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!

I am starting a puberty lifestyle company, which is in and of itself slightly hilarious because aren’t lifestyle brands supposed to be aspirational? And since when has anything about puberty – the zits, the sprouting hair everywhere, the odors, and the pendulous moods – ever been aspirational? But it’s happening, and you’ll hear more about it in the weeks to come. Meanwhile, launching this endeavor amidst a pandemic means my days have been split between thinking about an invisible viral enemy terrorizing the world on the one hand and a very visible coming-of-age transformation (that, coincidentally, happens to every human in the world) on the other. After months of toggling back and forth between the two, my mind has started to meld them. Suddenly, puberty and pandemic do not seem like such polar opposites. Go with me here…

  • Both make you want to hide inside your house and never come out until both make you want to do something impulsive, something you never in your wildest dreams might do over the past seven months but OMG I am overcome with a need to get out and be with people! Even if they are people I don’t remember ever having wanted to be with!!
  • Both drive very interesting purchasing decisions, though arguably the puberty shopping cart is filled with far fewer home improvement items and far more randomness (roller skates and bright colored hair dye, anyone?)
  • Puberty causes acne breakouts for what seems like no good reason but actually the fault of hormones like estrogen and testosterone; meanwhile pandemic triggers breakouts because the stressors associated with a hidden infectious enemy – everything from job losses to Zoom schooling – cause cortisol to surge and cortisol is no friend of clear skin.
  • And of course, the called-for dress code for each – PJs and sweatpants for days! – have fully converged.

Puberty is a stage of life, a time most of us would never return to (which is why, in the end, I am starting a puberty lifestyle company – because it can be better). Pandemic has become a stage of life, too, one we are all desperate to move past and don’t want to revisit. The biggest difference between the two is that we have some control over the pandemic: we can mask up, keep distance, and turn off our feel-good emotional brain this Labor Day weekend despite the fact that all we want to do is hang out with other people, in a perfect world it would be with lots of them! We can control this pandemic if we choose… puberty, not so much.
 
Let’s begin with links about puberty instead of COVID, because I am so tired of this freaking virus. That said, I promise we will get to it in just a few lines.

  • Starting with this powerful piece arguing that dads ought to wear their emotions on their sleeves with their sons in the same way they do with their daughters.
  • Next comes news of a California ban on the sale of all flavored tobacco, from candy and fruit flavors to mint and menthol, a move aimed at curbing tween and teen use of flavored cigarettes and ecigs but cutting access to adults, too.
  • And this one that talks about the implosion of the company Juul – those of you who have read this newsletter for a while know I am not shedding any tears.
  • Finally, an Atlantic article that references this newsletter. Thanks Jenny Anderson!
 
Okay, as promised, COVID stuff. This week, I find myself struggling to make sense of much of the hypocrisy, conflicting data, and generalized confusion.

  • Arguments for and against testing have become even more muddled. The newest argument in favor of widespread – including at home – testing came in the form of a study out of South Korea showing that not only are most kids either asymptomatic or very mildly ill, but about 70% of kids at risk for infection had symptoms that were missed and up to 93% would have been overlooked entirely if testing was only done on kids who met the current definition of symptomatic. The other headline out of this study is that kids with COVID symptoms continued to test positive for 18 – 19 days (not terribly surprising); and those with no symptoms had coronavirus detected for an average of 14 days (the researchers were pretty shocked!). But that said, the study was not designed to determine whether the detected virus was active and therefore contagious or whether it was just viral debris that cannot infect another person. We’ll have to wait for the sequel to find out.
  • There are lots of home testing kits hitting the market. These are the ones that have come across my desk over the past week (unfortunately, not literally):
  • Everlywell – self-collected nasal swab, results available within 72-hours of the lab receiving your swab with a price tag of $109.
  • Pixel by Lab Corp – self-collected nasal swab (while your are ordering on their site, you can also pick up a colorectal cancer screening test, lipid panel, and diabetes screening test, too); no guaranteed time to receive results but costs $119.
  • Vault – Hallelujah! Saliva! You collect your sample while someone watches you on Zoom (in case spitting in a tube is hard); the results are available 48 – 72 hours after they arrive at the lab (which is why they recommend doing the test 6 days before you must have results if you are on a deadline), and the test will run you $150.
  • BinaxNOW – Abbott’s new 15-minute antigen test which also comes linked to an app that will generate a mobile passport to show at work or school or wherever – the tests cost $5 each (the app is free), but all of them were just snapped up by the US government, yes every single one of the 150 million units produced.
  • If you want a great read explaining what might change if we have a coherent national testing policy, read this.
  • Off the testing bandwagon and onto face shields for a moment. The science behind using shields in lieu of masks is not looking so good.
  • And now this: contact tracing scammers. Yep, it’s a thing.
 
No meme today, instead an illusion. While both pandemic and puberty can be vile, there’s nothing vile about this amazingness! Click on image for proof that this wall is solid.