Posted on

5 Examples of Humanity’s Best Amid COVID-19

The war footing we’re on with COVID-19 remains serious and will be for some time to come. We can’t let our guard down or return our lives to normal — whatever that was — for the time being.

But we can put the future into a better perspective. As harsh as life seems right now, there are myriad examples of humanity doing the right things and seeing measurable progress. Here are five of them.

Mood Music:

The First US Vaccine Test Has Happened

The first person in the US was injected with an experimental coronavirus vaccine Monday, leading the American charge in a global hunt for protection.

Antibodies from Recovered Patients Could Protect People at Risk

With a vaccine for COVID-19 still a long way from being realized, a Johns Hopkins immunologist is working to revive a century-old blood-derived treatment for use in the United States in hopes of slowing the spread of the disease. The treatment could be set up at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore within weeks.

SK Reports More Recoveries Than Coronavirus for First Time

South Korea reported more recoveries from the coronavirus than new infections on Friday for the first time since its outbreak emerged in January. The downward trend in daily cases raises hopes that Asia’s biggest epidemic center outside China may be slowing.

Uber Eats Waives Delivery Fees for 100,000 Restaurants

One of many, many examples of private enterprise stepping in to help everyone stay afloat — with full bellies.

Booze Makers Are Using Their Talents to Make Free Hand Sanitizer

Distilleries across America are stepping up to mitigate the shortage of hand sanitizer by making their own and giving it away. Another example of the best humanity has to offer.

Hang in there, folks. The helpers are out in full force.

Posted on

Finding Meaning in a COVID-19 War Footing

Each morning, as part of my job, I scan the big daily papers for cybersecurity news so we can put them into a digest to help chief security officers (CISOs) communicate the important stuff to top executives. This includes reading DealBook, a business-oriented newsletter from The New York Times. Reading it this morning brought out something I didn’t expect.

Mood Music:

This morning’s digest led with “What a ‘Wartime’ Economy Looks Like,” a rundown of all the actions the government and private sector are taking to approach the COVID-19 pandemic like a war. Said Kenneth Rogoff, Harvard economist and former Chief Economist for the International Monetary Fund:

The whole point of having a sound government balance sheet is to be able to go all out in situations like this, which is tantamount to a war.

Kenneth Rogoff, Professor of Public Policy and Economics, Harvard University

Reading this energized me.

My reaction seemed odd at first, since the write-up was anything but a call to arms. It was just an emotionless rundown of information.

But this morning I awoke feeling grim. Right before bed the night before I had made the colossal mistake of ignoring my own advice of limiting news and social media intake. Erin chided me about it and I got snippy. Once you get sucked into a mounting pile of doom on the internet, pulling away is like trying to rip out a nail that’s gone through your foot.

So I met the dawn feeling that things were as bad as they could get, or that they were certainly headed that way.

Then I saw the DealBook article.

It didn’t convert my gloom into sunshine, but it reminded me of the larger purpose and how, to use the very old but still applicable cliché, we’re all in this together. This is indeed war, and we all have an opportunity to save lives and turn the tide of battle, even against a virus that couldn’t care less about borders, culture, creed, skin color or economic standing.

Social distancing sucks after a while. The damage to the global economy is going to suck in a multitude of ways. But all is not lost. We have much to gain, even if we have no clue what that is yet.

Rock on, fellow soldiers.

Posted on

Joking About COVID-19

“Humor is the universal solvent against the abrasive elements of life.”

Former U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson

Several lifetimes ago, I was a newspaper reporter and editor. I saw a lot of tragedy and depravity in that line of work: fatal car wrecks, families burned out of homes, murder and, yes, health crises.

Mood Music:

https://youtu.be/QPNqojbyIDk

I used to walk over homeless people sleeping in the Lynn Police Department entrance, the place wreaking of piss. I’d sit in courthouses to report on arraignments, watching some of the unluckiest, choice-challenged people I’d ever seen in my life.

Along the way, my sense of humor took a dark turn.

