Fighting quarantine fatigue with yet another newsletter. I love all of your emails, links and memes –you can find them in my
past newsletters
. I’m also thrilled to hear that people are forwarding this along – if you’re new, join my
mailing list
. And, as always, thanks for protecting yourself and others by staying home when you can, washing your hands slightly obsessively, and
masking up!
How should we all parent – frankly, how should we do just about anything – when the advice from experts keeps on changing? It’s a question uttered through the ages, prompted every time a mom or dad experiences the whiplash of flip-flopping guidelines on everything from baby feeding strategies to the balance between enrichment and helicoptering. As someone who has spent her life seeing the forest much more clearly than the trees, perhaps this is precisely why I have always felt that the answer lies in a distant perspective. The skill required for any of us to land on the smartest choices often relies upon the ability to pull the lens back and look at the larger picture with its longer runway. This was true well before the pandemic, but has never been truer. And so, in a nutshell (which, by the way, is a very funny metaphor for big picture, summary-level thinking when nutshells are themselves so small… far smaller than trees…), the best way to tackle the myriad of questions and worries hurling themselves toward you at the moment is to take a step back, way back. Get over it, literally. Put the pieces of the puzzle in context. Run the marathon, not the sprint. Let go of reactivity in exchange for calm, paced thought. And read the links below, all of which are designed to get you there.
The big picture: COVID data collection.
Every scientist in the world seems to be laser-focused on coronavirus, which sounds like a good thing. But consider this: the more studies published, the higher the statistical chance that some will land upon inaccurate conclusions.
Watch the Methods Man
explain the phenomenon much better than I ever could.
The big picture: masks
. Check out this unbelievably detailed
map of the US
showing who’s really covering up. (P.S. Need masks?
OOMLA
has you covered!)
The big picture: education.
The debate over will they or won’t they return to campus continues to rage. Studies like the one making headlines out of
South Korea
suggest that while younger kids (under 10) don’t spread coronavirus as effectively as adults, older kids (tweens and teens) do. One alternative to regular old school seen springing up across the country in various shapes and forms:
home school pods
. There’s a lot to weigh here, from the quality of the education to the growing rift between kids with resources and those without.
The big picture: innovation.
Who doesn’t love a story about an
all-girls robotics team
solving the ventilator shortage during COVID… with car parts?!
The little picture (with big implications): premature births.
Looks like locking down may have
reduced the number of premature births
in spots across the globe. Theories to explain it run the gamut from reduction in stress – at least, outside-of-the-home stress – to less exposure to all sorts of infections to improved air quality (yep, pollution has been linked to premature birth).
And staying with today’s theme of scale, next time you are trying to keep your distance from a non-mask-wearing subway rider, top this:
