Are you" isolated" ?

[frugal-one]

According to an article I just read: The more "isolated" an individual felt, the greater the risk of illness. Those who answered that hey had five or fewer interactions per month with close friends and family were considered "isolated".

[Teacher Terry]

No I see my friends and family every week. Plus I live with my husband and one of my sons is here too.

[iris lilies]

The greater the risk of what kind of illness?

[ApatheticNoMore]

definitely more so. @#$# coronavirus. I mean we are really not supposed to be socializing far and wide, either adopt a pod strategy of only seeing a very small number of people and/or see people outside with masks at a distance.

[JaneV2.0]

I imagine if you craved social interaction and it was suddenly cut off, you might feel melancholy--but honestly, I don't read those articles. I don't figure they pertain to me.

[herbgeek]

I'm isolated. I don't get out much on a good day, and never in Covid times. My entire social circle is my extended family. The only other people I have been in contact with in the last 4 months are my primary care provider and her nurse, and the mammographer. I could do Zoom calls with friends, but I just don't. I would feel sorry for myself and maybe a little lonely, but then I watch Washington Journal on CSPAN while I work out in the morning, and the callers make me afraid to leave the house. So many nut cases.

[Chicken lady]

Is a phone call an “interaction“?

I mean, I live with my Dh, so by definition I can’t be “isolated”.

[Teacher Terry]

The 3 months we stayed home all the time was depressing. We don’t do any large group activities but have resumed some of our normal lives.

[catherine]

I am definitely not isolated. At least I don't feel that way.

[bae]

Not too terribly isolated.

I Skype with my daughter every few days, she's trapped in the UK right now and not at home here as planned. This is perhaps the worst isolation for me, as we had all sorts of fun plans.

I Skype with my Dad for lunch a couple times a week, seems to cheer us both up.

I see my Mom in person 3-4 times a week, from a safe distance, as she is quite vigorous about her quarantine efforts. Sometimes my sister and her partner are also down there and I can chat, from a distance.

I have a Zoom class once a week on "literature of the pandemic" with about a dozen other local folks, taught by my neighbor the recently-retired professor, that's a lot of fun, and a ton of reading.

I have a Zoom "beach party" with co-workers from Silicon Valley I haven't seen for years, it has been fun seeing old faces and making new friends.

I have coffee in my cul-de-sac with the two other households who are on the same circle - we each set up chairs/table at the end of our driveway, we are probably all 20-40 feet apart.

My "friend" comes over for 3-7 days at a time, every week or two - they live on a nearby island, isolated, and we've combined our households as a "pod" after some amount of quarantine activity, and we reset a quarantine time whenever one household has perhaps been exposed.

I have my friendly bloodhound and satanic cat here full time as well, and my new vegetable garden out on my deck also provides company. I had to put up scare-owls, as the birds were eating all my berries, otherwise I'd have plenty of birds here too.

I am avoiding most non-essential human contact except from a great distance however. I live right next to a large state park that gets hundreds of thousands of visitors a season, and even with all of our restrictions here, the place is packed, so I don't feel so motivated to be over there right now.