girl at large

Pat In The Covid Era Is Still 100% Pat

   
 

We helped Mom move into a new apartment in her building the first week of July; one that is just a bit roomier so she can have more studio space, and it has an updated kitchen. She had quite literally worn out the previous unit’s 1970’s era kitchen. I’m still haunted by how close in time frame that move was to our Covid exposure, but somewhat relieved when I recall that we were extra diligent about masks and keeping physical distance, especially from Mom. And the kids haven’t been in her presence at all since they had returned to daycare. Still, it was a close one, and it nags at me.

So, we certainly don’t see Mom in person at all now. But that doesn’t stop us from getting the new place set up right. Some things don’t change, life marches on, furnishings must be arranged. I mean, have you met me? And we all know Pat hasn’t changed. Her reply to my photo messages for example:

“No I threw those pots in Chicago. Yes it’s a crock pot. One fan for head the other for feet. glad to make your day. Mom”

 

 

The Call Is Coming From Inside The House

The night before the positive case notice, when we still had summer at our house.

There’s a lot of Covid information out there, and a lot of it is confusing. Sometimes there’s a source that combines smarts, facts and a style of communicating that really works for me. Below is one of those posts, and very timely one to boot.

This bit of critical information became very real to us when I asked my physician father if we had to be masked indoors all the time with Charlie even if there was a good chance of already being infected (it was 10 days from exposure to test).

He explained that the initial amount of virus as well as EXPOSURE OVER TIME can affect how sick you get even after initially infected. That bit of information, easily absorbed in a visual and visceral way, made it much easier for me to embrace this whole-family, always-masked Isolation stage with a bit of hope. Having an action that I can take to help my family is taking back a little bit of my role as a parent.

The saddest thing for parents and caretakers is when this thing gets in your home. Until now, this house was our safe place. The very place where we had stayed for so long to protect them.

——-

Here is the post I’m referring to:

Hi, I'm back as Robin-Schoenthaler-the-Boston-cancer-doctor-who-writes-about-Covid.

(And it’s okay with me if you want to share.)

Today I’m talking about how Masks May Be Magic.

Massachusetts is still okay, trending up a bit in terms of numbers of cases but hospitals are fine, deaths are low.  

The rest of the US outside of the Northeast:  it’s just unspeakable.  The numbers are unfathomable.  

How bad is it? 

Here’s an analogy:  

More or less, the US is having one Wuhan a day.  Remember how terrible Wuhan was and ended up being?  That many cases are happening every day in the US.  

Here’s some statistics: 

How fast are cases exploding? 

0 cases to 1 million cases: 98 days

1 million to 2 million cases: 44 days

2 million to 3 million cases: 27 days 

3 million to 4 million cases: 14 days

 

Here’s a story: 

Every Thursday night I listen to this whiz kid Infectious Disease doc from Texas talk about Covid.  She talks non-stop for an hour and whips through about 55 papers, summarizing study after study after study.  She’s like the kid in high school who was absolutely the smartest person in the room and made it look easy; she’s amazing.  

At a recent broadcast she was quoting a paper and all of a sudden she started crying.  I couldn’t even figure out what was happening (I was doing dishes in my Eternal Multitasking Fashion) but when I stopped loading the dishwasher and looked at my computer screen, there she was, wiping her eyes and weeping.  That’s what life is like in Texas.  

In the midst of this misery, let’s talk about something positive.  Let’s talk about masks.  

I love masks.  Right now they feel like are like our magic protectors, like holding garlic up in front of Dracula, or wearing a special amulet that keeps the evil eye away.  

Or maybe like wearing a condom and not getting syphilis.

Why are masks particularly important with Covid?  

Well, as with Everything Covid, “we are building the plane while we fly it.”  We are accumulating data as fast as we can and some trends look promising. While some of this may change over time, for now this is what we know.  

First off, it appears, unbelievably, that the rate of people who are infected but have no symptoms is around forty percent.  (These are people who had positive nose swabs but stay completely asymptomatic.)

FORTY PERCENT!  It’s awesome that four out of ten people don’t suffer from the disease at all, don’t have long-term sequelae, etc.  

But it also means four out of ten people who have Covid have absolutely no idea they are infected, don’t know they’re contagious, don’t realize that every time they speak/yell/cough/sneeze they may be spewing tons of infected confetti all over the place, don’t know they may be an actual danger to family and friends. 

But if they're wearing a mask, they’re not so dangerous.  

There is now a good amount of research, old and new, showing masks filter out the majority of viral particles.  All masks matter, to varying degrees.  Without getting into a song and dance about the exact numbers, here’s the basics: 

 --N95s are better than surgical masks

 --cloth masks are way better than nothing

 --two masks (one on me, one on you) are better than one

 --having it on your chin doesn’t work 

Masks can work to protect other people from your infection. 

and

Masks can work to protect you from other people’s infection. 

and furthermore

Masks can work to protect you from getting ANY virus inside you. 

Masks can protect you from getting LOTS of virus inside of you.  

You always need a certain amount of viruses spewed at you like the above mentioned confetti to get sick. It can’t be just one solo virus — it has to be thousands.  Masks have been shown to cut those numbers down.  

Even better, there is evidence that the volume of virus that gets into your mouth or nose is related to how sick you get.  So when you wear a mask and hang out with people wearing masks, early studies seem to indicate you are increasing your chances of having milder disease. 

It even appears that masking increases the rates of being asymptomatic!  In some very interesting early studies, we are seeing this happen. It’s happened on cruise ships, it’s happened in food processing plants — even in the midst of big outbreaks, infected people who use masks are more likely to be completely without symptoms.

When we don’t wear masks, we have more deaths. We saw this so tragically in Italy and New York among health care workers. 

