How to Survive a Pandemic: Life Lessons for Coping with Covid-19

by John Hudson

accepting this and taking responsibility increases your ability to tolerate hardship and to restart your perseverance engine.

‘on the Tube you used to have to hide a fart with a cough; these days it’s the other way around’.

‘To summarize and generalize: if you can’t breathe or are bleeding heavily, time to death is in minutes, uninjured at extremes of temperature it’s in hours, without any drinking water death takes days, and without food, weeks.’

Remember that things like a good first-aid kit are top of your list, then ways to protect yourself physically – including perhaps a face mask or two – to maintain your body temperature, and importantly to stay informed.

If you feel overwhelmed, breathe – the breathing technique in Chapter 1 will help. And as we saw with the amazing escape of the three Aussie aircrew in Chapter 4, breaking any task down into smaller, achievable chunks is the key to maintaining hope.

mentally dividing things into those you can control and those that you can’t control will reduce your worries.

the key is to think like a Stoic: to accept the circumstances, understand the controllable and the uncontrollable and the difference between the two, and adapt your mindset accordingly.