At 80, I have discovered that people don’t want advice from those who have lived longer and experienced more than they. Covid-19 reminds me of polio that I dealt with when I went into nursing in 1958 on the polio ward at what is now the Medical College of Georgia Hospital in Augusta.

We had no cure or vaccine for polio. The worst, bulbar polio, hit young people.

Those who contracted it had to live in iron lungs. Some could be helped on rocking beds and others on pressure chest cages.

These devices moved the diaphragm to help the lungs inflate and deflate.

WHEN I WAS in school, the public health nurse came every year and gave typhoid shots. The injection caused sore arms, Mischievous boys would flip their fingers on girls’ arms to make them yell.

We did not panic or shut the country down so people couldn’t earn a living. We learned to live with the invisible menaces.

I’m not an infectious disease specialist but I have dealt with similar problems when my husband returned from the hospital as a quadriplegic with a dinner plate-sized bedsore and just about every hospital acquired infection known today.

I took care of him at home for the next 7 years. With the help of my family physician we got rid of those pests. I applied the principles my instructor taught me in nursing school and protected everyone who came into our house from these virulent bugs.

WHAT GETS to me is the events of the last 10 months we have lived with the virus. It is just as deadly as polio and other diseases were in other ages. By 1958 we had learned how to protect ourselves, but today we seem to have skipped over the basics.

We hear wear masks, wash hands, clean surfaces and other good advice but no details on how to do these things properly. ‘

Masks are not perfect but good if you use them right. It should cover your nose and mouth to protect you from droplets in the atmosphere and from droplets you emit during breathing, coughing or sneezing.

THE VIRUS can be found up to 16 feet from an infected person. Once you don the mask and walk into any place where people are, both sides of the mask have to be considered contaminated.

If you touch it to take it off, your hands may be contaminated. You should carry hand sanitizer with you to clean them.

If you make several stops, don’t use the same mask twice. My grandmother taught me that the best bleach and sterilizer is our gift from God, the sun. I put my masks on the dashboard of my car for ½ hour on each side to kill anything they have caught.

I have allergy problems so I prefer the non-disposable cloth masks. If you use the disposable ones, keep an old grocery bag in the car to dispose of them when you get through with your errands in that store.

Use a new mask for your next stop or one that has been “sunned” properly.

Keep enough masks for all stops on your dashboard. When you get home, take disposable masks in a bag out of your car and put them in the sun to be as safe as possible and then discard them in the trash.