Stay the fuck home.

This has been one of the scariest weeks I've ever lived through. We started on Monday with a hazy fear of a few cases of a virus and ended it with ITALY being CLOSED, every major event and sports league shut down, flights canceled, schools canceled, and social life as we know it canceled until further notice. 

It's easy to go into your own head and tell yourself stories of what might happen. Humans are terrible with ambiguity, and we are scary-story machines. But here's the thing: none of us have enough information to predict the future, we just have to do the best with what we have. We can control what we can and take really good goddamned care of each other in the meantime. Let's get into what we can do to help.

This thing isn't going away without our help

You've probably heard a lot of folks talking about #flattenthecurve, but that hashtag isn't enough information to know what tf is going on, so here's the tea. Our medical infrastructure has a tapping out point, a maximum capacity for care because resources and staffing are not infinite. If COVID-19 spreads quickly, it will overwhelm our medical system and make it hard for people in life-threatening situations to get care. So we need to slow it down.

We've seen the results when we don't slow it down. That's what happened in Italy. The government urged Italians to stay home, but a lot of them went to fucking brunch.

The virus spread rapidly and it overwhelmed their medical system. There weren't enough respirators or beds, and staff were consistently exposed to the virus. That created havoc and forced medical professionals to make hard choices about who got care and who did not. If it's your mom who needs an ICU bed, but there aren't any, it gets real really quickly. It's an awful situation, and it led to an entire country in lockdown. We need to make different choices.

Flattening the curve means using social distancing to slow the spread of the virus, to help our medical system to stay on top of things.
 

Social distancing means staying the fuck home. 

The more we're out, the more we could contract and spread the virus— so it's time to get our introvert on.  This simulation shows how social distancing works. This stuff is so hard, and when the problem feels distant it's easy to talk ourselves into sticking with our regular routines. It's even harder when we have social things we were looking forward to, weddings, vacations, showers, even just friend-hang dinners. It's ok to be bummed, to be sad, and to be scared. It's not OK to take those feelings and use them as a reason to act in a way that could harm folks.

If you want some ideas on how to help, I've got a few and I'm open to yours too. Please feel free to hit reply and let me know what you're thinking. We're in this together.

Three ideas to help your community

1. Stay the fuck home
See above.

2. Use your platform
When you ask for followers, at a certain point you'll be required to lead. When you have an audience you have a responsibility. We need to all get in the game, especially those of us whose voices are loudest.

Love and light is all good, but when your grandmother needs an ICU bed #stayingpositive doesn't help all that much, Ashley. We need to use our collective influence to #flattenthecurve. Please use whatever platform you have and to help spread solid scientifically sound information. Please use it to ask people to socially distance, to check on their neighbors, and to stop hoarding all the damn toilet paper. Scared shitless doesn't mean what you think it means, Chad.

3. Support small business, artists and freelancers

As a small business owner myself, this sucks. It sucks especially badly for those who need foot traffic to keep their businesses thriving. If you are in the position to, ask your favorite local businesses how you can support them. It could be buying gift cards at your local spa, it could be placing online orders for delivery, it could be ordering subscriptions for the next theatre season, or it could be keeping your social media freelancer on the payroll even though you don't plan to post much.

If you work for or own a company with deep pockets, look to how you can use your resources to keep your community going. If you need online growth marketing training, holler at your girl.

Let's spend these next few months taking really good care of each other.