Do your best to battle ‘COVID fatigue’
Practice self-care and recognize that we are not alone and share these feelings of anxiety, fear and loneliness.
“COVID fatigue” is real. It refers to the insidious feelings that we are experiencing 10 months into the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. These include a host of symptoms: restlessness, anxiety, lack of energy and perhaps for some a sense of hopelessness and helplessness that may represent a clinical diagnosis of depression.
For those who feel a deep sense of despair, professional counseling and medical care should be a strong consideration. Most of us have learned to live with, if not accept, the many life changes and personal restrictions that have so dramatically changed our lives.
At this moment, we also share additional social stressors individually and as a nation. How we respond to these is critical to our success to suppress the virus, maintain social cohesion and regain a sense of control over our lives until we can return to a sense of “normalcy.”
This requires first a recognition that we are not alone and broadly share these feelings of anxiety, fear, loneliness and loss of control.
Our immediate response should be for self-care and on the needs of those closest to us. Emphasize the basics of healthy diets, regular exercise e.g. walking briskly for 30-40 minutes three to four times a week and limiting alcohol consumption while eschewing illicit drugs and tobacco.
Explore the exceptional natural areas of Berks County. If one has some extra free time, engage in a new or creative activity. Maintain regular follow-up medical appointments for disease management and preventive care.
Above all sustain those essential familial and social ties while adhering to public health guidelines. Our goal should be to focus on what is essential in the moment and preserve a sense of enjoyment and control that we may feel we have lost.
It is also important to respond to the needs of those who have suffered the most through this pandemic. While we have all been called to sacrifice, this has not occurred equally, particularly affecting the elderly and racial and ethnic minorities.
Emotional support is needed for those with the disease or who have lost someone from it. Assistance for social agencies hard at work to provide basic necessities and efforts to patronize our many struggling businesses are not only the right thing to do but will lay the groundwork for a stronger community as we move forward.
Above all, at this critical moment, it is vitally important that we remain vigilant. This is no time to submit to our fatigue and to relax those behaviors that are essential to defeating this virus: Socially distancing at least 6 feet apart; wearing masks in public, especially indoors when social distancing is not possible and practicing good hygiene, particularly frequent handwashing.
Winter is coming, and with the onset of colder weather and the move to indoor activities, we are seeing novel coronavirus infections increase in Berks and across the country. The combination of the impending seasonal influenza virus with overlapping COVID-19 symptoms will make it difficult to distinguish one from the other.
It is not hard to envision our health care facilities overwhelmed, the most vulnerable exposed to even higher risk and pressure increased on our businesses and activities to be curtailed even further; something none of us want.
It is also imperative now more than ever, that everyone over the age of 6 months receive the influenza vaccine.
We will get through this, but there are critical months ahead until we have a safe, effective and readily distributable SARSCoV-2 vaccine in 2021. It is up to each one of us to defend against despair and protect ourselves, our loved ones and our neighbors.
We value our freedom, but liberty also requires personal responsibility to take those steps to protect ourselves and each other. Like many other times in our history, this is a challenge we must and will overcome.