Moving On from the Covid Era
May 11, 2023 – Today marks the official end of the Covid-19 emergency, though Covid will likely be with us for a very long time as what we hope will be a manageable disease much like influenza. What will end are the frequent updates and the various mandates that have either tormented us or protected us for the last 3 years – depending on your perspective. I have been suggesting to everyone that they write down some of the things we all did during the first phase of the epidemic when ignorance led to fear and irrational behavior. I will gladly acknowledge not leaving the house for several weeks. For me, accessing the Covid case and wastewater data every day was a form of reassurance that this thing was something to be understood, and through that not to be viewed with irrational fear – even as additional deadly waves like Omicron gave us more than enough reason to be fearful.
So, let’s move on. Some of us have been enjoying a few beers with friends and even enjoying music in indoor venues. I hope everyone can make peace with this virulent enemy and fully embrace all the good stuff around us – especially springtime – even as we remember the friends we lost and the disruption we endured. – RW
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You mentioned this as irrational: “I will gladly acknowledge not leaving the house for several weeks.”
This is absolutely the right course of action in the case of a pandemic outbreak. When dealing with an uncertain threat, there’s a fog of war. That doesn’t mean actions are irrational. Every pandemic, it’s good to take a conservative course of action until we understand the threat profile.
“Ignorance” isn’t the same as “uncertainty.”
You’re a math teacher. You handle uncertainty probabilistically. I’ll explain this in math terms:
There’s a new pandemic. It has a 5% chance of being the next Black Death, a 50% chance of being nothing, a 20% chance of causing long-term disability, etc. You don’t know.
You look at that model. You decide on a course of action which has the best expected outcome. The low-probability events DO matter, and they matter a lot. It’s like Russian Roulette. The most likely outcome is that you live, but the 1/6 outcome is worth considering each spin.
And to be blunt, I do think we took the wrong path. If we had all taken the same course as China — zero Covid — we wouldn’t have a new endemic disease. To me, I think that would have been worth a few months of pain for not having to worry about Covid for the rest of my life.
Comment by Pete — May 15, 2023 @ 7:34 am