Speaker 1: It's Wednesday. I'm Oscar Ramirez from the Daily Dive podcast
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles, and this is your daily coronavirus update.
Speaker 1: Some people haven't seen or touched others for three months
Speaker 1: because of COVID nineteen, and while the country is in
Speaker 1: the beginning stages of getting back out there, some will
Speaker 1: continue to isolate. Alan Gomez, reporter for USA Today, joins
Speaker 1: us for how some in the elderly and medically vulnerable
Speaker 1: communities and those skeptical of their government's reopening plans are
Speaker 1: keeping the quarantine going. Thanks for joining us, Allen, Thanks
Speaker 1: for having me. As the country is starting to reopen,
Speaker 1: people are starting to get back out there, there's still
Speaker 1: a big segment of people that are isolating, and we're
Speaker 1: getting into three months now. Some of these people can
Speaker 1: be doing because they're elderly, they might be medically vulnerable,
Speaker 1: or just scared to get out and back to normally
Speaker 1: get scared of the coronavirus and what it can do. Alan,
Speaker 1: you wrote an article about how, really, you know, humans
Speaker 1: aren't meant to be alone so much, and there's still
Speaker 1: the this segment of people that are isolating that haven't
Speaker 1: really had that human contact for quite some time now,
Speaker 1: So Alan, tell us a little bit more about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was interesting. I mean as we started seeing all
Speaker 1: these different states moved to reopen their economies. You know,
Speaker 1: this isn't a analysis of whether that's a good idea
Speaker 1: or bad. It's just we realized that there are just
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands, possibly millions of people who have been
Speaker 1: isolated all this time and who have no intentions of
Speaker 1: joining that reopening parade. And it's just been fascinating talking
Speaker 1: to these folks just kind of what they're experiencing. As
Speaker 1: you can imagine a lot of depression, a lot of isolation,
Speaker 1: a lot of missing the grandkids and their children. But
Speaker 1: it was really good to see some flickers of hope
Speaker 1: in there, like things that they're doing to kind of
Speaker 1: get through. And I can tell you just personally, I
Speaker 1: learned a lot of lessons from from these folks about
Speaker 1: how to get through this. Tell us a little bit
Speaker 1: about some of this, because there was a study that
Speaker 1: was being done about how quickly this forced isolation from
Speaker 1: the pandemic was affecting people. You know, you spoke to
Speaker 1: a few people that were part of this study. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's you know, I spoke to this one professor at
Speaker 1: a b y U or Her name is Julianna Holt Lunstead,
Speaker 1: and she has studied loneliness as part of her career,
Speaker 1: so she had studied this well before this pandemic came on.
Speaker 1: And so what they found previously was that it's not
Speaker 1: just a mental thing, isolation loneliness. It doesn't just affect
Speaker 1: you mentally. It's something that can have physical effects on people.
Speaker 1: It can raise your blood pressure, it can you know
Speaker 1: that anxiety, that constant, that that stress that you may
Speaker 1: have from being alone may lead to all sorts of
Speaker 1: physical problems. And they find increased more rapid mortality among
Speaker 1: people who are isolated, who are lonely, So they're quickly
Speaker 1: diving in to see how quickly those kind of symptoms
Speaker 1: can appear in people based on their isolation. It's not
Speaker 1: something they've studied before before. It was just sort of like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this person is isolated, let's look at how they do
Speaker 1: compared to somebody who's not um. But now they're trying
Speaker 1: to ramp up and it's an international effort with researchers
Speaker 1: from around the country trying to see how quickly those
Speaker 1: kind of sin THMs can really start materializing in people.
Speaker 1: Is it a month, is at two months, is at
Speaker 1: three months. So they're they're trying to take a close
Speaker 1: look at what that's doing. And we hear a lot
Speaker 1: about sort of the mental problems that come with it.
Speaker 1: You know, just straight depression is something that a lot
Speaker 1: of people have described when they're in those situations, and
Speaker 1: those are very easy to identify. Those are mental things
Speaker 1: that we can see. But it's that question of how
Speaker 1: it affects these people mentally or physically, excuse me, and
Speaker 1: whether that can lead to some you know, pretty drastic
Speaker 1: effects on them down the road. Yeah, and this is
Speaker 1: an interesting situation in that some of these uh, moments
Speaker 1: of isolation, they come on gradually. Maybe you you know,
Speaker 1: loved one dies off, things like that. Some of these
Speaker 1: things can happen kind of gradually. And this was as
Speaker 1: you mentioned the article forced isolation, This happened at the
Speaker 1: drop of a hat in March. You know, we we
Speaker 1: even know the date that it happened for everybody. So yeah,
Speaker 1: how quickly this stuff could affect you physically is going
Speaker 1: to be interesting to see what happens when it all
Speaker 1: pans out. And you also write about you know, you
Speaker 1: spoke to a lot of people, you know, how they
Speaker 1: were dealing with their isolation, and a lot of them
Speaker 1: said that, you know, they were finding certain reasons for hope,
Speaker 1: whether it be you know, I need to force myself
Speaker 1: to get out and see my grandson, or I just
Speaker 1: need to get out and and experience nature and kind
Speaker 1: of center myself that way. There was a lot of
Speaker 1: different stories you came across. Yeah, it was interesting, and
Speaker 1: there's a there's a ton more examples that we couldn't
Speaker 1: get into the article, but it's you know, one of
Speaker 1: the ones we mentioned was this seventy seven year old
Speaker 1: woman who for eight years has been trying to write
Speaker 1: a book and finally it was during this quarantine that
Speaker 1: she got the piece in quiet that she needed to
Speaker 1: find the finished Um. So that was just a really
Speaker 1: you know, you know a lot of these people I
Speaker 1: expected to speak to it would be sort of very
Speaker 1: you know, sad interviews talking about just what they're enduring.
Speaker 1: But really most of the people I spoke to, um,
Speaker 1: you know, talked about finding those things that to to
Speaker 1: to sort of brighten their day, to help them get
Speaker 1: through it. M One gentleman who lived in Georgia, who
Speaker 1: had moved to the small mountain town and really hadn't
Speaker 1: gone up into the mountains all that much. Kind of
Speaker 1: one day he just realized, wait a second, why did
Speaker 1: I move up here in the first place, and just
Speaker 1: took a dray I've been in the mountains, jumped into
Speaker 1: a river, uh, and just said he had the time
Speaker 1: of his life. As states are opening up, and all
Speaker 1: the people that you spoke to, did you get a
Speaker 1: sense that most of them were ready to get back
Speaker 1: to it or they're still going to continue to tasilate
Speaker 1: since the once I spoke to, we're doing so for
Speaker 1: very specific reasons, being elderly, um, having some sort of
Speaker 1: pre existing medical condition. Most of the people I spoke
Speaker 1: to just are not going anywhere. Some of them just
Speaker 1: don't trust their local governments that they're going to put
Speaker 1: in place a responsible reopening plan. A lot of them
Speaker 1: talked about like, hey, I went out to the store
Speaker 1: one time and half the people weren't wearing masks. I
Speaker 1: ain't going back out there again, you know. And so
Speaker 1: it's this combination of suspicion of either the local government
Speaker 1: or their neighbors of not taking this seriously enough. But
Speaker 1: for a lot of them, it really sounded like they
Speaker 1: had sort of okay now that they've settled into this,
Speaker 1: now that they've kind of figured out how they're going
Speaker 1: to get by, now that they've figured out how to
Speaker 1: get food, how to how to entertain themselves, how to
Speaker 1: keep themselves, saying during this, they just don't see a
Speaker 1: reason why they're gonna suddenly break all that, jump out
Speaker 1: into a restaurant and just risk being exposed when we
Speaker 1: just have so many cases still out there in the country.
Speaker 1: Alan Gomez, reporter for USA Today. Thank you very much
Speaker 1: for joining us. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: I'm Oscar Ramirez and this has been your daily Coronavirus EPTE.
Speaker 1: Don't forget that. For today's big news stories, you can
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