S1E36 / Alone Together / Julianne Holt-Lunstad, Lucy Flamm, Jeff Howe, Jackie Jones

Hi, I'm Annabelle Chen. I'm an intern working with Just Human Productions on Epidemic. Nominations for the 2020 People's Choice Podcast Awards open on July 1st. To show your support, please go to podcastawards.com and nominate us in the People's Choice in Health categories. That's podcastawards.com. Thank you.

Hi, I'm Dr. Celine Gounder. And this is Epidemic. Today is Friday, July 17th. The first stay-at-home orders of the pandemic started in February. By March, dozens of states had issued lockdowns. Nonessential businesses were closed and people were told to stay home. For some stuck at home, it felt like being in a submarine, trapped in a house with too many people. But there was another side to those orders too: loneliness.

You know, anecdotally, we're hearing a lot of people really struggling right now.

This is Julianne Holt-Lunstad. She's a psychologist at Brigham Young University and a leading researcher on loneliness.

Having social events and rituals disrupted Birthday parties not happening, you know, funerals even. Suddenly we can't have those people around us.

Julianne says that loneliness works the same way that thirst drives someone to look for water. People are social creatures and they want to seek out others.

It's unclear to what extent, given this current situation, whether people are able to connect in other ways and adapt or are still really struggling with some of those distressing feelings.

But loneliness isn't just a distressing feeling. It could be a lot worse. I've heard loneliness being compared to smoking as being bad for your health. Can you sort of flesh that out for us a little bit more?

Yeah. So that, that comparison actually comes from my research.

Julianne looked at data for more than 3.4 million participants and found some pretty sobering statistics.

What we found was that loneliness increases earlier death by 26%, social isolation by 29%, and living alone by 32%. And so it wouldn't quite reach that, that comparison to smoking, but it still exceeds obesity, physical inactivity, and air pollution.

But those feelings of isolation and loneliness are a little different during a pandemic. Now everyone has to socially distance or isolate. And that can create a sort of solidarity.

Yeah, that's one area that I think I'm hopeful about. People are beginning to recognize just how important our relationships are. And I see, you know, wonderful examples of people really reaching out to those who are vulnerable in their communities.

In this episode of Epidemic, we're going to look deeper into this question. In a time when people are being asked to stay away from one another, how are people forging new social bonds and even finding ways to help people who were previously strangers in their community? This is the second in our series featuring our interns, and today my co-host is Annabel Chen.

Yeah. Hi, I'm Annabel Chen. I am a soon-to-be second-year med student at Stanford University.

So you came to us with this idea for an episode about loneliness. Why was that something that was on your mind at the time?

I think it was kind of two things that made me think about it. On one hand, it was because around that time when I joined you guys was when we were being pulled out of school. And for me, you know, our med school class, it's 90-ish people. We're really tight. I'm sort of used to being with my classmates day in and day out, and that's my community. And so being pulled out of school, like, you obviously feel a little untethered and maybe a little bit disconnected to the group that you're used to be. So I think loneliness is something that naturally, you know, comes to mind when you're taken out of your normal environment. And kind of on the idea of togetherness, I think around that time was also when those videos of people clapping for healthcare workers were going really viral. And I thought there was something really beautiful about the idea of, you know, New York being New York, but then everyone kind of standing outside at a certain time of the evening and clapping together for this common goal. I thought that was— there was something really beautiful in that, and I thought that was something worth exploring more.

So Annabelle, as you were sort of processing your own experience of loneliness being away from your med school classmates, how did that get you thinking about solutions to that?

I guess on the theme of people coming together, I started seeing more and more news stories about these things called mutual aid societies popping up, which I had previously never heard of. But the idea, I guess, is that communities are coming together where they share things that someone might need help with and what someone else might offer in terms of help. One of the organizations that I became interested in was called Cambridge Mutual Aid, and during my reporting, I met a woman named Jackie Jones.

I'm Jackie Jones. Thank you for having me. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to put on lipstick.

Jackie lives in Cambridge.

Today I was like, Zoom meetings and podcasts, I'm gonna put on lipstick. So today I like combed my hair, and put on lipstick. I loved it.

Giving back is a big part of Jackie's identity. Before the pandemic, she used to organize events for kids to visit nursing homes and build connections with the residents there. She serves as a member on both the Transit Advisory Board and Persons with Disabilities Committee for the city of Cambridge. And she founded an art therapy organization for survivors of domestic abuse. That organization came out of her own experience escaping a violent relationship.

Fleeing for domestic violence is very isolating. And unfortunately, like, even though I had a college degree and I'd gone to college and I had 401(k)s and I had, like, worked at really good jobs, I found myself now as a single mom in a domestic violence shelter having to go on welfare, get food stamps.

