First - doing research. I've had two cancer diagnoses; my daughter has a liver disease which will most likely require a transplant. When confronted with scary medical things, I review everything I can get my hands on (medical articles, support groups, etc.). Knowledge is a comfort for me, even when there is an emotionally challenging prognosis. Beyond tending to my emotional health, mostly sounding the alarm - trying to get others to understand what was coming at us, at what pace. Trying to encourage my workplace to push pepole to do symptom checks and stay home if they had cold-like symptoms, educate others that the risk was not just to older folks, and that it was not just the flu.
I started wearing masks just about this time in 2020, after reviewing the literature as to effectiveness (yes - cloth masks are effective to protect the wearer; some are as effective as N95 masks. The research supporting the latter assertion was not available in March 2020, although research suporting the former was).
I didn't do a lot of personal physical preparation. I did one significant shopping trip for food staples (we had all the TP we needed for nearly 2 years, since we buy in bulk when it is on sale). I expected to be able to shop - just less frequently. (I shopped in person about every other week during the first wave of the pandemic). I shifted some of my shopping to online. I stopped eating anywhere but my home or office.
I am an assistant dean at a law school, so my job wasn't in jeopardy due to the pandemic.
As for the next couple of years - I'll be watching the numbers. The rush to re-open is political, and premature. Basing community recommendations for masking on hospital census is assinine. Hospitalization is a trailing indicator of disease, so by the time the census numbers rise enough to suggest mask wearing again, the number of people who will need to be hospitalized in two weeks will be double or triple that number - and, since they are already infected (and infecting others), it is too late to prevent overrunning our hospitals. And the studies on **at least** short term brain damage for mild (even asymptomatic) cases is terrifying. Since my daughter had COVID around the time my spouse's executive functioning ability took a nosedive, my guess is that my spouse has an asymptomatic case. (She has existing executive functioning deficits - and that is an area of functioning damaged by COVID.) No one knows what the 5, 10, decades-long impact of COVID will be. Will it be like Polio and Chicken Pox - raising its ugly head decades later, or like the flu, which is generally over and done with. We just don't know, even for mild cases, so we should still focus on prevention.
That said, I'm close to comfortable taking my mask off except for crowded indoor spaces. There were 13 reported new cases in my 539,000 person county yesterday. That's about 34 cases/100,000 people total in 2 weeks. My cutoff is 50 - so as soon as the cases from a week ago (in the 20s) work their way through the two weeks we'll be at 50. (Today's number is 64, taking into account about a week of numbers above 20 cases per day)
I'll keep tracking - and **when** it goes above 50 I'll start masking again (or when I travel to an area where the transmission is higher - or the vaccination rate lower), and I'll stop eating with people I don't live with. If the next variant which comes around is omicron-like in terms of infection, I'll wear KN95. Otherwise, as long as the transmisson rate is reasonably low I'll be back to cloth masks (since I don't like the impact on the environment of disposables). But I'll still expect to be able to shop as I need - and if it feels too risky, I'll shop by mail.
I retire in 23 days, so I have little that will require me to go out of the house if I don't feel safe - and plenty to keep me busy at home. (I've been working 80-100 hours/week since 2018 - and my housekeeping has suffered. I'm not an emotional hoarder - I'm able to toss stuff I don't need. BUT - I do need time to make a conscious decision before tossing things, and I haven't had that time for quite a while. And my spouse's odd sorting practices, which either prioritizes potential junk or mingles potential junk with the most recently worn clothing, for example, make it more challenging (that executive functioning deficit). I've plowed through the records I inherited from the past 20 years of deans/directors who left in a huff with chaotic mixed piles of crap and gems in 5 days. I'm looking forward to reclaiming a couple of rooms in my house!)
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