(Slipping into global Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and how to stop)

On March 17, 2020 in Sonoma County, California, citizens were at first told to shelter in place to “stop the spread of the coronavirus,” a phrase which now wields great power. Then on March 23, 2020, some people, over the weekend of March 21 and 22, were hanging out on the beaches and not observing the sacred six feet of social distance; therefore, Sonoma County’s Interim Public Health Officer Dr. Sundari Mase decided to close all parks in the County. (My brother Tom, in New Hampshire, tells me that that state has closed their state beaches, seemingly following California’s lead. Other states have followed or are sure to follow.) No attempt was made to enforce social distancing first before shutting down the parks. Instead, we quickly crossed the line into an OCD nightmare where any possible vector of contamination must be stopped.

Prior signs of global OCD were people wearing gloves all day, somehow thinking this would prevent the spread of the virus. But how would the virus not transmit when you wear the same gloves all day? Also, the hoarding of toilet paper, bread, and random baking ingredients like baking soda and yeast: Maybe there is some underground notion of a coronavirus cleanse where you eat bread and baked goods all day, finally shitting out all the viruses? In a parking lot about a week ago, I watched a hard-faced woman carry a container of wipes with her to go into a hardware store. Why not wash your hands, go into the store to buy stuff, come out, and wash your hands again? Do not eat directly after installing your new lightbulb, but wash your hands first.

The irony is that sheltering in place and closing the parks are leading to a feedback loop of worsening mental health (panic) where people are now sitting at home with their ears and eyes glued to the news about the dreaded coronavirus. Meanwhile, other gnarly diseases are feeling envious about the attention lavished on dear old SARS-Co-V-2. Emblematic of this panic was a thread recently on Nextdoor.com for Santa Rosa about someone who had seen teenagers sharing a drink among the six of them. The poster was horrified and highly disturbed. My response to this post was that teenagers are going to resist control and not to freak out because the logical endpoint of trying to control teenagers and others would be a totalitarian state. Well, land sakes alive, as my mother would say! I was accused of not being empathetic, of being flippant, and, worst of all, of getting all my information from Donald J. Trump. Which was hilarious, because if Trump were the last person in the world, I wouldn’t have voted for him. In fact, if I turned into Trump, I wouldn’t vote for myself. I would resign from the presidency, then get to work on making amends to the women whose pussies I had grabbed, the investors I had defrauded, my children I had abandoned, and immigrants whose lives I had helped ruin, for a start. I would also stop with the fake tan spray. It would be a lifelong job.

On this thread, I also remarked how just because you disagree with someone, people will paint you as the kind of person they are not. Which is disturbing in itself, the notion that anyone who isn’t a carbon copy of you is wrong and on the other side of the political aisle. Personally, not only do I think that Republican frontrunner Donald Trump sucks but also that Democrat Joseph Biden is made of plastic. But that is not the point of this essay. As fun as that was to write, I will now return to the subject of OCD.

Another sign of this global mental illness crisis, as my nephew Cliff told me, is a video going around where a doctor explains how to wash all your produce in the sink and also Lysol the containers of the rest of your groceries. I have not got the heart to watch this video. Meanwhile, some people are washing packages delivered to their homes. The funny thing about this is that Michael Osterholm of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, in his March 10, 2020 interview on the Joe Rogan Experience, said that washing hands, always a good idea anyway, is more of a feel-good measure for this particular virus. I am not sure he still feels this way, because I can’t find more recent information about this on the CIDRAP website. But let’s let that lie, because washing hands is good practice in general to prevent disease. Instead, let’s focus: Where is this OCD coming from?

People are freaked out, understandably, especially (from the CDC website) those who are obese, immunocompromised, aged 65 and over, living in nursing homes, or in cancer treatment; those who have high blood pressure, diabetes, chronic lung disease, serious heart conditions, liver disease, kidney disease, bone marrow or organ transplants, moderate to severe asthma, or poorly controlled HIV; and those who use immune weakening medications. With pregnant women, the CDC states that it is unsure if they are higher risk for getting severe illness. From CIDRAP, also those who smoke cigarettes or have high blood pressure are at higher risk. These are probably not all the risk factors for kicking the bucket from these tiny pieces of genetic material.

