Last May I had an extended business trip that took me to the West Coast for twelve days (Los Angeles, then San Francisco, then Anchorage, then Seattle). While on business, I did what I always do: I looked up my friends in each city, individually texted them, and then scheduled every hour of free time as meals and visits to catch up. I shaved two or so hours off of my sleep schedule each day so I could pack in catching up with more friends.
I love people. One of my most persistent complaints is that there is not enough time in life to be best friends with everyone I think is amazing.
For my own curiosity on my flight back to D.C., I counted the number of friends I had “meaningfully” interacted with in that twelve day period. I defined “meaningful” as “engaged in conversation for at least one hour while hanging out in a group of four or fewer.” The answer was forty-seven.
Notable among that forty-seven is who I didn’t count. The hundred people I gave hugs to while visiting my old ward in the Bay Area didn’t count. The three dozen colleagues/opponents I interacted with in meetings and depositions didn’t count. The passengers on my flights, trains, and buses didn’t count. The servers and fellow customers at restaurants didn’t count. The temple workers at the Saturday morning session I attended in Seattle didn’t count, nor did the woman who I hitchhiked a car ride with up to the lodge atop Mount Rainier.
If you changed my metric from the 47 friends I “hung out with for an hour” to “everyone I touched, shook hands with, hugged, or breathed within six feet of” during that twelve day stretch, it’s easily 500 people. If you extend my breathing radius to anyone in the same enclosed spaces, its easily more than 2000.
I’m a woman in my early 30s. I’m healthy. I tend to shrug off and work through common colds. I’m religious. And I’m extremely social. In other words, my life looks like Korean COVID-19 patient #31.
Prior to this woman, every case in Korea could be traced to a cluster of people who had returned from Wuhan, China and their immediate family. But this woman, first in the days before she showed symptoms and then in the days after when her symptoms were mild, attended church and ate at restaurant buffets. She interacted with more than 1200 people. Those interactions quickly ballooned into more than 2500 confirmed cases stemming from her social network alone. Approximately half of all coronavirus cases in Korea trace to her social life as a proximate cause of the spread.
The only way the world is going to beat this terrifying virus is if people like me stay home.
The Washington Post has an incredible interactive graphic modeling this power of social distancing today. Social distancing is more effective than mandatory travel bans and geographic quarantines. Fewer total people will get sick, and those who do get sick will be spread across a greater length of time. It gives our health care systems a fighting chance.
As recently as a week ago, my reaction to COVID-19 was to avoid older people, and urge older relatives not to travel, but not to change my patterns at all. I still went to church. I still rode the metro to work. I was still planning on flying to California for a business trip. I had still set up a pi day party for D.C. friends and an Indian food girls nights for S.F. friends. I was supposed to board a plane for that trip an hour ago.
But then last week I read a blog post from an emergency room doctor in Milan. (I don’t remember the exact one, but it was similar to this one.) Next I read an engineer post reminding everyone of exactly what exponential growth mathematically looks like. Then I started hearing reports from medical professionals in the United States that we have been so atrociously terrible at testing that the virus is –already– everywhere. There has likely already been a week of exponential, asymptomatic community spread in every major urban area, and those cases are going to explode into public health crises within days.
When I woke up on Thursday with a tickle in my throat almost certainly attributable to cherry blossoms blooming and allergy season beginning, I realized I had already been acting like Korean Patient 31. That day, I went to my office, packed up my work binders, and decided to work from home for the foreseeable future.
I resolved to skip both Latter-day Saint and Catholic services, and felt guilty about it — until twelve hours later when both churches cancelled services of their own accord.
I cancelled my pi day party.
I cancelled my business trip to California.
I cancelled the next four trips I had planned to four separate states through May 1.
And then I watched as people in my social network decided to not take this seriously. They’re claiming coronavirus is a hoax, an overreaction, a political attack, a sign of the times. (World Health Org myth busting info is here.) They’re booking cheap travel and pointedly shaking hands as a way to “own the Libs.” So this is my plea to all of you: health is not political. Please take this seriously. Maybe you’re like me and you and your friends are generally young and healthy. To you, COVID-19 will be nothing more than a bad cold. But this isn’t about you. It’s about the immuno-compromised and elderly who you interact with. It’s about the total resources of our medical system. It’s about buying time.
We all need to start socially isolating in order to stop hospitals from being overwhelmed.
There is something so pernicious about infectious diseases which capitalize on humanity’s compassion. Part of me feels selfish and guilty for isolating myself in my comfy house with wifi and Netflix. Isolation goes against my every social instinct. It goes against every scriptural passage and general conference story which emphasizes building close-knit communities and being physically present in caring for other members of the body of Christ. Physical presence, right now, can accidentally kill. So I’m trying to channel my social fervor into calls, texts, and small acts of remote financial assistance.
I take some meager comfort in knowing this is not the first time humanity has faced this theological crisis, where isolation is a purer act of neighborly love than visiting the poor, the imprisoned, the sick, and the widows in their affliction. Throughout the European plagues of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, theologians struggled with the same questions. From one early modern sermon:
“I leave the proving of the Plagues infection to the Physician; he will tell you … that it is spreading, and so spreading, that where it once breaks forth, a man cannot be too careful, because he can never be too secure, if secure enough. For to say that the Plague befalls none but such as want faith to rely upon and trust in the Providence of God is an error more bloody than to say that it is not infectious.”
It is error, my friends, to think you are unaffected — and thereby affect others. Please, listen to the public health experts. If you won’t listen to the public health experts, listen to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints listening to the public health experts. Start social distancing, now, and don’t laugh COVID-19 off as a joke or hoax.
For everyone in critical medical service and food service industries, I’m praying for your health and grateful for your heroism. For everyone who is immuno-compromised or elderly, I’m praying for enough social isolation to spare you from sickness and premature death. For everyone already ill, I’m praying for effective treatments and speedy recoveries. For everyone who is financially unstable, I’m praying for compassionate leaders and neighbors to ensure your stability as we careen into a recession. For everyone who has tumultuous home lives, I’m praying for peace during this time of turmoil. For everyone who is healthy, including for myself, I’m praying for the humility to listen to public health experts and understand how hyper-sociality can have ripple effects which devastate your communities and wreak havoc on the world.
Stay safe, my friends.
*Photo by Pablo García Saldaña on Unsplash