To all our readers in the space community: when dealing with #COVID19 be the Matt Damon on the left – not the one on the right. #BeMarkWatney #Coronavirus #NASA pic.twitter.com/eyw7q1GLCT
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) March 24, 2020
Keith’s note: I am starting to see Facebook and social media posts by people I know – who know people who are sick with COVID-19 – or have died. This will start to accelerate sharply albeit exponentially in the next week or so. Remember back in the 80s and 90s when your gay friends would comment once in a while about the increasing number of friends they lost to AIDS and the air of despair and hopelessness that accompanied that loss – and the aching hope for a cure? Think of that decade or so of prolonged loss compressed into mere months. That is what COVID-19 can and will do unless everyone does their part to limit the spread. Add in what we all went through during/after 9-11, Columbia, and Katrina for good measure. We’ve all seen those movies before. And we all made it through each of them.
If you have worked at NASA for more than 5 minutes then you have heard the old “there is no ‘I’ in team” management theme. Well, guess what: that is now obsolete. The “I” is now of paramount importance. Every single person can – and must – make a contribution by staying home, being cautious, listening to medical professionals, and adapting to the new normal of doing rocket science from home. Acting as an individual is now of core importance to the team.
As Jim Bridenstine noted “Each of us has the important responsibility of taking extra precautions to protect ourselves and our team. If you are performing on-site work and feel sick, do not go to work. Contact your supervisor immediately and schedule an appointment with your primary care provider.”
I take Jim 200% at his word. If your center is not at Stage 4 yet and you think that it should be, then tell your management. If you do not feel comfortable doing so or think that they are not listening then please borrow the NASAWatch comments section – or send an email – and I will make sure the message is delivered – with anonymity.
In the mean time, now that working at NASA – is working from home – in isolation – there is one example to emulate: Think like Mark Watney. He teleworked from Mars for years. He eventually showed up at his NASA office on Earth after all the bad stuff was over.
So can you.
Some of the recent increase is due to faster testing & the testing of backlogged samples, much is truly new cases, but all these will pass. Meanwhile, practice distancing, handwashing, stay home and cross your fingers CoVid-19 is sensitive to warmer weather.
But according to POTUS, he’d like to lift restrictions by Easter. This does not seem to be in line with reality.
He did indicate it was his dream, and it’s a nice one, but we will see how things turn out. The re-opening of Wuhan where the virus started after 10 weeks of lockdown is encouraging.
I had to live in isolation for 4 months during my bone marrow transplant. Early on, I pretty much had NO immune system. Not fun, but you learn to do it because your life depends on it. Even now, two and a half years later, due to previous medical history I am at serious risk with this novel virus.
Per medical guidance, everyone in my house has to go through extra precautionary procedures just to go get food. My wife is an MD; she can’t see patients in person…for my sake. We are both working remotely from home (I’m a teacher these days; crazily enough I was working in a typical germ-exchange facility called a high school).
A long time ago (when I was working at NASA in Houston) I came within a day or so of succumbing to an antibiotic-resistant pneumococcal sepsis (everyone on the team figured I had caught something from The Satanic Satellite (TSS) on which I was working at the time; you’d have to have worked the tethered satellite to understand the humor). I spent a week in the hospital and was on IV Vancomycin (I call it Draino for Veins) for ten days. I’ve had other serious infection episodes down through the years. And those weren’t novel bugs. I know a number of others with PIDD who have endured similar histories.
Any of your kids catch Molluscum contagiousum? Mild harmless skin infection that lasts a few months or so if managed well. (It’s related to small pox btw.) One of my kids brought it home from a pool party and most of my other kids caught it and got over it. I caught it…and apparently had no immunity to it. Hundreds of papules, even on my eyelids. We finally ended up lasering off many, but it never went away completely. And I had it until my transplant, 11 years later. MC didn’t kill me, sure; but I called it the Zits from Hell. Infection happens in large part through the individual actions of others, and this new virus is very good at getting around.
The key to my safety—and truly everybody’s safety—is for everyone to think and act differently than they are used to, to be mindful of the transmission of practically invisible things that can cause harm to themselves and others. Those in the grocery store when my wife goes shopping, those who come in contact with those who work and shop in that grocery store, and those who come in contact with them and so on and so on. All it theoretically might take to kill me is if one person is mindless somewhere across that network and the virus hops along the thread one person to one surface to one person to another person etc around not-quite-careful-enough practices…and then my wife inadvertently brings it home inadvertently too and it gets past her house-entering wipe-down-of-goods-and-clothes protocol.
Please hunker down happy, for all of us together. I’m hopeful that we’ll turn a corner by Easter, too. Hope is a good thing but it doesn’t imply blindness. We ALL need to go out of our way every day to care for each other. I hope it catches on…so to speak…and that it lasts beyond the current situation.
In every moment, in every action, in every decision
Choose to be the person you should be
Not the person your weaknesses would let you be.
Thank you for your comments and observations, Keith. I have lived by them since your first post about COVID-19 and am increasingly thankful that I have.
Hearing that Boris Johnson is now infected, I started to wonder. Our leaders are constantly in touch with others: staffers, public, and listing dignitaries, among others.
This is a potential recipe for disaster.
And while there are many ways this pandemic can play out, do not discount a future where top- and mid-level folks in responsible positions are sickened t higher rates; and as they tend to be much older, the mortality will be higher, too.