A Glimmer of Hope While Sheltering in Place

An eerie silence fell over my town. The sense of dire responsibility and slight panic settled like a heavy dust as each of us burrowed into our homes, sheltering in place.

In the first few days of the emergency order, it seemed most people in Albuquerque took it seriously. Businesses shut their doors on a Friday afternoon and didn’t reopen the next Monday. Restaurants closed for a week or so as they made preparations to shift their entire business model from dine-in to carry-out. And for a brief moment, during one of the many daytime walks that people began taking to help maintain some semblance of sanity, the city seemed quiet. Traffic noses had almost ceased. Construction, trucks, air travel, everything had come to a standstill. And there was a strange sense of hesitant, tentative peace.

In the weeks following lockdown, my own workplace, and many others, began placing a focus on employee wellness. My workplace created challenges to keep us active, amassed resources to deliver to us to help improve and maintain our mental health. Walking meetings became a thing. Even the very air around the city began to clear as most polluters stopped for a breath to reassess how to continue to operate in a shut-down world.

Our Governor took a strict approach to the pandemic at the beginning. Many New Mexicans celebrated her quick and decisive action and saw her as a champion for public health, a defender against a virus that had only began to sweep through the Land of Enchantment. There was a sense of statewide solidarity that I don’t think I’d ever seen. For a moment, it seemed as though a slew of positive things would come out of this. Combating climate change seemed more within our reach than before. Employers were forced to allow their employees to work from home, which in many cases contributed to an increase in productivity and job satisfaction.

Maybe our entire way of life, our consumption-hungry capitalist society, would change for the better to lead into a more sustainable, healthy world. Because we clearly didn’t have to continue living as we had. We couldn't. And there was a glimmer of hope that we would all come out of this living better.

And then things started to change. The virus began spreading more throughout our communities. It would seem that the fraction of the population who did not adhere to social distancing, masking requirements, or mass gathering limits would be the vessels that would allow the virus to spread rapidly. It seemed, for a while, we were able to prevent it from getting to the point where we were overwhelmed, or at least holding it at bay (which is a very generous statement), then a holiday would show up. Cinco de Mayo. Graduation. Memorial Day. Independence Day. Labor Day.

As each holiday enticing large gatherings came, people would let down their guard and cases would surge in the days and weeks following. More restrictions. Moderate control. Relaxing requirements. Another holiday. Surge in cases. More restrictions. Conservative protesters. Relaxing requirements. Another holiday. Then… no more restrictions.

And cases rose again.

I’m an epidemiologist. Not the cool kind that gets to go out to conduct outbreak investigations. Not the kind you see in movies in full hazmat suits out in an ebola testing tent in west Africa. I’m the kind who sits behind a desk, working in spreadsheets and statistical software, researching, absorbing, and analyzing public health data that illustrate the distribution of disease to help inform public health programming to address those health issues. I work mostly in chronic disease, substance use, and social determinants of health, so I don’t get to see the action of a pandemic that I expected during school. And while I absolutely love my job, I can’t help but wish I was out there, part of the response team. I’m just sitting back and watching others tackle the pandemic when this is literally what I went to school to do. Some days are harder than others for that reason, among many.

I read an article that talked about this kind of fatigue, generally around emergency situations, but applied to the COVID-19 pandemic. It spoke to me, and helped me to understand what I was going through mentally. This helped me see how people psychologically fall into an emergency management mindset in these situations. It’s like an adrenaline rush, our faculties become hyper vigilant. We’re diligent. We’re aware. We’re striving for the best possible outcome and we have the momentary chemical-fueled optimism and motivation to do so. Then we get tired. Living in a place of constant emergency management mindset is physically and mentally exhausting. And people just want to get back to normal. That’s understandable. And yet, we can’t. We have to find a new normal, identify support systems, change the way we approach self-care, approach our lives. Find balance.

I think this is what's happening. I'm certainly feeling the mental strain of it all.

I worry about the capacity of our healthcare system across the state and beyond. As cases surge, we risk overwhelming our hospitals, most of which are in rural areas with limited access to healthcare. The responsibility to prevent that surge rests with the people, the very people who are now so fatigued. People either just forgot they needed to wear masks, maintain social distancing, and follow other public health recommendations, or they chose not to.

A pandemic talking point began circulating, spreading across the country like the virus, but faster and just as deadly. Infringement on our rights. Hoax. Conspiracies. Weaponizing the constitutional ideals of the nation. A war cry blooming from seeds of misinformation, lies, and radicalization. Privilege personified. An accusation doesn’t have to be true to cause damage. And this misinformation spread like a necrotic bacterium, eating away at the foundational trust in a public health system that has been studying and addressing infectious diseases for hundreds of years. I’m not sure there’s a way we can rebuild that, at least not in time to prevent the worst of this pandemic.

Where does it end? At what point will the health experts be understood? At what point will people realize that the power to stop the spread is within their control?

November - New Mexico slid into a “reset” period. Two-week lockdown. Again. And cases started to decline. Then Thanksgiving came and cases rose slightly. Transmission rates started to plateau and, once again, progress was in sight.

December - In true New Mexico fashion, our new approach is called the “Red to Green” framework. If you’re familiar with New Mexico chile, you’ll get the humor of this. This county-specific rating system incentivizes change by linking individual behaviors with local economies. This change in strategy looks promising. Meanwhile, a vaccine is on the way and we have a glimmer of hope in this already dark winter.

We’ll see what happens. Christmas is coming.