May we bring our best selves forward

As a retired Public Health physician, it has been a roller coaster few weeks of anxiety. I know I have been an annoyance to friends predicting an illness explosion rapidly heading our direction

Now that it is nearly here, I find myself cautiously relieved, and even hopeful.

Not that we won’t experience severe problems with illness in our community, but I believe we as a nation, state, and community are responding beyond my expectation to the precautions advised by public health experts, our governor, and responsible media.

Everyone by now is familiar with the hygiene advice. Social distancing has entered the vocabulary along with basic public health interventions of testing, contact tracing, isolation, and quarantine. We understand what it means to flatten the curve. What the impact of the pandemic is and will have on every aspect of our lives is beginning to unfold.

While we await virus testing and work on flattening the curve by staying home, it is time to turn our attention to, “What can I do?” I am seeing people looking to connect with neighbors to determine who is older and should stay home and may need help with errands, wondering how they can support families with young children when child care and schools are closed, and imagining how we will all take care of our own sick families and selves when that might occur. I am anticipating a great deal of creative response to our predicament.

I was recently impressed by a meeting of the Blue

Lake community regarding their neighborhood/community pods that connect small groups of households who now know and support each other and are better prepared to deal with disasters. I was about to try and pull together such a thing in my own community in April, but the pandemic has moved that timeline forward.

Nothing like a real event to motivate action.

When people in neighborhoods reach out and connect, there will be help with shopping and errands, sharing resources, and taking pressure off the greater system.

Our Public Health system has been badly broken and those remaining are working hard to protect us with meager resources.

We, the public, are the patient when it comes to public health, and to the degree that we are cooperative and helpful with each other we can make things better in difficult times.

I salute my Public Health heroes who when they do their prevention and containment job well will never have someone come up and say, “thank you for saving my life,” because you will never know which interventions kept you safe. Your neighbors may also be the ones who should be thanked.

Let’s hope that these trying times will bring our best selves forward, our shared ingeniousness in small measures will help us all adapt, and our love for humanity will guide us. We need each other now more than ever.

I am Rebecca Stauffer, MD, pediatrician, public health physician for 17 years and Humboldt State University Student Health and Counseling Director for seven years, now retired.