Finally, keep in mind that many teens and young adults are anxious or scared in our new normal, even if they don’t show it. Half my patients are under age twenty-one, and many have broken down in the exam room, admitting to feeling stressed and anxious since the world as they knew it has been turned upside down. Be sensitive to how your child might feel and encourage them to talk about their emotions, whether it’s with you or a trained therapist.
What to Do If You Test Positive
If you test positive for COVID-19, the first thing to do is go home and isolate yourself. The second thing to do is pick up the phone and call everyone you’ve had any close contact with in the last forty-eight hours, including those at work and/or establishments like restaurants, gyms, churches, or salons. While making these calls may not be easy, it’s absolutely necessary—and ultimately much easier than living with the fear you may have allowed a friend or relative to spread the disease to dozens of others. If you feel guilty, embarrassed, or scared, it’s okay to be honest and admit on the phone how you’re feeling. You may be surprised that your friends and family are more understanding than you think.
Navigating Married or Romantic Relationships
The pandemic has injected many marriages and other romantic relationships with stress, social isolation, financial uncertainty, parental difficulties, and/or intimacy issues, all of which are here to stay for the long haul. The upshot has been mixed, deepening some relationships while causing others to break apart. Unmarried couples seem to be weathering the storm better than married folk, with seven of out ten unmarried people reporting that their relationship has become more serious since the outbreak began, according to a survey from Ipsos.7
These couples, however, may be the exception, not the norm. Anecdotal evidence from divorce attorneys shows a surge of interest in marital separation8 while the same Ipsos survey found that one in ten married or partnered unions in the United States are very likely to separate due to issues related to the pandemic.9 One in five couples are also now fighting more while 27 percent of all Americans say they know a couple who is likely to break up, separate, or divorce whenever the pandemic ends.10
As I’ve said many times on Good Morning America, crises tend to bring out the best and worst in people, and it’s often our significant others who are the first to see these extremes. Navigating interpersonal problems hasn’t been and never will be easy, especially if one or both people in a relationship are experiencing any of the mental-health issues common in our new normal. My best advice is to communicate, communicate, communicate. Tell your partner how you’re feeling, whether that’s scared, stressed, or suffocated, without blaming the other person. Explain your needs with empathy and compassion for your spouse or partner, who’s also been through a stressful time, and ask what he or she may need right now to feel healthy and happy.
No matter your situation with your spouse or partner, don’t let health concerns add to your anxiety or problems. If you or your partner gets sick, don’t share the same bed. This was good advice before COVID-19, but it’s become even more critical since sleeping in same bed for up to eight hours at a time is one of the most intense forms of close contact you can have with someone else. When someone in a relationship gets sick, concede the bedroom to the person who isn’t feeling well—the healthy partner can spend the night in a spare bedroom or on the couch. Don’t be intimate while sick and for up to approximately ten days after the first sign of symptoms.
Sex and the Single Person in Pandemic Times
Can I date during a pandemic? Can I have sex during a pandemic? These are the questions I hear on a regular basis from almost every one of my single patients. My answer: There is no easy answer. It’s a tricky and sticky situation, and there’s always a risk in everything you do. But you can use good judgment to lower your risk. You can think of it with almost the same decision-making criteria you would use to reduce your chance of getting a sexually transmitted infection.
Start by being selective about whom you date. Do they share the same health behaviors and risk tolerance as you do? You probably don’t want to date someone who doesn’t believe in masks if you do, for example, or has no problem going out to crowded bars all night while you’re social distancing. Also ask yourself how important the relationship is to you. While it’s probably worth the risk to see someone you really like and foresee a future with, it might not be smart to take the same chances on a guy or gal who may be in your life for only a few weeks.
Spending Time with Friends
A pandemic is a socially charged situation for all our relationships: When someone else can give you a potentially debilitating disease, every acquaintance gets reassessed. But pandemics may exact a particular toll for friends, who are people we want to see but may not necessarily need to see, which has forced many to reevaluate their friendships six ways to Sunday. For this reason, many friendships have fallen apart in our new normal, as people disagree over risk tolerances and health behaviors or simply don’t see each other anymore. Conversely, the crisis has also deepened some friendships, as people have come together in a shared time of need.
I’m a medical doctor, not a therapist, so I can’t tell you how to heal your friendships. But I can give you etiquette to follow when it comes to navigating the health behaviors of your friends. Here are seven tips to keep in mind when you spend time with people outside your pandemic pod:
Opt at times for a party of one. We shouldn’t have to keep saying it, but we will: stay home if you’re sick. While some may apply a different filter for when they want to socialize with friends, sharing is not caring in the age of contagious disease.
Huddle before you hang. When meeting with a friend or group of friends, intentionally start a conversation about which safety precautions will make everyone feel comfortable. This way, you know how your friends feel and can avoid missteps that might offend someone or make another feel uncomfortable. Talking also allows you to communicate how you feel so that your friends can respect your safety measures.
