Okay, COVID is picking up for the great Fall Plunge into the Winter Miasma of Disease, and health officials are talking about taking precautions again. To which many people are responding, “Oh, No! I’m so tired of all that!”
COVID Doesn’t Care
Right. You’re tired of all this. You’ve got COVID Fatigue. Everybody’s got COVID Fatigue. Of course, this makes it just fine to stop getting booster shots and wearing masks and staying home if you feel ill.
Well, guess what? It isn’t fine, and misinterpreting the effectiveness of the precautions has no effect on whether you get the disease or not. Unless it means you don’t take them. Then it’s a sure thing you’re screwing up.
Playing the Odds
Because none of these precautions we are all taking are 100% effective. Even the scientists aren’t sure on the reasons why and how, for example, masks work, and why sometimes they don’t. When you get an inoculation and wear a mask, you are reducing the chances of getting the disease. It doesn’t mean you won’t get it. Even if you participate in a practice that is 90% effective, one person in ten will still get the disease. And if you’re one of the unlucky ones, well, that’s just your bad luck. It doesn’t mean you stop the precautions. If you do, your odds of getting the disease go up.
True Story
I went hiking last month with my usual group. We carpooled up to the Stawamus Chief, a 40-minute drive. Four of us went in one vehicle, two of us went in a second. Those in the first vehicle wore masks. Those in the second vehicle didn’t. Coming home, one person moved to the second vehicle (and kept her mask on.)
Someone in the first vehicle had COVID. Everyone in that vehicle got COVID, including the person that only rode one way. The other two did not get COVID.
A couple of weeks later, one of the people who got the disease was complaining that, “The masks were no damned good at all! Why bother using them?”
Sorry to spoil her fun, but you keep using them because otherwise, the odds are you’ll get the disease again.
The rough takeaway from my hiking trip is that everyone wearing masks in an enclosed vehicle for 40 minutes is not a very effective deterrent. On the other hand, four hours outside hiking with an infected person is probably not dangerous. We might also suggest that someone who has just been infected who wears a mask will probably not infect anyone else immediately. The way COVID is spreading this month, I’ll be wearing a mask in cars with people outside my immediate family. And in other enclosed spaces with strangers. And when I’m due, I’ll be getting Booster #7. Or is it 8? Doesn’t matter.
The “New Normal”
The wishful thinkers among us dream that COVID will become normalized, and then we can forget about it. In other words, just because they want it to go away, COVID will go away.
Sorry, the objective of avoiding COVID is a moving target. In midsummer it was all right to take it a bit easier. Now that the winter sick season is on us, we have to bite the bullet and go back to safer behaviour. That’s the new normal. Play the odds the best you can as the conditions warrant it, whether it seems to work or not.