By Kenny Bramwell, M.D.
St. Luke’s Health System Medical Director, Children’s Hospital & Service Line
Rotating Chairman, Medical Technical Committee, Incident Command, St. Luke’s Health System
Sending kids off to school is often a time to feel a bit nervous, excited, or even sad. Concerns over COVID may complicate these emotions. Whether it is kindergarten or college, we all want our kids to be healthy and happy and to feel safe in their surroundings. Given an uncertain environment where we are all learning more about COVID-19, social media may offer lots of opinions, some sound, some not. It is best to look for up-to-date information from our most trusted sources, such as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), www.cdc.gov, South Central Public Health District, or with your primary care provider. St. Luke’s website also contains a great deal of information and a symptom checker via myChart: https://www.stlukesonline.org/symptom-checker.
You or your child may have the sniffles that could turn out to be a common cold, influenza, or COVID-19, and it will be hard to tell at the early onset of symptoms. It is safest to assume it is COVID and take protection measures such as staying home, quarantining, and isolating from others. Historically, we might take some cold medicine and push through in order to avoid missing work or school. It may even be the culture that has been ingrained in us from our parents, teachers or employers. Now, we must all make a shift in our thinking and err on the side of caution, thinking of the “we” versus “me.”
We likely all know someone in our circle that can become very sick if they contract the virus, young as well as old. We must adjust our thinking to consider the downside of us not staying home if we are sick, coughing into our sleeve or elbow and practicing the three Ws: Watch your distance, Wash your hands and Wear a mask. So many accounts start with “I never thought I could get so sick” or “I didn’t take it seriously until I or someone close to me became ill…”
However, we must not feel ashamed or make others feel bad if we do contract COVID. We were never going to stop this in its tracks, it is highly contagious, it can be spread before we exhibit symptoms and, therefore, it is possible to get COVID even if you do the right things. Prevention and protection do equate to mitigation, which buys us time to learn more, not overwhelm our healthcare system, and to hopefully not shut down our economy another time. Our way of life has definitely been disrupted, but we can slow COVID down if we shift our mindset and culture to giving ourselves the grace to stay home when symptomatic. After all, that may be the best way of taking care of each other.
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