Accept the highest common denominator. If a friend has a particular safety concern—e.g., they don’t want to go to a restaurant, they don’t feel comfortable inside—respect that concern and adhere to their wishes whenever together. Think of it like wearing a seat belt in someone else’s car or taking your shoes off when you go inside a friend’s home: If that’s what they want you to do, the polite thing to do is to nod, smile, and comply.
Respect the RT. Everyone has a unique risk tolerance, which was true before the pandemic began. For example, you may have a friend who would happily sky dive out of a plane as well as one who wouldn’t even get inside a small plane, let alone jump out of one. Respect your friends’ personal boundaries.
Don’t assume motives. Sometimes a friend may want to take measures you feel are excessive not to protect themselves, but to protect a vulnerable family member or friend. You may never know their motives unless you walk in their shoes, but the thing to do is not get upset or hurt by what they feel they need to do.
More is better. When in doubt, err on the side of safety. In our new normal, no one is going to accuse you of being rude if you want to stay at least six feet apart. Similarly, you’ll never be sorry if everyone wears a mask inside a restaurant, but you may be if someone gets sick if you didn’t.
You can choose you. It’s okay to prioritize your health over a friendship, especially if someone is unwilling to respect your boundaries. If that’s the case, they’re likely not a true friend anyway.
Playing It Safe with Furry Friends
Sometimes there’s no greater relationship than the one we have with man’s (and woman’s) best friend: our pets. First, the bad news: COVID-19 can infect dogs and cats. Since it’s a coronavirus, we know that some strains affect animals. But confirmed cases are rare, and reported deaths from the disease are even more unusual. Most pets don’t show symptoms, or if they do, they’re very mild. What’s more, the risk of your pet spreading the illness to you is low, accor
ding to the CDC.11 The risk is likely greater that you could spread the virus to your pet. While it’s possible to test your dog or cat for COVID-19, the CDC recommends doing so only if your pet exhibits symptoms associated with the virus and has had known contact with an infected individual.12 If you’re sick with COVID-19 or any other illness, avoid sleeping in the same bed or kissing or hugging your pet.
In the end, one of the biggest changes wrought by the pandemic is how to interact with other people. Our new normal has transformed our relationships with family and friends, and it’s not easy to know who to see and how to socialize. But you don’t have to be reactive about relationships in our new normal. Instead, you can choose to make conscious, informed, and smart decisions about who you see and how you see them. Doing so will greatly increase the chances that you and your family will stay safe while staying connected with the people who matter most in your new world.
Chapter 10
Public Places
Captain Dennis Tajer flies several days every week. He does it because he has to—it’s his job as a 737 pilot—but he also does it because he wants to. In our new normal, Tajer says he’s confident that his profession doesn’t put his health at risk.
“It’s ironic that people will go to restaurants where the airflow is standard, and they’ll feel comfortable taking down their masks and eating. But they think twice about being on an airplane, where airflow goes through a HEPA filter and is superior,” Tajer recently told me by phone. “Everyone should feel safe on a plane. That’s engineering—that’s not opinion.”
I saw Tajer—at least on TVs at the station—when we featured him on Nightline in May 2020. ABC News transportation correspondent Gio Benitez caught up with Tajer then, the day the pilot started flying after being grounded for weeks due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Months after the segment aired, Tajer told me those early weeks had been a struggle, before the airlines implemented widespread mask mandates. But today, the spokesman for the union group the Allied Pilots Association says everyone he sees on a plane and in an airport is wearing a mask over their nose and mouth—a game changer for air-travel safety in our new normal.
“I couldn’t engage in this on a day-to-day basis if I felt my passengers were unsafe—not just morally, but professionally, I couldn’t fly a plane,” Tajer said. “I make that obligation every time I clip on those wings.”
There’s wisdom behind these words—Tajer has been flying passenger planes for more than thirty years. In those three decades, he’s never seen anything affect air travel like the pandemic—and he says the outbreak will keep shaping the air-travel industry for years to come.
“You can’t go through this and not have it change your life,” he told me. “It’s part of the human experience. There’s going to be a period of time when people feel more comfortable wearing a mask, whether it’s COVID-19 or not. I think people are going to take these precautions out of personal choice.”
In the meantime, Tajer says no one should feel afraid to fly in our new normal. But if you’re hesitant, he says he understands. “It’s okay to feel that way,” he told me. “It takes time, and everyone is going to have a process to get to the point where they feel comfortable. But when you’re ready, we’ll be ready for you.”
Tajer is right: There’s a process and it does take time. Answering the question of whether it’s safe to fly—or go back to work, the gym, a restaurant, a theater, a salon, a church, or any other public place—starts with one variable: you. Because only you can make the decision.
