Rarely in human history has an invisible
pathogen had so
much publicity.
The
COVID-19 pandemic has devastated lives and
livelihoods. Some 12 months after its declaration by the WHO, COVID-19
has left
over 105 million people infected and more than 2 million dead, around
450,000
of these in the USA alone. Australia has been fortunate. We
are an island, our
leaders have listened to and largely acted on the science, and our
population
responded.
Leon
Piterman may be a general practitioner by training but he is a
philosopher,
healer and humanitarian by nature. In Living in COVID Times Leon takes
us on a
fascinating journey in time and also perspectives. He helps us to look
from
every angle at the experience of living through the extraordinary
events of the
2020 pandemic as they unfolded. Leon explores our individual and shared
experience with compassion, wit and wisdom. It would be hard to read
this book
without feeling both better informed about the pandemic, but also
comforted and
inspired. These are the kinds of stories we will proudly share with
coming
generations one day when we try to communicate what it was like to live
through
these 'unprecedented times'.
Associate
Professor Craig Hassed
As
one of the world’s leading GP educators and a practising GP with
extensive
mental health experience, Leon Piterman insights span the everyday
experiences
of individuals, their fears, and concerns, through to the ethics of the
unprecedented political and public health pandemics
Dr
Grant Blashki, Lead Clinical Advisor, Beyond
Blue
…read
this book. It will allay your fears because it reveals how self-aware,
alert
and compassionate doctors must strive to be.
Phillip
Siggins
The Weekend Australian
ISBN:
9780648038771 98
pages $24.00
Contents
Foreword
1
Preface
2
Passover, Plagues and
COVID-19
6
Transitioning to and from
Uncertainty in the COVID Era
12
Ethics in the COVID-19 Era
15
What about us....in the COVID
era
18
Coronaphobia
22
Quo Vadis (where to)
COVID-19?
26
General
Practice in the COVID era.
29
Co-Vic-19. How and where did
it all go wrong?
33
Mental
Health Consequences of Pandemics:
A comparison of Spanish Flu
and COVID-19 in Australia
37
Mental
health implications
40
Questioning Quarantine
49
Demonising or Defending Dan?
52
COVID-19 Lessons Learned
56
Finding meaning through
COVID-19
60
LOCKDOWN: Locked in, locked
out and just locked up
68
Book Sample
Transitioning to and from Uncertainty in the COVID Era
L
ife presents us with a
seemingly endless set of transitions, some predictable, expected and welcomed,
others not so.There is the transition
within the life cycle from infancy to childhood, to adolescence, to adulthood,
to senescence and finally to death.Each
of these milestones and each transition to a new milestone presents its unique
challenges.
From kindergarten to
primary school to secondary school to higher or technical education and into
the workforce, friends are made and lost, relationships are formed and broken,
success is achieved and failure is confronted.There is an element of certainty attached to these transitions which is
met by rites of passage.It is
anticipated that as we grow older we will move through the education system,
then through one or more jobs or even several career changes.It is anticipated that we will partner with
one or more individuals, perhaps raise a family, purchase a house, save money
directly or through superannuation so we have enough to eventually retire.There is of course no guarantee or certainty
that any of these things will happen. When these transitions
occur they do so over a period of time rather than overnight.The current Corona crisis has occurred almost
overnight and has left all of us unprepared emotionally for its impact.Transitions may be glacial but the
transitions brought about by COVID-19 are lightning fast.From freedom of movement to lockdown, from
mass gatherings to isolation, from employment to unemployment, from financial
independence to seeking handouts, from school and higher education on campus to
learning online and at home.
The human condition needs a
level of predictability to thrive and survive.Remove predictability and create uncertainty and we be-come fearful,
anxious and then depressed, even chronically so.Many of us are now fearful of permanent loss
of employment, loss of savings, loss of meaning, loss of health and loss of
life. Professor Myrna Weismann, a
Clinical Psychologist who developed Interpersonal Therapy as a means of
treating depression, believed that certain trigger factors underpin the onset
of this condition.They include loss or
grief, transition, interpersonal conflict.
It seems that the current crisis
may contain all of these trigger factors, whereas normally there may only be
one or two triggers.We are witnessing
loss on a monumental scale including of course, loss of thousands of lives.This leads to grief.We are now grieving for and longing for a
past we took for granted.It was a past
with some certainty, knowing consciously or unconsciously that apart from taxes
and death the only other certainty in life is change, and change is what we are
experiencing. We planned and looked
forward to coffee or meals with friends, family gatherings, attending sporting
events and theatre or simply going to the local playground with children.These pleasures have been stripped from us.Coffee over Zoom is not the same.And those who have lost their job, grieve for
the loss of security as they face an uncertain future.
Transitions that I have
mentioned have occurred on a massive scale and with electrifying speed.When we add loss and grief to transition and
place them in the incubator of a lockdown we face the possibility of
interpersonal conflict.Adding all of
these factors, we have the makings of a pandemic of depression, more than an
adjustment disorder, with the potential for domestic violence and even civil
unrest as the lockdown is extended.Our
leaders and society at large are confronted with an enormous challenge.Keep the lockdown going and delay or prevent
spread of the virus, or ease the lockdown and prevent economic meltdown, mental
illness and social unrest.
As we are still in the
early phase of the lockdown, with pending school holidays, we may feel
comfortable in maintaining lockdown, but what will it be like in two or three
months’ time?We are confronted with
uncertainty on many fronts, importantly the decision and timing to ease the
lockdown and then encourage return to work, whilst avoiding a second wave.This will require the judgement of Solomon.Let us hope our leaders, acting on best
available evidence, have the capacity to act wisely.
In the meantime, we need to
bring a measure of certainty into our lives.Setting goals for each day, enjoying the outdoors for a limited time,
maintaining an indoor physical fitness regimen, undertaking mindfulness and
mediation techniques to focus on the present, catching up on domestic chores
that have been postponed, reaching out to friends by phone or digital media,
seeking psychological support when needed, and always being vigilant with hand
hygiene and social distancing.We need
to maintain faith in our health system and our public health measures.Morbidity and mortality in Australia are
still relatively low. We must turn despair into
hope and hope into joy in the firm belief that this too will pass. 7 April 2020