1. Consider anyone who is living with you in isolation as family.

-Make a decision to be good to each other, to respect each other.

-Talk to each other (no yelling, teasing, or demeaning language) in a positive manner; this won’t always be easy, because the uncertainties linked to this pandemic will cause stress, which generally leads to shorter fuses.

-Forgive quickly. In stressful times our best self is not always exhibited.

2. Hygiene is everything when it comes to transmissible disease, and everyone living in the house must participate in it.

- Wash your hands often, and just as important, wash them properly!

- After coughing, sneezing, and blowing your nose.

- After visiting public spaces/places: public transportation, markets, banks, drive-thru’s, and places of worship.

- After touching any of the surfaces outside of the home, including money, ATM machines, credit/debit checkout machines and stylus pens.

- Before, during and after caring for a sick person, regardless of their COVID-19 status.

- Those are minimum hand washing requirements.

- Do not touch your face.

- Make hand sanitizer and tissues like the American Express card…don’t leave home without it.

- Sneeze into a tissue; your best bet is to keep a tissue handy.

- If you must leave your home, limit outings to once a day.

- If you do leave your house, when you come back home, go straight to the bathroom and bathe before you interact with the house. Then use pre-moistened antibacterial cleansing cloths or a bleach solution to clean everything you touched on the way in.

3. Do everything you can to boost your immune system, especially if you are higher risk. Take vitamins, 50 mg Zinc Gluconate per day, 100 international units of Vitamin D3 per day, and 1000mg Vitamin C each day. If Vitamin C upsets your stomach, look for liposomal Vitamin C, because it is better digested.

4. Take care of yourself.

- Eat healthy, limit bad things. You’re likely to have more time on your hands; don’t spend it drinking more alcohol, smoking more cigarettes or more weed, or eating your way through the pandemic. Fresh fruits and vegetables are the best, but you may not have access to them, so frozen fruit and vegetables are better than no fruit and vegetables. Every restaurant has delivery now, but try to not give in and order carbs, fat, or sugar crap delivery. Eating healthy also helps boost your immune system. Google “foods that boost the immune system” and see what you like and what you can get your hands on.

- You must exercise every day. Obviously you should not visit a gym or use community gym equipment, but it’s fine if you own it and it’s inside your home. If you share gym equipment with your “covid family” be sure to clean it between uses and wash your hands thoroughly after using it. If you don’t use equipment, go for a walk or bike ride. Look On-Demand or YouTube for workout videos to do at home. Move your body every day.

- Keep to your regular work day sleep-wake schedule. Go to bed at a certain time, get up a certain time. Sleep deprivation and/or exhaustion compromises your immune system, so it compromises you.

- Get dressed. If you dress like a bum, you’re more likely to feel like a bum. Don’t wear your pajamas all day, get dressed and look like a human being please. Shower, shave, brush your teeth, and wash your face. If you’re working from home and want to wear sweats for a day to two, that’s fine, but doing it every day for a long period of time tends to undermine the sense of self-esteem and degrade the community around you.

- Learn to relax. These are trying times. Do things to help deal with anxiety. Try aromatherapy, music, gardening, yoga, or meditation. Google meditation videos, and look on YouTube as well and give it a try. For some people, a pet is the best anxiolytic in the world. If that’s not for you, try getting a little plant to take care of, just something you can nurture. It helps a great deal psychologically.

- Meals become a bigger deal now, because it will probably be the most face to face interaction you’ll have. I suggest you schedule one big meal a day – usually dinner – and everyone pitches in. Some people prep, some cook, and some clean up. Working together is good for the mind and the soul, because it gives everyone a sense of belonging.

5. Be frugal. If that is foreign to you, learn to stop spending. Figure it out. You must conserve all resources and manage the resources you have in the most efficient way, so you are not wasting food, goods, or money. You don’t know how long this is going to last, or the effect on the economy once it’s gone, so think before you spend a penny.

6. Limit news exposure. You’ll go crazy watching it all day. Take everything with a grain of salt until you hear the same news from multiple sources who have conflicting interests. Then you can put more stock into what you’re being told.

7. How to entertain yourself or others in your family? The key here is to keep changing it up. Movies, binge watching TV shows, virtual reality systems, Gameboys, puzzles, board games, cards, reading and art. Try some hobbies you’ve never had the time to try before: planting a garden, sewing, knitting, painting, drawing, writing, tie-dye, whatever rocks your boat. You’re not going to be able to do the same thing day after day, because you’ll be bored out of your skull.

8. You must maintain a high level of socialization. Use Facetime or Zoom rather than just phone calls. Email or text, however you can stay in touch with people. I suggest that you use social media, Facebook, Instagram, etc. to facilitate interactions with people and get ideas from the outside world and really stay in tune with what’s going on. Normally I harp on the evils of social media, but it’s a brand new world people! Try very hard to stay in touch with friends and family

9. Have structure, especially if there are kids in the house. You must establish special rules for the special circumstances we are in. If you have school-aged kids, are they “out of school”? This isn’t summer, and most schools have a curriculum for students during this time at home. So, kids must wake up in the morning, shower, have breakfast, brush their teeth, and boom…school is in session! Make a schedule for them for every day, Monday to Friday, and stick to it religiously. The key here is to break the day up into separate topics/sessions: reading time (or lecture, depending on age), discussion/questions on the reading or lecture, outside activity, snack time, art, creative play time, lunch time, nap time (if applicable), puzzle time, special project time. The key to success is tailoring the subjects, activities, and the length of each session to the age of the kids. Young kids have a short attention span, so spend no more than 20 minutes on each session. Older children can usually handle 45 minutes, but adjust the time according to your child. Special projects could include maybe making homemade kites and racing them, or having a cookie day, where you make cookies and talk about the origin if ingredients and/or their purpose in the recipe. For instance, when you add Chocolate chips, explain that chocolate actually starts as a big pod grown on a tree, called cacao (pronounced ka-kow), and Google a picture of it along with how the process goes, from the pod to the chocolate chips in the cookies. As for lecture subject, you can Google lectures or “educational topics for _____ graders” and find c curriculum and lesson plans. The bottom line is that if you don’t engage the kids, they’ll be idle and bored, a perfect prescription for the house to descend into chaotic madness.

10. Think! Think really hard before doing anything. Ask yourself, “Is it worth the money?” and “Do I need it?” Stop with the panic buying! Really, how much toilet paper do you actually need? Buy the things you need, but think before you do in order to conserve your resources. Think wisely about what your family will eat, and what items will last for a long time: rice, pasta, jarred sauces, frozen fruit and vegetables, granola, protein bars, shelf stable milk, etc. Don’t do anything stupid like my friend in Pennsylvania did, taking a quick vacay to Florida…now he and his wife are on a COVID-19 quarantine vacay, a bummer place to be. And think how idiotic they’ll look when that have to answer to friends and family’s questions on how and where they got the virus! Also, don’t panic. There’s really nothing to panic about. Prepare the best you can, take good care of yourself, be smart, and wait it out. Always keep your wits about you.