Owning Risk

The whole mask thing is galling in a number of ways, but there are two aspects that make the mask theater we see in so many public spaces especially irrational.

One is the ridiculous odds.  The data is clear that once you’re vaccinated, your chances of catching virus are extremely small – about 1 in 10,000.  It is also clear that the chances of catching COVID from someone by casual interaction in a public place, like a grocery store or mall, are also very small.  The CDC standard for “exposed” is within 6 feet for 15 minutes or more, so no, that’s not what’s happening at Walmart, or at the set-way-back public comment podium in the huge school board room for all of 90 seconds.  Even if you’ve got the virus, the chance that someone else will catch it from you in such space is probably about 1 in 1,000.

Here’s where the math comes in.  To compute the chance that a vaccinated person not wearing a mask in the Fresh Foods is going to transmit the virus to someone else, you don’t ADD the probabilities, you multiply them.  And, as anyone who got through high school algebra knows, 1/10,000 x 1/1,000 = an even smaller number – 1 in 10 million.  Suppose I’m off by a factor of 10x on one of these – it’s still one in a million. 

Do we refrain from doing things in the real world because the chance of harm is one in a million?  Heck no, if we did, we’d never drive to the Walmart in the first place.  Or vacation on the Outer Banks during the summer hurricane season.  Or eat at a potluck, let alone a food truck.  Everybody tolerates risks much higher than one in a million routinely.

Let’s consider, in contrast, what those folks browsing at the CVS could do on their own to reduce their risks with respect to COVID-19. 

They could take Vitamin D.  They could walk outside and soak in some Vitamin D the old-fashioned way.  Higher Vitamin D levels are significantly correlated with better outcomes if you catch COVID-19.

They could exercise.  Improving cardiovascular health improves survivability with COVID, as can be readily seen by the numerous correlations of cardiovascular comorbidities with negative COVID outcomes.

They (most Americans, anyway) could lose weight.  Obesity is clearly correlated with negative outcomes.  And losing weight would be good for their health in many other ways.

Mind you, our supposedly benevolent government and media could have been encouraging us to do these three things all along, and probably would have saved a lot of lives if they did.  But you and I are not allowed to talk about them on social media, because positive health advice has been designated as misinformation.

So here’s the rub:  we’re supposed to do something uncomfortable and inconvenient that hampers our communication with other human beings (masking), or subject ourselves and others to social isolation, with all its attendant adverse health effects, in order to avoid a one-in-a-million risk to random strangers.  But no one is telling these very same people to take simple and safe steps that have a very high probability (like 2 out of 3) of reducing their COVID risk, and will almost certainly improve their overall health even if they never catch COVID.

So who is better positioned to take control of factors affecting their own health:  the person whose health is at risk, or a random stranger in the supermarket?  Why are we asking people we don’t even know to discomfit and isolate themselves, when we could protect ourselves by taking sensible and cost-effective health steps?

And why have the media and the government continually emphasized the unpredictability and fear factors with this pandemic, rather than pointing out the things we can do to protect ourselves?  We all know that people are frightened by things they cannot control, and feel better when they find things they can do to help deal with it.  Is it just me, or didn’t public health authorities used to emphasize personal health recommendations?  Remember the food pyramid?  Let’s Move?  The Presidential Physical Fitness Test?  What happened to all of that sensible DIY health advice?

There is a change of public health strategy here that is on some levels more disturbing than any pandemic.  Who is in control of your getting COVID and of surviving it?  Not you, they say, but rather the government and the big pharmaceutical companies and strangers in the store.

Yet the plain fact is that you are the one at risk, and you are the one who is in the best possible position to reduce your risk. Why don’t they want you to think about it that way?

The answers to that question get into motivations hidden behind a barrage of pretended benevolence. Quite possibly some of them actually think it’s better for everyone if the citizenry think of themselves as helpless followers. Certainly we’d be more docile and compliant if we were.

I’m not. And you?