The cost of social distance, or please #shutthefuckup with #staythefuckathome

I'm a bit sick of the #staythefuckathome brigade. It makes it sound as if it's all easy. We just lay on the couch and save the world. But what really is the price of staying the fuck at home? We talk about the economic and health costs of this pandemic, but the shouting of stay the fuck at home is rude and hurtful to those for whom staying home is in fact, really awful.

The day we locked down my work, I cried. I had residents crying in front of me and families crying over the phone. It sounds so straightforward. The elderly are at risk, we must lock down the facility to save them. But the costs of that lockdown are huge. Seeing their family is one of few remaining pleasures in life for them. Residents and families may never see each other again. Many are unable to use Skype or even a phone, and elderly partners in the community frequently don't have a computer or smart phone. Most are unable to understand why they can't see anyone. I hold the Ipad up for them to see their family, and they cry again.  I feel guiltily like I am running a prison. In staying the fuck at home, we cut a large amount of their quality of life remaining.

When they shut the borders with SA, I also cried. I was going to see my mother this week. She is high risk and I wanted to get over to see her before it was too risky to visit. I was too late. I will still go over to nurse her should she become sick. I will strap my battle wombat on the front of the van and storm the border if I have to, but by staying the fuck at home, I may not get the chance to spend time with her well ever again.

Our communities are already full of isolated people. People only marginally connected. People only just holding it together in the normal world. People whose families or partners are a source of stress or risk with whom they are now locked in.

I am one of many people living alone these days. It's great when I could pop into friend's places for a cuppa, held pot luck dinners, arranged sociable climbing days, headed off on road trips or went on random Tinder dates. It's not so great right now. I have mornings when I wake up and contemplate 6+ months of living alone through stress and grief and without those things that keep me together, and it's not good. There's no one there to give me a hug and I can't just turn up at a friend's for a comforting tea and chat. And what if staying the fuck at home mean no fucking for 6 months???? I'm not entirely in jest when I say I don't know that I'd make it through 6 months without sex, climbing and riding. That's like all the great pleasures in life ...

So stop saying just #staythefuckathome and acknowledge the cost of it. There are people coping with the fear and anxiety of covid 19 alone or coping being cooped up with people who are causes of fear and anxiety. Grief and depression will be rife. Rates of suicide and family violence are going to skyrocket. Instead of shouting at them, try saying, "I understand staying at home can be hard. Is there anything I can do to help you stay safe, sane, connected and healthy through this?"

The cost of mixed messages: can I go climbing if i buy takeaway first?

Australia is rife with mixed messages at the moment, but the one currently doing my head in is the encouragement to order takeaway to support local businesses.  I get that people want to support local businesses. They are often an integral part of small communities, are run by people we care about, employ people we care about. But there are two major flaws I see in this strategy. One is, we are still creating a vector of transmission. Sure, it might be less than if we all crowded in the cafe, but there is a line from the homes and other connections of staff and owners to each other and to customers, and vice versa. We're just minimising the customer-customer vector.  Don't go climbing. Don't go riding. Don't go camping. Don't go to the beach. But do go buy takeaway. Does anyone else find this message a little inconsistent?  How the hell are we gong to trace contacts if one of these takeaway providers becomes ill? I am so not eating food prepared by other people at the moment.

The other is that this is just not a viable strategy for keeping small food businesses alive. Anyone who has worked in the industry know that it's always marginal. The chances of covering costs on the limited services available is pretty slim, let alone making a living out of it. We are also asking people in the community who have lost jobs or reduced their income to spend money supporting these businesses. For example, those in my community who worked in the outdoors industry have basically lost all income for an indefinite period.  How are they going to be able to prop up local businesses?

This appears to me as yet another way in which our government is trying to fob off dealing with a major crisis onto individuals. Slowly, our government is realising that this strategy is rather limited and turning to government intervention - enforceable closures, boundaries and isolation, increased financial support, but it has stopped short of the incredibly obvious solution to the mass loss of livelihood caused by this. Universal basic income. Massive queues at Centrelink could be avoided. The delays in processing claims and the immense stress on Centrelink staff avoided. People in need supported. The farcical measures to try and keep some non-essential services functioning that still contain risk stopped. Clarity could prevail and we could actually have an effective shutdown without people starving or loosing their home or business. People will say but not everyone needs it, to which I say, who cares? So a few people will get some money they don't need. The government does that to big businesses all the time. High income earners will still be paying tax on it, whilst low income earners won't. The money and stress saved in administration will make up for it. Imagine if all that policing welfare that we do just no longer happened. This is a time when we are seeing how flexible the world really is, and different ways things can work. The benefits of a large, benevolent state are becoming obvious. Maybe once shutdowns have finished, we could move onto to government job creation instead of welfare policing. Maybe it's time to find out if the world doesn't end when we simplify welfare.

