We’ve reach the final weekend of the school year! As the Grateful Dead sang, “What a long, strange trip it’s been!”
For this week I decided to bring back my traditional ‘article summary’ format. What It's Like Living in One of the Only Countries to Adopt Herd Immunity is about what living is currently like in Sweden, one of the few countries that opted not to implement shelter-in-place restrictions for its citizens.
While life in Sweden has been anything but normal, the article’s author and her fellow Swedes have been asked by their government to practice what she calls ‘common sense’ behavior.
Over the past months she and her husband have continued going to work and her kids have gone daily to their local day care. Living in a big city, she avoids public transportation, which for most cities has proven to be a high-risk area of Covid-19 contagion. She socially distances at work and in public. With older parents, she speaks with them on the phone but has not seen them in person. She practices good basic hygiene, e.g., wearing a mask and handwashing frequently. She stays home from work and keeps her kids out of day care at the slightest sign of any illness.
Sweden has continued to allow bars and restaurants to remain open but limited the number of customers and mandated wider distances between tables. While she and her family have gone out to eat a few times, they mostly stay home. She does not allow her kids to have playdates with friends.
She’s seen some inevitable flouting of rules yet overall she and other Swedes have done a good job staying within the confines of these wider parameters. The results thus far have been positive as Sweden has not seen a dramatically higher percentage of people contracting Covid-19.
For me this article is a good example of where we and different parts of our country will likely transition to as we move into the summer. Over the past two weeks I’ve begun to venture out a little more but remain mindful of wearing a mask, not touching my face, and vigorously washing my hands as soon as I get home. My parents live 2o minutes from me, yet I haven’t seen them in person since early March as they are both in high-risk categories. To support local restaurants, I do take-out and curbside pick-up but I don’t feel comfortable enough yet to sit down and eat in a restaurant. When I run or walk on the sidewalks in my neighborhood, I dutifully move onto the street to avoid pedestrians heading towards me—yes, it’s polite but it’s also an easy and safer way to avoid spreading germs.
We’ve seen Georgia and Atlanta businesses open up a bit more over the past two weeks. An article I recently read in USA Today reported our country overall has begun to see a decline in the contagion curve. Over the next few weeks all of us will determine what ‘common sense’ behavior means for us.
Enjoy the final weekend of the 2019-20 school year—and then the final days of school next week!
And here’s the corny joke of the week:
Why do you never see pigs hiding in the trees?
Because they’re pretty good at it!
Joe
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