By the way, before you dismiss me as heartless and not concerned enough, understand that I have a mother who is 88, in-laws who are 79 and 81, and friends and family with various underlying health issues (including one with HIV, one in cancer treatment, a few with atrial fibrillation, a few who are at least very overweight, and some with diabetes). I do not want these people to die from this disease. (On a side note, my mother had 10 children and a couple of miscarriages and is not as strong as an ox. She is stronger. Her age merely shows that I have a parent in the feared demographic.)

However, I have some questions for and arguments against the prevailing compulsions in place to “stop the spread”: Why is it necessary that all of us vastly shrink our lives to protect the few? Even after the shelter in place is lifted, those at risk will still need to protect themselves. I’m sorry, but it is true. Secondly, some of the people who are at risk have been killing themselves slowly for years. How did their lives become my responsibility? Not that I am really making that argument, because addiction is not a moral issue, and I do love addicts. (What’s up dudes and dudettes, gotta love the process addictions!) Thirdly, there has been no attempt at balancing safety from the virus with the very real risk factors of sheltering in place: domestic abuse, addiction, depression and other losses of mental health.

So, what the hell has happened? Somehow, the consciousness has clearly gone from slowing the spread to trying to stop the spread entirely. It begs the question of how many precautions are enough. Obviously, we could start making people bleach their whole bodies before leaving their homes. But I think we crossed the line with the park closures. Others I know believe that sheltering in place crossed the line; I find it impossible to completely disagree with them. Personally, I am okay with social distancing and limiting people’s ability to congregate indoors if it can reasonably be linked to saving lives. After all, this virus passes through the air as aerosols and droplets. I can even go along with sheltering in place if we are also allowed to drive around and walk safely in outdoor places.

The sad fact is that going headlong towards total governmental control of human activity will not even work, anyway. “To stop an epidemic like that [SARS-Co-V-2] permanently, nearly half the population must be immune,” according to Marc Lipsitch (www.statnews.com/2020/03/18/we-know-enough-now-to-act-decisively-against-covid-19/). One could argue that the best policy is making the high risk stay home and the rest of us just get the frigging thing over with. I am not making that argument because of the danger of still overtaxing our hospitals, and also that would force loved ones apart within a household. But the point is, we do need to be exposed to become immune; slowing the spread is possible, but stopping it is not. Also, the date of a safe vaccine is still too long in the future.

What is the long-term plan here, anyway? Are we supposed to shelter in place indefinitely like some world where every household is its own separate tribe? By the end of the order to shelter, every household will have created its own language and culture and be unable to communicate with other households. Also, what happens when the supposedly flattened curve goes past; will we lift the shelter in place? As mentioned above, people at risk would still be at risk at that point. Presumably, those at high risk would be told to take all precautions and not spend time breathing recycled air without an N95 respirator. And how will we even know when this “flattened curve” is heading back down without widespread testing?

As I write this, I know that some people will merely argue, “Italy.” This is not Ebola, though. Why did neither they nor us have a plan in place for a pandemic as predictable as this? That needs to happen next time. Another common argument is the newest fact revealed about the coronavirus. Yet another argument I’ve encountered when I’ve argued against over-control of the population: People will send you a video of a nurse freaking out in Michigan about the state of the hospitals. One friend sent me an account of a surgeon having to make hard decisions about whether to perform exploratory throat surgery and risk exposing patients or let the patient potentially have untreated cancer. Yes, the hospitals are struggling, and what the virus can do to some people is horrible, but what does that actually have to do with the necessity of us going to a ridiculous degree to prevent the spread of the virus? We need to stop when we have made enough precautions, before further precautions make us all go insane.

Enough is enough. I am not going to be soaping my apples (except metaphorically) or staying out of the parks; civil disobedience is beautiful and necessary here. I argue that social distancing and not congregating inside is a good idea. Those who entertain the idea of enacting martial law need to go live under the Taliban or take a time machine and visit Pinochet for a while to see if they still feel that way. We as a nation cannot push ourselves into agreeing that all measures are necessary just because officials think so.

