Much has been written about the financial and social stressors associated with COVID-19. As the director of a primary care practice that includes family and internal medicine, and as I continue to see a small number of patients in acute pain for chiropractic care, I have come to understand that there is another, deeply unsettling and stressful aspect to the current pandemic. In the absence of a coherent, unified message from government and public health officials, many Americans simply do not know what to believe. As we find ourselves facing a frightening swell in the wave of infection across most of the country, knowing what we can and should be doing about it is important not just for the safety of our communities but also for our own mental health. Therefore, each day for the next several days, I will be posting a KPT Pearl that will attempt to make clear some aspect of COVID-19 based on my own careful reading and understanding of the scientific data that are emerging daily. I hope that doing this will help some people to reduce the stress and anxiety caused by the inconsistent, chaotic messaging, misinformation, and in some cases, disinformation coming from public officials and news sources.
Day 1: KPT COVID-19 Pearl of the Day is: Don't Share Your Air. At the most basic level, COVID-19 is spread when infected people without proper face-coverings speak, shout, chant, sing, or breathe heavily such as during exercise, producing tiny viral aerosols, and then someone sharing their their air breathes them in. This is not the only way you can catch it or spread it but viral aerosols seem to be the chief vector of transmission. Since about half of people with active COVID-19 don't show symptoms, we should be very careful not to breathe in shared air with anyone outside of our household. The best way to do that is to isolate as much as we can and when we need to be out and around others, we should keep our face-coverings on at all times. Tomorrow's post will go into some detail about face-coverings.
Day 1: KPT COVID-19 Pearl of the Day is: Don't Share Your Air. At the most basic level, COVID-19 is spread when infected people without proper face-coverings speak, shout, chant, sing, or breathe heavily such as during exercise, producing tiny viral aerosols, and then someone sharing their their air breathes them in. This is not the only way you can catch it or spread it but viral aerosols seem to be the chief vector of transmission. Since about half of people with active COVID-19 don't show symptoms, we should be very careful not to breathe in shared air with anyone outside of our household. The best way to do that is to isolate as much as we can and when we need to be out and around others, we should keep our face-coverings on at all times. Tomorrow's post will go into some detail about face-coverings.
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