We have been fortunate as a company and as a family so far. None of our clients or employees have gotten COVID so far. We’ve felt the economic impact of COVID-19, but luckily no personal impact.
That changed on Monday morning when we got a message from one of our employees, an amazing content writer. She went to the hospital because she was not feeling well for the past week, and while at the hospital, she tested positive for COVID. So now it is a waiting game, when will she get better, when will she be able to get back to regular life and the ever-present waiting game, when as a species will we get this virus under control?
Hopefully, she will be back on her feet soon and feeling much better.
I know some of you may be thinking well, she must not have taken the social distancing seriously, or she went out and did something to come in contact with the virus. Well, I can tell you this is certainly not the case. From the get-go, she has taken this virus more seriously them most. Certainly more seriously then I have. My family has still been going out to do things we did not change our lifestyle too much. We have been very cognizant of if someone is even a little sick not to go out and risk exposing anyone else or ourselves, but we still go to the store if we need something our the park to play.
She was not that way! From the get-go, she has self quarantined avoiding contact with people at every turn. She gets everything delivered to her home so that there is less of a need to encounter the virus. Her isolation has even been an issue to our business at times, a few weeks ago her keyboard broke and she was unwilling to go to the store to buy a new one and instead worked with the broken one until a new one arrived for her to use.
Working together to Stop COVID
The effects of this virus are ever-present and just keeps growing. We will need to work together as a species to get this under control. The virus does not care where you were born, what color your skin is, or the language you speak. It affects all of us, and all of us need to work together to get in front of this virus. You can see in the graph below that when we were isolated, we did an effective job controlling the infection, but as we have started to work toward getting life back to normal, the infection has grown.
(Source: Aatish Bhatia in collaboration with Minute Physics)
Masks
I know there a mask order going into effect or are already in effect in many places, but I urge you that wearing a mask does not make you immune to getting the virus or spreading the virus. It just lowers your risk. And, it only does this if you are wearing the right kind of mask and wearing a mask properly.
The video below does a great job of explaining how masks work, and it takes more than just covering your face to prevent spreading the virus. You have to make sure that the mask that you are wearing seals well against your face and all of the air that your breath has to go through the mask in both directions. This poses a minor problem when buying a mask because many masks are equipped with a valve mechanism that is designed to open when you breathe out. The feature prevents the mask from performing its intended purpose if you are an asymptomatic carrier of the virus. Any virus you exhale is not expelled through this vent at an accelerated rate, increasing the distance that it can travel. The other problem that I have seen is that people are making homemade masks out of material that has little to no effect for filter the air that you are inhaling or exhaling. So if you are going to go out and you need to wear a mask, make sure that the mask can filter the air that you are inhaling and exhaling as to provide the intended effect.
Staying home
I am sick of hearing it, too, being told to stay home. But like we were all told in Health class, abstinence is the only correct way to prevent something from happening. Right now, staying at home is the best tool that we have to prevent the spread of COVID. You heard me talk earlier about how I have not let COVID impact our lives too much. The one thing we have worked very hard at doing is to stay away from people. When we go to the park, we pick times that we can do this where there are no other kids there, and we change parks if there are kids on the one that we go to. When going to the store, only one person goes if at all possible. While at the store, we stay well over 6 feet away from everyone in the store when it is possible.
But with the symptoms of COVID being hard to identify and the incubation period being as long as it is, we feel that people shouldn’t venture out unless you are confident that you are healthy and when you are out that you should keep your distance.
Contact Tracing
Here is where we get into the marketing part of all of this. We have all heard a lot about different contact tracing methods going on, and at least for the moment, it is all done very altruistically. The health industry is using this information to help alert people that you or someone you have been near in the past 14 days that there has been a positive case of COVID and that you should self isolate. This information is not being used for advertising purposes, tracking your location, or any other source that is meant to invade your privacy. But is we are going to get ahead of this issue. We will need to get comfortable with this concept of contact tracing. We are not contacting tracing experts, but we are proficient in contact tracking and understand targeting in advertising. We can comfortably tell you there are significant differences between the systems and methods.
What are your thoughts?
I would love to know what your thoughts are around COVID, and as a business, what is your stance when they have an extended sickness or leave? Please comment below.
We wish you well and hope for the best outcome!
We wish you a speedy recovery, with every happy hope that your health keeps improving.
Sending warm wishes your way,
Islin and Lucas at Theia
(Source: xkcd)