I’d joke to other court reporters about whether someone standing in front of the judge was guilty of whatever they were charged with (“Of course they are!”). When listening to police-scanner chatter about fire trucks being sent to a triple-decker fire in Lawrence, some of us would place bets on how quickly they’d put out the flames. Lawrence burned so often that the firefighters learned to do their jobs with ninja-like precision.

My colleagues and I felt a lot of sadness and heartache along the way. Our hatred of human suffering was always just below the surface. But joking about some of it is how we survived.

This gallows humor is something a lot of police officers, medical professionals, security practitioners and military veterans have shared with me over the years based on their own experiences, most of them a lot more harrowing than anything I’ve experienced.

No matter how dangerous and tragic something is, sometimes laughter is the only armor you have.

I mention this because there’s been some backlash over memes and commentary making light of the current COVID-19 pandemic. Some say it’s cruel to laugh about such a grave threat, that we have to take it seriously. Some who joke about it are called dismissive.

And some of those people are dismissive. I shake my head more over people who seriously downplay what’s happening, writing it off as a media conspiracy to undermine Trump.

But those memes joking about toilet-paper hoarding? That Onion article about wearing two face masks (one on the back of the head in case Coronavirus attacks from behind)? Those are keeping me sane.

If the humor bothers you, I’m sorry. I certainly don’t want to see you hurting.

But don’t expect everyone to walk around their quarantine holes with a dour stare 24 hours a day.

To the jokesters: Keep it coming. You’re helping me through this, and I appreciate you.

Posted on

5 Stages of Depression: Like Grief, Only Different

I first wrote this in 2014. Amid COVID-19, a lot of us are going to go through bouts of depression. Back then, I found it useful to use the five stages of grief as a reference point for what I was feeling. It helped me get to the other side. May it help you now. It won’t make the depression go away. But it might help you deal with it. 

There are plenty of articles out there about the so-called five stages of grief. Based on my experiences in that department, I find the writings mostly accurate and valuable.

I’ve been thinking lately about how there are also stages of depression, not unlike those of grief. Identifying them can help you know where you are and what’s going on. Note: this is not a scientific effort. It is simply based on my own experiences.

Mood music:

  1. Denial and isolation. Things start to go wrong, but you’re not immediately aware of them. Your short-term memory starts to slip, you become disorganized, and you protest when those who love and know you best suggest you may be heading for an episode. You respond by clamming up and ignoring friends when they ask you to have coffee. You spend a lot more time on the couch.
  2. Anger. After one too many days in denial, you start to realize you’re again slipping into depression. This makes you angry, and you start taking it out on those around you. Your self-worth begins to sink, and you start to feel you can’t do anything right. This leads to more anger, self-loathing, and self-pity.
  3. Bargaining. During grief, this is the stage where a person repeatedly goes over the what-ifs: what if the loved one had gotten medical attention sooner, what if you’d recognized the problem for what is was, etc. With depression, the bargaining works a bit differently. You plays the blame game with the world around you. You’re depressed because of work. You’re depressed because of a disagreeable family member. If the depression is really bad, you blame anyone and anything but the disease within your own brain.
  4. Melancholy. With grief, the fourth stage is depression. Within the depression itself, the fourth stage is melancholy, at least in my experience. A deep sadness and hopelessness take hold in your gut after too many successive days of feeling like shit. It becomes hard to do most basic daily tasks.
  5. Acceptance After a while, you realize you have a few choices. The most extreme choice is suicide. I’ve never seriously considered it, but I know people who have and, sadly, gone through with it. Another choice is to start doing things to emerge from the depression. For me, that involves talking to people and writing to get the feelings off my chest. The other step is to re-embrace coping tools. It’s not like flipping a switch, but more like rebooting a computer. It takes time to start using your coping tools effectively again and more time for them to make a difference. But acceptance is a start.

Acceptance is where I’m at now. I long ago accepted that frequent bouts of depression come with being me and that there are things I can do to keep it in check. It’s time to reboot the system.

Melancholy by BaxiaArt: Isolated tree in background

“Melancholy” by BaxiaArt