NEW NORMAL
Health and disaster officials describe their routines amid the pandemic
The future for school, sports, health and the economy looks different.
How, we’re all wondering, how are we supposed to live these days? Everyone is sick of staying home. Nobody loves the feel of a mask on a hot day. But at the same time, COVID-19 hospitalizations are rising with alarming speed in Harris County. What’s a person to do?
I called some of Texas’ leading experts on coronaviruses, epidemiology, vaccines, public health and disaster response. This is how they’re leading their lives.
Ben Neuman, virus researcher, Texas A&M University-Texarkana
Ben Neuman is one of the world’s top coronavirus researchers. He’s grown more SARS virus than anyone else alive. And he sits on the committee that named SARS-COV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
Remarkably, he loves explaining science — so much so that in March, despite the fast-growing demands on his time, he and his wife, Nicola, launched the Facebook page “Dr Ben Neuman’s Science Group.” There both kids and adults submit coronavirus questions — everything from his assessment of the World Health Organization’s recent statement about asymptomatic carriers to “Is the Easter Bunny an essential worker?”
Often dressed in biopatterned shirts (whales, dinosaurs, tropical fish), he sounds like Mr. Rogers, if Mr. Rogers had been a research virologist.
Since the pandemic began, Neuman has been working at a lab at Texas A&M’s main campus in College Station five days a week, and commuting home to Texarkana on weekends.
“Five days a week, I live out of a hotel where I don’t have a kitchen. So I eat takeout. In the takeout place, I’m one of two people, both wearing masks — it’s me and the person doing the serving,” he says.
“Conversation is probably the thing that gets you — talking in the same room, or singing. Especially the ‘sh’s’ and the ‘th’s’ — those are the sounds where your mouth is most constricted, so the air is pushed out fastest,” he says. “I wish I’d realized that when I named my daughter Thea. She gets spit at constantly, every day of her entire life.”
The five-hour drive home on the weekends is scary, and he often has to make pit stops.
“I try not to go inside service stations or convenience stores or any places with high foot traffic. A gas station could easily be a nexus of infection. I wear my mask while I’m pumping, and I pay with my card outside,” he says. “My family doesn’t make me selfquarantine when I come home, which is good of them. Why go home if I can’t see anyone? It’s a balance between safety and mental well-being.”
Catherine Troisi, epidemiologist, UTHealth School of Public Health
Catherine Troisi is the rare academic who understands how, in the real world, the epidemiological rubber meets the road.
Since 2010, she’s taught at UTHealth School of Public Health in Houston, and researches the epidemiology of infectious diseases. Before that, at the Houston Department of Public Health, she was director of the Office of Public Health Practice. Among other things, she was the incident commander of Houston’s response to the H1N1 outbreak.
“Whatever you do, you have to weigh the risk vs. the benefit — for you, for everyone in your household, and for everyone you come into contact with,” says Troisi. She and her husband are both over 65, making them high-risk.
“Since the pandemic, I haven’t gone to get my hair cut in a salon,” she says.
“It’s not worth the risk. But if I were to break my arm, I’d certainly go to the hospital.”
She eats takeout sometimes, but doesn’t worry about wiping down the mail.
One of Troisi’s masks says, “This was preventable.” Another favorite has wire that allows her to mold it around her nose, and a pocket in which she inserts a coffee filter for extra protection.
“I don’t wear a mask while walking and biking for exercise. People in my neighborhood, West U., are very good about maintaining their physical distance,” she says. “If you're approaching someone on the sidewalk one of you will go out in the street.”
She’s returned to the gym, but prefers to stay outside there. “I’ve swum outdoors there twice, with six people in the pool at a time,” she says. “And I’ve done outdoor yoga, spaced far apart in the parking lot, at 7 a.m. on a Saturday. It was hot even then.”
She’s resigned. “We’re all tired of this. We want our lives back,” she says. “But until there’s a vaccine, everyone is susceptible.”
Peter Hotez, vaccine researcher, Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital
Since the pandemic, bow-tied vaccine researcher Peter Hotez has become one of cable news’ most reassuring presences: a frequent guest with a rare ability to explain the complicated, fastchanging science of the coronavirus.
His lab is developing a COVID-19 vaccine. An M.D. and Ph.D., he’s a professor and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, and co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development.
Before the pandemic, Hotez, 60, and his wife
Ann, 62, ate out every Friday.
“Now we’re not going to restaurants,” he says sadly. “Our world is a lot smaller.”
He’s canceled flights to London, Brazil and Korea, and hasn’t been on a plane since the first week of March. “For me, that’s an all-time record,” he says.
He works from home as much as possible, stacking Zoom meetings. “It works surprisingly well,” he says, “but I miss human contact.”
Hotez especially misses face time with his adult children in L.A. and Tucson. He and Ann have seen their adult son, a petroleum engineer in The Woodlands, a couple of times since they began social distancing. But now that his son has gone back to his office, the risk is higher.
Hotez is frustrated that Texas reopened before the virus was contained. “I don’t see how this resolves,” he says.
“What’s the end game? We’ll have a vaccine at the middle of 2021 at the earliest — and even that would be record-breaking speed,” he says. “We’ve got to figure out how to manage this better.”
Angela Blanchard, disaster-response expert, Brown University
While CEO of Neighborhood Centers/Baker Ripley, Angela Blanchard helped Houston respond to many disasters, including the Louisianans displaced by Katrina. Now she’s a consultant, and though she still lives in Houston, she teaches a Brown University grad-school class, “Disaster and Displacement.”
“Generally, I’m being uber-conservative,” says Blanchard. “I’m not getting on planes. I’m not eating at restaurants.”
When she ventured out to a plant nursery, she remained outdoors. “My garden is looking pretty good right now,” she says.
Since March, she’s seen few people in person. But last week she made an exception for the Black Lives Matter march. “I wore my mask 95 percent of the dang time. And I maintained what social distance I could.”
Umair Shah, Harris County Public Health
Dr. Umair Shah is executive director of Harris County Public Health, where he’s leading the county’s fight against COVID-19. Since March, his office has been working seven days a week. Sometimes he feels guilty that he’s only working 12 or 14 hours a day.
He has three children, ages 10, 6 and 3. His 6-yearold son, a daddy’s boy, used to ask him to play as soon as he came home. Shah, tired, would say OK, but then answer the phone or respond to an urgent email. “It got to the point where he just stopped asking,” Shah says.
That, he says, is what it’s like now for everyone in public health, where the work to be done vastly outstrips the number of people available: “I hear people feeling guilty because they want a few hours off to watch a graduation for their fifth-grader, or a few hours off to go to a virtual faith service. They ask: ‘Is it OK for me to go to a park for few hours of fresh air?’”
Shah’s wife, a health care provider, sets firm COVID rules for their family. She limits the kids’ outings — to protect the children, and also to protect the people they’d come into contact with. “If my own family is the only one that learns from that messaging, that's not good enough,” Shah says.