On this Friday the 13th, we have a tremendously important episode of Solutions News for you, built around the questions we’ve been hearing from our friends and neighbors about what to do with the pandemic knocking at our door. Our guest today is Dr. Douglas Metz, Deputy Director of SB County Public Health.
Officials across the nation have begun to make proactive decisions to temporarily close schools, and shut-down public events, sports games, conferences, and other non-essential groupings of people to help slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus. In this context, a new question arises - how badly will this health crisis morph into a full-blown economic crisis; how will it affect our personal ability to pay our bills; and, how will it impact our consumer economy more broadly?
While it’s impossible to know the future, in our lead story, we explore a few proactive business solutions that in the absence of, or in addition to, fundamental and substantive assistance from the federal or state policy makers, can help to smooth out the economic fallout from this pandemic. Then we talk with Dr. Metz and ask him all about how to protect ourselves and our families and the community at large in the face of this public health emergency - as well as how to take care of ourselves or our loved ones in the case of getting ill. In our final word today, we discuss some ways to curtail negative “emotional contagion” and promote good mental health in the face of media narratives and panicky friends or family members that feed our fear of this public health emergency. In the best advice in the universe, from Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide - “Don’t Panic.”
RESOURCES:
https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/Immunization/ncov2019.aspx
https://countyofsb.org/phd/
https://publichealthsbc.org/
https://www.who.int/health-topics/coronavirus
A Meditation on Staying Calm and Positive in the Face of Crisis:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOYI6O_qaHM&feature=youtu.be