When you do have places mostly masking (eg >80%) you may well see fewer deaths.  San Francisco (a great masking place, like Boston) has had ONE death since July 16 despite 1500 new cases.  And deaths have stayed low post-surge in the Far East countries where masking is part of the cultural norm and most countries where masking had been mandatory. 

This is not to say that masking is a miracle cure-all; we still need physical distancing and hand washing and staying home when sick.

Still, what a lot of reasons to wear a mask: 

 — you don’t have to walk around with the guilt of being Patient Zero

 — you have less chance of getting it

 — you probably have a higher chance of being asymptomatic

 — you may well have less chance of getting super sick

 — you may have less chance of dying of it

And you won't make your doctor burst into tears in the middle of a presentation.

by Robin Schoenthaler July 26, 2020, Facebook.

In No One We Trust

I had a blind spot.

I wear a mask all day at work, we require our customers to do so too, and we control the entry to the store to keep capacity low. We only see my mom outdoors, and with masks on. We’ve cancelled every trip, even Elkhart Lake because the hotel didn’t have a mask policy for guests. We haven’t set foot in a store or a restaurant since March. Paulie is working from home indefinitely. Viv’s two-week day camp doesn’t allow contact with parents, requires masks when indoors (yes for the kids too), does temperature checks and screening. Viv’s regular summer daycare has the same tight procedures—no parents in the building, masks, no crossover with groups of kids, temperature checks and screening.

Charlie.

Charlies daycare, which we started back five weeks ago, just didn’t ramp up the way I expected. Their occupancy when we started was super low, and I saw masks on about half the parents. When I saw an unmasked parent, I just waited in the car to time my pick up or drop off after they exited. They had hand sanitizing stations, closed early for daily cleaning, and a list of covid protocols that included social distancing, no room crossing, etc.

But the two biggies—controlling entry in the building and masks. On those they seemed to drag their feet. I kept nudging; I asked, I wrote. When I sent a list of my concerns, especially compared to the two other centers we experienced doing it better, they only made the two smallest changes on my list. They buried their response to the mask question in a technical non-answer four paragraphs down. As the numbers continued to rise these last two weeks my gut said something isn’t right.

But my heart.

My heart just didn’t want it to be true. My heart kept saying:

We love Miss V. Charlie loves Miss V.

I want him to have that same experience in her room that Viv had.

We love Miss K and Miss C and Miss A. They know him, they care about him. They know his stubbornness and laugh at his silliness. And Miss S! Miss S who recorded story time EVERY DAY for weeks during shut down! 

He needs the interaction, he needs to see his playmates.

He’s so much better since he’s been back! Behavior, attitude, resiliency!

He’s so much happier and energetic.

He loves his playmates, he talks about them all the time and is so happy to see them every morning.

He needs the routine.

I don’t want to abandon my friends. My co-parents. (Daycare providers are our co-parents.)

 

I kept thinking, maybe just need more time to get it, they will see the writing on the wall with the numbers. Maybe they have good reasons, maybe I just don’t understand, maybe there’s something they know that I don’t? (about daycare regulations). These people take care of my family. They are part of my family structure. They are trusted. But, but...why is the director not wearing a mask? Why is the owner dodging my questions? 

The day that we finally said, nope, they have to adopt masks or we will pull him out, the day that we had finally decided was our deadline, was the literal day that they had a teacher test positive. One of Charlie’s teachers. 

As I communicated more these past two distressing days with other parents and teachers, it became clear that we were not alone in our concerns. And that we had been misled. They had not been truthful when I asked if other parents had concerns. It is clear they had no intention of ever adopting a mandatory mask policy. In fact, in the days just prior to the positive case, they had received an exception to the City of Milwaukee mask mandate that they had ACTIVELY APPLIED FOR. 

When we picked Charlie up, in total crisis mode, I asked the OWNER of the center, “Why no masks!?”

She replied “Well, we encourage masks”, as she handed me the Close Contact Exposure notice from the health department

”Will you make them mandatory now? Now that you HAVE A POSITIVE CASE? They reduce transmission!” I screamed, unable to contain my rage.

”Well, it depends what you read, not everyone believes...” Believes. That word.

This is the insidious danger. This woman, who controls the livelihoods of 20+ people, who had power over the well-being of 40+ families and children, doesn’t BELIEVE in masks.

And that failure to understand science, that failure to trust experts, that failure to see your community and employees and clients as worth taking extra precautions for, that failure to see your organization as part of the larger fabric of society has broken our lives.

And our hearts.

 

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(7/21 Update and Clarification: they applied for an exception to the City of Milwaukee mask mandate for children age 3. They complied with the City of Milwaukee ordinance for adults (staff, teachers, parents) to wear masks IN ONLY THEIR LOCATION THAT FELL UNDER THAT ORDINANCE. They did not apply that same protocol to their other locations, because, as they repeated in two emails and a phone call, our location's municipality did not have an ordinance). 

Big Thoughts for a Little Guy

“Firefighter Dan came to our school Mama and we sat outside and he put on a funny mask and we got to talk to him and ask him questions after he gave us badge stickers”.

Oh, what question did you ask Firefighter Dan, Charlie?

“I asked him about the Great Chicago Fire”.

Wait, what? You asked about what?

“Yep, but Firefighter Dan didn’t know too much”. (shakes head)

A Little Bit of Fun

Things are not back to normal. They shouldn’t be. The kids are back in daycare and I’m back at the store, which means no other activities for us, our exposure is just too great. I’m worried for myself and for others. I’m worried I’ll give it to someone. So, while the rest of the world returns to entertainment and bars like nothing ever happened, we are doing a daily balancing act.

To treat the kids this weekend to a bit of at-home summertime “normal”, I ordered a HUGE inflatable kiddie pool water park thingie...

It came in a tiny box.

This is going to be fun.