A Healthy Person’s Guide to Staying Safe and Sane During the Coronavirus
A Healthy Person’s Guide to Staying Safe and Sane During COVID-19
Should I go to my friend’s party? Work out at the gym? Disinfect my credit cards? You’ve got questions. We’ve got information you can use.
Rolling Stone | March 13, 2020
Anxiety is soaring across the country as the number of confirmed cases of the new coronavirus continues to climb. City, state, and federal governments are scrambling to contain the virus, also known as COVID-19. The government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic has lagged behind that of other affected countries, raising questions about why there have been delays in testing and how long it will take to slow the virus’s spread.
For people who are at risk of developing serious complications from COVID-19, such as older people and people with underlying health conditions like heart disease or diabetes, the guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is clear: Avoid large crowds and non-essential travel, and stay indoors as much as possible. But it’s less clear how people who do not fit into those categories should operate on a day-to-day basis. For now, the biggest question many people have is: How should I go about my life? Am I at risk? Should I go to my friend’s birthday party this weekend? Should I take my young child out to the park? If I’m a healthy person in my twenties, thirties, or forties, why should I change my lifestyle?
Rolling Stone interviewed medical doctors, public-health experts, and researchers to help answer questions about daily life during the coronavirus pandemic. These experts caution that there are no cure-alls or one-size-fits-all solutions. They also say that as more tests are completed and more data becomes available, we will likely learn more about the virus, the ways it can be transmitted, and its effect on healthy and sick people.
But we know enough about the virus to help answer questions the average healthy person might have.
How cautious should I really be about getting COVID-19?
It’s time to embrace your inner germaphobe. The most important thing right now, public-health experts say, is slowing the transmission of the virus and protecting those who are vulnerable — namely, people over the age of 70, people with pre-existing conditions, and people with weakened immune systems.
What does that mean in practice?