Sponsored by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services
Can you believe it’s November already? Soon it will be Thanksgiving, then Christmas, and then we will be moving into 2021! I think I speak for everyone when I say that I am hopeful things will look better in the new year in regard to Covid-19 and stopping the spread! I choose to spread hope instead!
As a pediatric nurse, I am not seeing as much direct contact with coronavirus patients because the virus has not been affecting children as much as older populations. However, recently, with the coronavirus numbers increasing again here in Michigan, we are seeing the effects in the hospitals with an increase in patients yet again. The nurses in the adult hospitals are starting to feel that slight overwhelming feeling that there may not be enough beds again. There are entire units housing patients with coronavirus, and these nurses are needing extra help, so they have been asking nurses from Pediatrics to help out.
From what I can see, as a community, we have gotten a little lacking in keeping up precautions in public. You see many people out with their mask on, but below their nose, or tucked under their chin. Doctors and scientists have said that properly worn masks can stop the spread by up to 70%. If you wear your mask under your nose, and someone sneezes near you, those tiny droplets will travel through the air, right in your nose as you breathe. Sneezes can travel up to 27 feet through the air.
Besides the masks, we should also be continuing frequent and effective handwashing, and maintain social distancing. Additionally, another step we can all take is to be proactive in helping those working as contact tracers do their job effectively.
Contact tracing has been put into place as a system to track and notify those who have tested positive or who may have come into contact with someone else with Covid. Contact tracing plays a critical role in helping Michiganders stop the spread of coronavirus. These are confidential calls and the contact tracers will not ask for your personal information. It is their job to inform. So if you go to a restaurant and they ask for your name and phone number, this is so that if someone in the restaurant at the same time as you was to test positive for covid, you can be notified that you may have been exposed. I don’t know about anyone else, but I personally would want to know as soon as possible if I had been exposed, so that I don’t put my family or my patients as risk.
I was listening to a podcast recently and the guest was Neil deGrasse Tyson, the astrophysicist and scientist, and he referred to the coronavirus pandemic like this, “If coronavirus was a monster in the woods and grabbed people and bit their heads off at the rate that coronavirus deaths are happening, the coordinated efforts of the world to get rid of this creature would know no bounds (Arnett, Bateman & Hayes).” This blew my mind because it made so much sense to me. Although coronavirus is not something we can see or touch, it is still a monster harming lots of people, and one simple way we can spread hope, not covid, is to wear a mask! Please do your part! Humans are resilient, and even more so when we work together to achieve a common goal.
Spread hope, not covid!
Click this link to learn more Michigan.gov
(Arnett, Will, Bateman, Jason and Hayes, Sean. “Neil deGrasse Tyson.” Audio blog post. Smartless. 27 July. 2020. Web.)
