favorite articles + legit advice
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The Zoom Boom - May 15, 2020
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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!
This week, I experienced a full-on collision of worlds, thanks to Zoom. Over the past nine weeks, since coronavirus first started to spread like wildfire across the U.S., we have all to some extent become Zoomers. But this week, I had what I can only describe as a Zoom Boom. I was asked to speak to parents about coronavirus, and folks from across the country signed up. Moments before the talk began, as squares populated in front of me, I watched my worlds collide. There was my cousin in one square and, next to him, a camp friend whom I have seen thanks to social media but not in real life for decades. Wait! A second camp friend – another bunk mate from the 1980s. Then a mom from my prior practice. And then a friend from my hospital training days in San Francisco.
All these people from remote corners of my life (and the country), lining up like the Brady Bunch title sequence and then, as only happens on Zoom, constantly reshuffling their faces.
As I spoke about the impact of our choices on others, I thought about how these squares connect: how my cousin’s decision to wear a face mask might impact my camp friend’s health. They don’t know one another and on their screens, they may not even be Zoom neighbors (or IRL neighbors). But they impact one another – we all impact one another. The way we live in the world right now is one giant Zoom Boom.
When this pandemic is over – and no, I still don’t have an accurate guess as to the timing of that – we will each look back with mixed emotions. For sure, there will be pain, loss, sorrow, and struggle. But we will also be filled with the fuzzy warmth of having spent time in ways never before imagined. I treasure the moments I have with my family right now, the time I didn’t take before all of this to pause and embrace togetherness. I value just as deeply these accidental moments of virtual togetherness, the collision of worlds, people, and ideas that never would have happened otherwise.
The theme of today’s newsletter is conversation. Specifically, conversations I have had with my kids thanks to the past couple of months of hunkering down. We talk a lot, about tons of stuff across a spectrum of topics. I like to think it’s because my kids feel connected to me, but really it’s probably because they are trapped here at home with me, with no one else available on the receiving end of a conversation in real life. Regardless, I’ll take it. Something else I have noticed – and maybe you have too? – is how often my kids use the word “like.”
Whhyyyyyy?
I often ask myself (and them).
Well here’s, like, why
.
Another subject that comes up often: sleep and how much more they are getting. But it turns out that
when you sleep is as important as duration
. There’s a big difference between going to bed at a reasonable time and staying up until the wee hours of the morning even if you can sleep-in until noon.
We talk about germ spread, though this video about
how fast virus can spread during a meal
will take our conversation to a new level of grossness. It makes a great case for keeping your hands off shared food. Manners teaching
and
reduction of viral spread – 2 birds, one stone!
My kids and I often talk about smoking and vaping, which leads me to this curious headline:
No, Smoking Won’t Save You from COVID-19
. The link is a video by one of my favorite vloggers, F. Perry Wilson. In 6 minutes you’ll learn a lot about how to interpret study results. (By the way, if you want to nerd out about data interpretation, he has an
entire course on Coursera
.)
And while we often talk about social media, it’s rarely on the topic of vaccine (mis)information on social media –not that I have dodged vaccine talk with my kids, but until now there has been much juicier stuff to talk about with teenagers when it comes to Snap, Instagram, and TikTok. After reading this piece about
the coming vaccine information wars
, though, it dawned on me that my kids will be – frankly, they probably already have been – receiving lots of propaganda. I have certainly thought about the potential devastation of a powerful anti-vaxx backlash against a coronavirus vaccine, but I hadn’t thought about it in the context of my own kids being part of the target market of that messaging. This article doesn’t focus on that, but for whatever reason, it was the tangent my mind followed! And so I am adding future coronavirus immunizations and social media messaging to the list of upcoming kid chats.
Finally, we talk a lot about what’s going to open – and then likely close again – in the coming weeks and months. Summer programs, camps, parks, gyms, and of course, schools. Today we have new
CDC guidelines about what it will take to reopen
many of these venues. For those of you hungry for this information, here’s the CDC infographic about
camp
and the one about
school
.
This meme is for the visual learners out there. PS, it’s rated MA.
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