getting cigarette smokers to stand 12 feet away from others as they do the huffing and puffing thing in service to nicotine addiction.
A lot of people would benefit from counseling and group support-self help groups during a pandemic.
Many need a case manager to help them get food or a place to live or a job or child care or eviction or mortgage default. Others may need a legal counselor to help deal with problems incurred because of wholesale job loss and the resultant loss of life savings.
To stop the spread of COVID-19 you cannot just tell someone to wear a mask or not go to a family member for support.
What you need to do is to help individuals with pandemic fatigue and other problems find ways to constructively deal with the pandemic and get help from public sources.
Fortunately, most of the social services needed to help many people deal better with the pandemic can be provided by trained mental health and healthcare professionals and their assistants. When provided by telephone or video sessions or online support groups and counseling or specific advice to someone getting evicted these services are much less expensive than treating someone in the hospital or outpatient clinic who has become infected with COVID-19. And of course, every person who gets COVID-19 can potentially die or be affected by lingering symptoms for the rest of their lives, and the cost of any life or development of a lifetime disability is one we should try to avoid as completely as possible.
If we want to cut the levels of COVID-19 we need to up the prevention, support, and behavior change services we provide.
Click on the mind map to expand it and look at the issues in providing behavioral and support services that could make it easier for people to avoid dangerous behaviors that spread the disease.