A good way to remember that this nation is a democracy and that collective mental health is also important would be to open up the parks. Let people walk around outside; the benefits to people being outside and seeing other people (Chill out! Yes, at six feet away.) are innumerable, even if they haven’t been studied as much as our prickly little replicating friends.

Personally, I intend to move on mentally from this panic as much as possible. And accept that this is a new world with little toilet paper and angel hair. And everything closed. And people afraid to go anywhere. Because I think I’ve heard as much as I can about these storylines: Some people will die. Hoarders will hoard. The media will publish the rare case of young people dying and not provide details about underlying health issues (which have turned out, in New York for instance, to be mainly obesity). Politicians will posture. Officials will crack down. Hospitals will be overrun. But, if there is any new information outside of those story lines, I am interested. Meanwhile, I will check in on the people I love who are at risk.

Lastly, here are some reasons to stop freaking out and even be appreciative:

• Fatality percentage may be 0.66%, according to one study (cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/03/global-covid-19-total-passes-850000-study-shows-14-fatality-rate)
• Spread seems to be being slowed by using social distance, at least in Sonoma County. No, officials who have closed the parks and those who have used OCD-type behavior don’t deserve any credit for this.
• Not freaking out will help your immunity.
• The threat of death can be a positive motivator. People are being more honest and facing reality (Some of my family had an important discussion about some shit that went down years ago; my wife and I are planning proactively for fire season in Santa Rosa).
• Homeschooling teaches your kids some things that they don’t learn in school.
• China will have to stop doing wet markets, which is good for poached wildlife, such as pangolins.
• As an old guy said to my sister Jane, these crises bring out the best or worst of people. We do have the power to stop the panic and help out instead. For instance, one group (North Bay Sewists Unite!) is sewing masks for healthcare providers.
• A question, maybe a naïve one: Does immunity to other coronaviruses, such as colds, help against this one? I haven’t seen that discussed anywhere.
• If you flip some of the worst predicted fatality rates, 95% of those infected will live. That’s pretty damn good, actually. If you use the above statistic (not replicated elsewhere), the living rate is 99.34%; remember, by the way, that studies need to be repeated to be accepted as fact.
• Again, studies need to be repeated to be accepted as fact. The newest scary information from one place doesn’t make it true.
• No, I am not including the patronizing stuff such as clapping for healthcare workers or creating hashtags putting social pressure on people to comply with silly rules. But the internet can be a positive tool. Schools are using the internet to teach their students, and my sons both have excellent teachers.

Acknowledgments:

Original art from StayHomeSaveLives.us. Satire art by Cliff Bernzweig.

I would like to thank (by first name) Alex Bernzweig, Alexandra Iova, Amos Young, Christie Blair, Christopher Reiger, Cliff Bernzweig, Dave Young, James Young, Jane Czajkoski, Joon Lee, Leon Sultan, Marisa Rossman, Naomi Young, Priscilla Lowell, Shawn G., Solomon Young, and Tom Young for text, video, email, and, rarely, in person discussions on this subject which helped inform this essay. You do not all agree with me, which is good. Particularly Alex, Cliff, Dave, Jane, and Tom have had many remarkably sane and hilarious takes on the issue. Also, the Joe Rogan (even though he tends toward the paranoid) interview of Michael Osterholm on March 10, 2020 gave me excellent information and predictions which have since come true. John P. A. Ioannidis’ opinion piece (www.boston.com/news/health/2020/03/17/coronavirus-decisions-without-reliable-data) and Marc Lipsitch’s response (www.statnews.com/2020/03/18/we-know-enough-now-to-act-decisively-against-covid-19/) were extremely helpful in framing many issues. Thank you to Dave and Leon for providing them. The people I argued with on NextDoor helped show me, in bold relief, the tendency toward totalitarianism emerging in the population. A huge thank you to Jeffrey M. Schwartz, M.D. for his book Brain Lock: Free Yourself from Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior. Large second thank yous to Cliff and Tom for reading and feedback on an earlier draft of this essay. A gigantic second thank you to Naomi, Amos and Solly for listening to me talk ad infinitum about this issue before finally deciding to write about it instead. Lastly, I thank all the other shit on the internet for providing information and misinformation.