I am not buying takeaway. Not because I don't want to support local business (don't you love how there is always a moral imperative in these things? Good citizens support their local businesses. I think good government supports their people), but because I think it is an unnecessary risk. A much greater risk of transmission than a solitary ride on gentle trails, or a climb on an obscure crag, both of which those with moral imperative like to tell me I shouldn't do. Driving to pick up your takeaway is a much greater risk of an accident than my gentle trails or obscure climb as well.

I believe one of the reasons people are not adhering to physical distancing is the inconsistency of the message. If the message was clear, then people might hear the urgency of the message, and also make better decisions about what they do. And if people don't start making better decisions about what they do, we will all be subjected to the required boundaries of the lowest common denominator and be shut in our houses. I don't want to be unable to do anything because the government has a policy full of loopholes or people are just doing stupid shit. We are trying to avoid something that has droplet transmission. So don't have close contact with other people and don't touch shared surfaces whenever possible or wash your hands before and after. Minimising your time around other people is the easiest way to do that. But the stay at home message is pointless unless you also don't go to the hairdresser, don't crowd crags or beaches and don't get takeaway. I'd love to not go to the supermarket, I was never a fan of them at the best of times, but it seems unavoidable every so often. Try and make staying at home fun enough that you want to do it and make sensible choices when you do leave the house. Right now, exercise is an acceptable reason to leave the house. If we follow the principles of physical distancing,  all we can still do that. If we don't, we'll shut in our houses completely for months.

Climbing in the time of coronavirus: not quite as poetic as Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Countrywide, we have the two extremes of panic and denial going on around covid-19, neither of which are really justified. Lots of people are panicking because covid-19 is new and unknown. There’s no doubt that many other things will continue to be far more dangerous – climate change, poverty, family violence, driving, hell, lifestyle diseases lead to a huge number of preventable early deaths in Australia. People continue to refuse vaccination and can be rather lax at using condoms. All these things could kill us, but the risks are dealt with through normalisation and denial. Covid-19 is a long way off being normalised. It will be eventually. Most of us will get it at some point, a vaccine will be developed and life will go on. Until then, there’s a lot we don’t know about covid-19. We don’t have clear figures about how prevalent it really is, how contagious it is, or even rates of mortality. The different living conditions, populations, health facilities and management strategies of different countries all effect the outcomes we have seen. Between its frequently mild presentation and limited availability of testing, there could be a much larger reservoir of it out in the community than we know of.  Rates of mortality may be elevated by its presentation in countries where many people live in poor conditions with poor access to health services. Having said that, Italy is a modern western society, and its health service is overwhelmed. This again leads to increased mortality. As we are living longer, we have a large aging population particularly vulnerable to acute illness. I also dread to think of the impact if it gets into remote indigenous communities, who have high rates of pre-existing health conditions, crowded living conditions and very poor access to services.

Despite all of the uncertainties, one thing that has been clear that it is spreading exponentially. Australia is on track to have 1-2000 cases in another week. I don’t think we are going to prevent the spread of the virus. The sort of serious intervention, investment and support that was needed weeks ago in order to prevent it is the sort of action that is anathema to liberal governments, as is the health and social welfare action we should have had over the years that would have been made us more resilient to this. Instead we get told things to do as individuals. Self isolate (is quarantine a dirty word?). Take your annual leave to do so. What, casual workers haven't saved their meagre casual loading for a national crisis? Part time nurses, step up to fill the staffing shortage! (Yeah, right, like I'm going to work more to save Scotty's arse ...).  No wonder people are unwilling or unable to do this. No amount of good will is going to solve this problem. Welcome to the trainwreck that neoliberalist policies get us.

  

Climbers like to think of themselves as a healthy bunch, so it seems there’s a fair bit of complacency about covid-19 in our community. For most of us, it is quite reasonable to expect we will not suffer badly with the virus. But that doesn’t mean we should remain unconcerned about it. Some climbers are not as robust as they may seem. Some have chronic respiratory or heart conditions. Some are on immune suppressing drugs for conditions like rheumatoid arthritis or Chrone’s disease or after organ transplant. Some are recovering from cancer treatment or are just becoming older and more vulnerable despite their continued capacity to climb. You can’t really tell how strong someone’s immune system is just by looking at them. We don’t know if someone is going home from the crag to care for an elderly or sick friend or relative who may be vulnerable to serious complications if they become ill.