Jackie's former husband would try to find her. He'd go to the churches she would attend, and she was embarrassed about the violence. She didn't tell her friends what had happened, so Jackie lost the community that someone would normally turn to in their time of need.

I just found that it was easier to just self-isolate. So going through this COVID isolation is, um, normal. My normal.

Jackie tried to work, but it became increasingly difficult to hold down a job and care for her kids.

Poverty comes because I put my children first to make sure that their mental health was addressed rather than to, like, you know, work 40 hours a day or 40 hours a week and, and, um, 8 hours a day and not be there for them.

But this winter, things were looking up. She had gotten a job.

I was so happy. I thought my whole world is gonna change, everything's gonna get better, we're gonna, like, get to do all the things that we sacrificed and didn't get to do.

Tonight is an unprecedented time for New York State. All non-essential businesses closed their doors 3 hours ago as the state goes on public health lockdown. Pause to fight coronavirus.

I was looking around and people were talking about COVID and they were nervous, and they were staying away from each other. And, um, pretty soon I'm the only one on my station.

Jackie's job was considered essential, so she kept showing up for work. But as the situation got worse in Boston, she was told she could take leave.

I was like, I'm not taking leave. I'm getting all this overtime from— and no one's here, you know, and I'm gonna have plenty overtime because there's lots of work to do because no one's doing any work. But then her daughter got sick, and when I would get home from work, she'd be in my bed and she just looked sickly. She looked— she was sweating and she was achy and something I'd never seen before. The fatigue and just— it was like a monster.

She had COVID. Then her other son got COVID. Her son with Asperger's couldn't cope with the unpredictability of the pandemic. He was hospitalized, and when he got out, he would need a place to stay. And Jackie needed new tires for her car. Jackie didn't know where to turn.

One day, she was talking to her domestic violence advocate about all of it.

So she sent me the link for Cambridge Mutual Aid Network, and I reached out to them, and it was a blessing.

The Cambridge Mutual Aid Network helped Jackie get those tires she needed. And they helped fund her son's college housing.

This is a symbiotic relationship amongst volunteers to uplift one another as a form of solidarity, not charity.

This is Lucy Munsat-Flam. She's one of the organizing volunteers of the Cambridge Mutual Aid Network. The Cambridge network was one of the several groups that popped up at the beginning of the pandemic. When we spoke with Lucy, there were 800 volunteers signed up to offer any assistance they could.

We've had individuals say that they can provide tarot card readings to the community. We've had individuals say they can provide assistance in filing filing for social services such as pandemic unemployment.

So, you know, especially in this moment, I think people with social distancing, and granted some of that's being lifted now, but I think people feel everything from disconnected to lonely. How does a mutual aid society help address some of those feelings?

Loneliness is something we hear a lot from individuals in our community. It's a time of physical distancing, and at first this was really articulated as social distancing, I don't think that's a problem. Yes, we are physically disconnected, but that doesn't mean that we're socially disconnected.

If someone needs help with something, they put in a request. It's all pretty simple. At its core, it's a lot of volunteers and an Excel spreadsheet.

You're just trying to figure out, you know, people who have stuff and people who need stuff and match them up.

This is Jeff Howe. He's a journalist and professor who lives in West Cambridge.

Fun fact: he's the guy who coined the phrase "crowdsourcing." Jeff volunteers as a sort of block captain for Cambridge Mutual Aid. The network is broken down into several neighborhood groups called pods. Jeff is a pod leader. How did it feel for you to be sort of at the center of the hub bringing all these people together?

Oh, I'm a Leo, so I loved it.

So here's an example of how someone would get help through the network. One day, a family moves into an apartment. It's their first place since being homeless. The only problem is they couldn't afford to furnish it.

You know, the organizers at Cambridge Mutual Aid at the Cambridge level notice that that is in my neighborhood and contact me and say, "Could you reach out to your neighbors to see if anyone would help these people furnish their apartment?" Everyone's home, right? So everyone is right there staring at their stuff that they cannot bring to a Goodwill because all the Goodwills are closed. So I become the Goodwill. I just send out emails being like, I have way more— way too many trash cans. We're done with trash cans. Yeah, I mean, these were nice, like, kitchen trash cans. It was, um, you know, but it was everything. I mean, it was coffee makers and, uh, uh, you know, some actually some really nice stuff, some nice appliances. By that evening, I think we were— we'd been able to fully furnish her apartment.

Jeff thinks there's a natural logic to these kinds of groups.

