Northern Virginia reader Allen Barringer responded to my request yesterday for readers to describe how they are coping with COVID-19. He started writing this piece as a comment, but it became so comprehensive that we decided to publish it as a full-fledged post. — JABby Allen Barringer

We live in a surreal moment: On the one hand our health care system’s response to this pandemic is vintage 1918; on the other, we live in the age of the internet. We can do amazing things on-line, both to entertain ourselves and to socialize with friends.

The dichotomy has brought to the fore the generational divides between those who grew up with on-line technology, those who are familiar with what it can deliver but can DIY only primitively, and those who are overwhelmed by it. The sine qua non, of course, is  a decently fast internet service.

We attend a church that has put worship services on-line and is experimenting with the use of Zoom for just about everything meeting-wise. A hard-core group is committed to overcoming these barriers to keep the sense of community going. Fortunately, that includes a majority of the vestry.

The dilemma is everyone else: It is difficult to get people thinking creatively “outside the box” when so much about daily life has changed and individual circumstances differ so greatly. It’s difficult to reach out to the isolated without on-line tools, or to help them overcome their technophobia without at
least a home visit and perhaps some training sessions, both of which are breaches of SD (social distancing) protocols.

It’s near impossible, at this time, to see how we will share our relative abundance with the many, many folks out there less fortunate than we — the people who are going to be left without a job, without backup resources, due to SD itself and the sharp economic recession brought on by SD that plainly lies ahead of us.

How, for example, does one help run a food bank without face-to-face contact in a crowded room with people widely exposed to this bug? I’m reminded by David Brooks that for many years after 1918 people wouldn’t talk about their experience; many were ashamed they had not done more for others.

A good can-do attitude helps a lot — and that depends on small victories and on keeping in touch with others doing the same. Lots of phone time. Lots of iPad FaceTime and its Android equivalent, Google Hangouts Video-chat — both free if you have the underlying hardware. (Personally I try to avoid the Facebook empire for privacy reasons but we’ve even stooped to using FB as well.)

Google Video Chat is easy and you are already signed up for it if you have a gmail account; you just have to talk your Apple-world friends into registering for it (still free but an extra step) so you can bring them into your video chats.

Zoom, a fairly new platform, is free for casual use and an absolutely essential tool. Sign up for Zoom now if you haven’t used it, and go out of your way to
participate with groups if only to learn how it works. Zoom is designed to handle larger audiences with moderator-like, on-line academic courses but it also works for church-sized or book-club meetings; the Diocese of Virginia has been using it for a while for all their Diocesan meetings. Zoom requires a license to host large, longer (>45 mins) meetings. This is an institutional step that churches and the like need to step up to.

This wonderful resource may be overwhelmed by all the academic use that’s going to fall on it next week, but Zoom management is committed to
persevering, and the company will have earned a large dose of good-will when this is behind us. Zoom has already suspended the 45-minute limitation that used to restrict the time for larger video-chat meetings using the free version.

Amazon is still delivering, and there is so much to deliver. Some people seem focused on staples like hand soap and toilet paper. My shortages run to things like a 10-foot USB-C to HDMI jumper cable. And projects: I just bought those light fixtures for the garden we’ve always wanted (bought the wire, electrical boxes, wire staples and connectors, etc. all on-line) and will wire them up when the weather obliges  But the point is, we don’t have to leave the house to get these things.

What you do need is some familiarity with how Amazon, Home Depot, etc. indexes such things — how to search for them, how to sort through Amazon’s pricing options, your options to get it delivered. If you don’t have Amazon
Prime this is a good time to upgrade to that for faster deliveries free. Prime also comes with access to Amazon’s on-line movies for streaming to your TV.

In Northern Virginia, Giant and Harris Teeter, Safeway and Wegman’s all provide on-line shopping with drive-through pick-up or, even better for some,
home delivery (may be slower and extra charge). You do not have to get out of the car to go in. Grub-hub delivers our favorite pizzas and kebobs to our door.

We are doing SD workarounds for keeping in touch. If you have Google Chrome as the web browser on your computer or phone and a Chromecast device on your TV, you can “cast” anything you can put on the screen of your laptop or phone onto the TV screen. A video chat on Hangouts with multiple participants can be cast right up there to the TV screen. (There are alternatives, including Apple TV).

We are exchanging photos of the spring flowers up here with friends. We have instituted a weekly family group video chat with cocktails and hors d’oeuvres. Our book club is looking at Zoom or Hangouts for our next meeting with everyone participating from home. A casual bridge club we sometimes join has figured out how to play their games on-line at trickstercards.com (real games, among themselves, not individuals against a computer) with a parallel video chat open so the participants can see each other and table-talk while they play. Life goes on!

Finally, there is, of course, the world of movies and television shows. Netflix, Amazon Prime and Google-Play-Movies are the big three for rentals. Plus, consider upgrading to “Passport” status with PBS (a $60/year donation) if you’d like streaming access to much of their library of Masterpiece Theater and
so forth — a clunky website but useful. See the Broadway spectacle you missed years ago, at broadwayhd.com. Learn how to use YouTube for free videos of, e.g., famous/historical sports events — of course there will be no new games for a while. And the news: YouTube also carries the PBS NewsHour, usually live, and we already receive the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and numerous magazines on-line in addition to hard-copy, so we will stay in touch even if hard-copy distribution is suspended.

I will tell you, however, that what our family really has benefited from most is inter-active human contact through webcasting and video chatting. We need that constant reminder that we are all in this together, that we have friends, and that our family is basically OK.