Climbing is actually a pretty good medium to spread bugs in. Covid-19 is transmitted via contact and droplets. This means that infected particles are heavy enough to fall to the ground within a metre or two. They aren’t airborne. So if you are two metres away from someone, you should be pretty safe. That’s easily breached in a crowded gym or even a busy crag. The virus can survive on surfaces, meaning every time you touch something, you may get some your hands. We don’t know how long covid-19 survives on surfaces, but studies of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome virus suggest it survived 60 minutes on surfaces. A lot of people can touch a door knob or climbing hold in 60 minutes. Of course, the skin is a great barrier, but you become infected when those organisms on your hands get into your mouth, nose or eyes.  How often to you put your gear, or your climbing partner’s gear in your mouth? We handle all our grotty, probably never been washed equipment, then scoff down a sandwich without a thought of washing our hands. How many other sweaty hands have caressed each hold you are using? I’d avoid the gym at the moment, but that’s no great sacrifice for me, as I haven’t been in one since about 1997. Now is a good time to start taking hand sanitiser to the gym and to the crag though. Put a generous dollop in your hand, rub vigorously together until dry, making sure you include thumbs, between fingers, finger nails and backs of hands.

Should we still go out climbing? I certainly will be, but remote and obscure crags have extra appeal at the moment. In consideration of the more vulnerable members of our community, don’t go out climbing if you are at all sick, or known to have been exposed to covid-19. If you are feeling well enough to do stuff, save your sanity with some solo or non-contact outdoor activities, like hiking, trail running, mountain biking, surfing. Well or unwell, quarantined or not, practice hand hygiene all the bloody time. Before touching stuff, after touching stuff, before eating, before and after blowing your nose … it starts to feel ridiculous, but ridiculous is best practice. When you are sick to death of washing your hands so much, sympathise with us poor nurses whose skin is basically falling apart from years of handwashing like this. If you are at gyms or busy crags, you are at more risk of exposure, so don’t spread your exposure to vulnerable people. It’s fine to take risks with yourself, not so fine to force those risks on other people. Ring Nan rather than visit. Leave a care package on her doorstep, but make sure you wash your hands before preparing and handling it.

You’ve got the climbing trip of a lifetime planned and you’re wondering whether to cancel? I guess we should be grateful that these are the hard decisions of our lives, because they could be so much worse. Check your travel insurance to see if they will cover cancellation in case a pandemic, or if your airline will change the dates of travel. Assess the risk of the country you’re are going to, or any transit countries. Check the travel information from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Who knows what restrictions may end up in place for international travel? It looks suspiciously like it’s too late for travel restrictions to be of any use for Australia now, but our government does like the “strong border defence” lines. They are practiced at that. You might get out of the country, but face quarantine to come home, or be unable to enter your destination country. Planes are great places to spread illness, so you will inevitably be increasing your risk. If you have any chronic conditions that increase your risk of complications, think about it even harder.  If you do go, get immunised for everything you can before you go, stock pile your first aid kit with medications to relieve symptoms and antibiotics for secondary infection.  If you get sick, find yourself a comfy hotel, hole up in your room, order in food, minimise contagion, make sure the hotel knows to take precautions and lounge around until you recover. That is, if anywhere will let you stay there by that stage. Consider the possibility that you could get seriously ill in another country. Will your travel insurance cover you, and will that country be able to care for you? Is your trip worth the risks?

There’s no great reason to panic.  If this was ebola though, I’d be hiding out bush for the duration. Be sensibly cautious nevertheless. Practice scrupulous hand hygiene, choose less crowded places to go, avoid close contact with vulnerable people, and just stay home if you are sick or aware of an exposure to covid-19 until cleared. I’d love to take the social distancing advice as a chance to disappear somewhere with my bike for a few weeks, but sadly, I don’t think they mean nurses when they say please stay away.  For those of you who want to self isolate via climbing, may I recommend the Australia wide tour to repeat all of Greg Pritchard’s new routes?  I am certain that you will not find anyone with coronavirus on Greg’s new routes, and by the time you’ve managed to find them all,  if you ever get back out alive, we should have a vaccine. Bugger stocking up on toilet paper, though, make sure you have enough coffee, wine and chocolate. I’ve also got a supply of pop corn in case I get the pleasure of watching the capitalist system collapse around me.