People are going to know what their neighbors need best. They're going to be able to meet those needs most efficiently. And the motivation is going to be there. I think people are instantly, you know, care first about their family and then boom, they're going to care about their neighbors.

Jeff says the experience of volunteering during the pandemic has helped him feel more at home in his own community. He had a similar experience after he spent months at Ground Zero covering the 9/11 attacks.

I think before then, I had always felt like an Ohioan pretending to be a New Yorker, sort of an imposter syndrome. But after experiencing a crisis, you know, once you've been in a foxhole with your community, You know, like, you're part of that community.

But some critics say not so fast.

It was evident that there was going to be an absence of capable top-down guidance, which is to say a president doing his or her job. His job in this case. You know, so that was obvious that we were going to need local organization.

But some people might argue the opposite, right, where they say like more local support, like crowdsourcing things, or like mutual aid type groups shouldn't have to exist if the national response were good enough and people were taken care of in the need the way they need to be.

You know, I mean, it's, it's, uh, I think it's a necessary thing. I mean, I, I think, I think honestly even we would have needed some sort of mutual aid networks even in the best-case governance scenario. At a very scary time in March when there was so much uncertainty and we didn't know what was going to happen, it was like, okay, well, everyone on this block knew one thing, which was that other people on the block cared about them. And I thought that that was incredibly powerful.

And there are some problems that are bigger than Cambridge or any one community. But Lucy thinks there's a lot to be said about connecting people on a personal level despite social distancing measures.

These are moments where it's not just, "Hi, nice to meet you, goodbye." This is a moment of getting to know neighbors who neighbors wouldn't know otherwise. And I think that there's something to be said for this moment in bringing people together. And I truly wish that coronavirus wasn't the impetus for this, but there's something to be said for relationships which will last beyond the coronavirus.

Jackie says she felt better receiving assistance through a mutual aid organization than traditional assistance programs she had to deal with in the past. She said those systems felt demeaning, and there was always the risk of being turned away.

And Cambridge Mutual Aid Network was uplifting and refreshing and kind. I think kindness is lacking in the welfare system.

How does it feel to be receiving that kindness?

I'm inspired. I feel like it's the new way to do service.

What do you think is so special about the idea of neighborhood collaboration or like neighbor-to-neighbor helping that just makes it feel so different? Because I can hear it in your voice almost the way you talk about this organization. Like it feels like it means something different to you. And I'm wondering just where, where is that coming from, do you think?

Yes. Is it because my mom was from the '60s? I don't know. Like, I think that there was a simpler time when society helped each other. And I feel like the protests right now, Black Lives Matter, are so important and they do matter. And it is an awakening. When you see that someone's life matters, then you see that you're— you'll see it's your neighbor. It's not just the people protesting in, in the, you know, in your streets. It's the neighbor next door to you that's, that's like, um, silently suffering, right? And this network has a way of reaching out and making a change and so quickly.

Earlier in the show, Jackie said that self-isolation felt natural for her. It was how she had to deal with her flight from domestic violence. And at first, it was how she had to handle the coronavirus too.

But her experience with mutual aid showed her that there was a whole community of people out there, people who didn't even know her, who cared about her and her family. It gave her hope.

So I guess I'm not so isolated. I guess what I lack in, like, say, you know, friends, girls coming over to have a glass of wine, I transitioned it into community service. And that doesn't make me feel lonely. It makes me feel empowered and And that my life, the tragedies or the challenges or the experiences that I went through, help someone else who might be going through that.

Epidemic is brought to you by Just Human Productions. We're funded in part by listeners like you. We're powered and distributed by Simplecast. Today's episode was produced by Zack Dyer and me. Our music is by The Blue Dot Sessions. Our interns are Sonia Baradwa, Annabel Chen, and Julie Levy. If you enjoy the show, please tell a friend about it today. And if you haven't already done so, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps more people find out about the show. You can learn more about this podcast, how to engage with us on social media, and how to support to support the podcast at epidemic.fm. That's epidemic.fm. Just Human Productions is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, so your donations to support our podcasts are tax deductible. Go to epidemic.fm to make a donation. We release Epidemic twice a week on Tuesdays and Fridays. But producing a podcast costs money. We've got to pay Zac. So please make a donation to help us keep this going. And check out our sister podcast, American Diagnosis. You can find it wherever you listen to podcasts or at americandiagnosis.fm. On American Diagnosis, we cover some of the biggest public health challenges affecting the nation today. In Season 1, we covered youth and mental health. In Season 2, the opioid overdose crisis. And in Season 3, gun violence in America. I'm Dr. Celine Gounder. Thanks for listening to Epidemic.