the risks – know them avoid them

Erin Bromage “The Risks – Know Them, Avoid Them”

Jonathan Kay “Enough With the Phoney ‘Lockdown’ Debate” (on Quillette)

As it turns out opening the country is like having sex. If you take proper precautions, there will be no problem. If you do not, it is not absolute that you will have problems, just more likely. Like sex, opening the country can be personal (liberty!! – you can go out to a restaurant for supper, but how can you eat & enjoy your meal wearing a mask? You might just as well get take out and eat at home), or directed by government oversight, but either way, you have to act safely.

These two articles make the point that all is not lost because Pres. Trump is worried that if the economy does not rev up soon, he will lose the election, or something. I do not listen much to people who think they are God’s gift to the world, so I do not know what his reasoning for opening the country is, but to enhance his reelection is my cynical thought on the issue.

In the first article begins with a bit of analysis of the facts of what we are doing. The up slope of the cases, or deaths, or whatever, has a down slope that is the mirror image of the up slope. This simply means that we are not gong to be over the challenges of the pandemic just because we have gotten to the downward side. He points out that opening the country too soon will create more problems than it solves, but that is a whole other ball of wax that is not something we can do anything about.

What we can do is pay attention to proper safety measures that will decrease our exposure to the virus. It is explained how the virus is spread needs time and exposure. Just because some one with the disease passes you on the sidewalk, does not mean you are going to be infected – there is not enough time to acquire the virus so you would be sick. Another problem that he does not mention, though, is that this can only happen when the other is already infected. If they do not have the disease, they can not infect you with it. The bigger question is how do you know? You do not, so you act as if they are – an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

The rest of the article tells of situations where the disease has been passed en masse, outbreak clusters.

The second is not the article that inspired the first, but it is pertinent. It explains that people are not stupid. They took care of what needed to done before the government told them. Sort of gives you hope for mankind, eh? It also means that just because the country opens up, people will act like normal. They will behave in safe and cautious ways, just as before. They are not going to put themselves in harms just because the government says they can.