But there are specific ways to assess your risk and evaluate the safety of any situation for yourself and/or loved ones. In this chapter, we’ll look at four factors to consider whenever you go to crowded public places and distinct ways to protect yourself in our new normal, whether you’re headed back to work, taking a trip, eating at a restaurant, going to a salon, attending a religious service, or enjoying a museum, movie, or concert.
I will explain why the best way to assess risk is to take a macro-perspective rather than a microscopic look at a given activity, event, or behavior. When evaluating the pros and cons of doing anything in our new normal, we also can’t make decisions in a vacuum or a bubble—we need to be able to integrate numerous factors relating to our environment, pathogens (and not just the coronavirus), each other, and ourselves. These elements are not static; they are ever-changing. And we need to be able to change with them.
But it’s not just about risk assessment—risk mitigation is just as important. In this chapter, I’ll give you the tools to make informed decisions and take proactive steps to lower your chances of getting infected with COVID-19 (or any other contagious illness) in public places. All in all, it’s about learning how to empower yourself to feel good about your choices to be in public and stay healthy and happy no matter what you choose to do.
How to Think Like a Doctor to Assess Your Safety in Public Places
Is it safe to do X, Y, or Z? is by far the most frequent question I’ve received from viewers, patients, family, and friends since the coronavirus outbreak began, but it’s not an easy question to answer. What we know about the virus is continually evolving, along with guidelines from global, federal, state, local, and tribal officials. What’s more, every situation is unique, and what going back to work looks like for someone in the service industry, for example, will likely be different from the guy or gal with an office job who doesn’t have to regularly interact with the public.
For these reasons, instead of suggesting you memorize particulars about how the virus may or may not impact certain public places, I want to encourage you to do something I’ve advocated throughout this entire book: think like a doctor. If you adopt the mental process a doctor would use to assess each individual situation, you have the ability to make the best decisions for you and your family, based on the unique circumstances surrounding what you want to do, alongside your own personal risk factors and tolerance. And you will be able to do this for every situation that comes your way.
The first step in thinking like a doctor, then, is to evaluate everything we know about the situation and the inherent risk it poses. In today’s new normal, we can distill situational risk of becoming infected with COVID-19 down to four major factors:
Time: How long will you be at the public place? In general, any events that last longer than fifteen minutes require some safety scrutiny.
Place: Will you be inside or outside? If inside, are there windows and doors that will or can be open? Or will there be adequate ventilation?
People: How many people will be with you, approximately? Or how densely crowded will the place be? Is there a mask mandate that ensures everyone will be wearing a face covering?
Space: How much space will there be between you and other people? Will you be seated or standing in one place for a duration of time or can you move about? In general, more space apart is safer than less space.
In addition to these four factors, there’s also your city or state percent positivity rate, which reflects the percentage of people who test positive for coronavirus in your area. The percent positive isn’t a total case count—instead, it indicates how widespread COVID-19 infection is in the area where testing is occurring. If your city or state has a percent positive rate of 1 percent or below, for example, your risk of contracting the coronavirus is relatively low—but it’s not nonexistent. By comparison, the World Health Organization advised governments in May 2020 to maintain a percent positive rate at or below 5 percent for at least two weeks before reopening. Many states, however, have not adhered to this suggestion and have remained opened with percent positives in the double digits. Whatever the case may be in your area, a high percent positivity is reason to avoid public places. But again, realize that there is still a risk of contracting COVID-19 if your state or city has a percent positive rate below 1 percent.
After you’ve assessed the total situational risk, including your area’s percent positivity rate, the next step is to evaluate your physical risk
factors in the situation. In the instance of COVID-19, physical risk depends on how old you are, how healthy you are, and whether you have any specific medical conditions that may make you more vulnerable to severe complications. To learn more about these conditions, see chapter 1.
Your degree of physical risk may also shape your degree of risk tolerance—another variable to evaluate when you’re discerning whether it’s safe for you to do X, Y, or Z. If you have multiple physical risk factors, for example, or live with someone who has multiple physical risk factors, your risk tolerance will likely be lower than someone who doesn’t. Your risk tolerance may also be lower because you simply don’t feel as comfortable as others in certain situations in our new normal. Just like fingerprints, everyone’s risk tolerance is unique, as it should be—it never has or will be one size fits all. As we discussed in chapter 9, some people may be comfortable sky diving out of a plane while others wouldn’t even step foot in a small plane, let alone jump out of one.
Recognize that your risk tolerance may also be tied to non-negotiable risks—those activities you have to do in our new normal. For example, an essential worker may not want to take any additional risks by seeing a movie or eating at a restaurant because they’re already interacting with the public every day. This is how I feel. Since I already see patients and go into the ABC studios, where I can’t wear a mask while having my makeup done or when I’m on air, I’m selective about what other risks I’m willing to take. On the other hand, people who work from home may feel more comfortable introducing risk every now and then to eat out or go to the movies.
The New Normal Page 19