How Careful are Americans in the Age of Covid-19? How we Engage in Other Activities Serve as Proxies

"Feb. 29, 2020: 1st death reported in United States."

I'll use that date as my start date. Today is Day 87 of COVID-19 here in the U.S., and it is bringing out the best and the worst of Americans. Behold who we are! Lots of careful people mixed in with others willing to take risks. On average, it appears that individual Americans are responding to COVID-19 with the same degree of care that we display when we A) drive our cars, B) take care of our bodies C) nurture the environment and D) fill our brains with TV shows.

Why would we expect anything different?

Continue ReadingHow Careful are Americans in the Age of Covid-19? How we Engage in Other Activities Serve as Proxies

Let’s Apply the Drunk Driving Argument to This Pandemic Pool Party

Take a look at this crowded bar Memorial Day weekend at Lake of the Ozarks.

I’m going to assume that most of the people in this picture are drinking. I’m also going to assume that some of the people in this picture will leave this party intoxicated yet believe they’re ok to drive. I’m going to assume every single person in this picture arrived home safely.

What would your conclusion be if all the above were true? Would you conclude that because none of the intoxicated people in this crowd got into a car wreck afterward, that drunk driving is ok? Would you think that maybe we don’t need laws forbidding drunk driving? Or, would you conclude that the intoxicated drivers were damned lucky, because intoxicated driving clearly increases your chances of causing an accident and killing yourself and others?

Here’s another possible outcome: One of the men driving home was pretty hammered. After getting onto the highway, he realized that he shouldn’t be driving. He kept losing his focus and had some trouble staying in his lane. When he arrived home, he breathed a sigh of relief. No harm, no foul.  Unbeknownst to this man, a woman driving in the lane next to him on the highway was trying to get home from her shift at the hospital. She was a nurse tired from another long day. When his car drifted over into her lane, she was forced to swerve, causing her car to roll down an embankment. She is severely injured and may not survive.

The man who is breathing a sigh of relief that he got home safely, he has no idea what his actions caused. He may never know.

Now let’s look at this picture again, knowing this photo was taken during the pandemic. It’s entirely possible that everyone left this bar feeling good and that all of them continue living a healthy happy life. It’s quite possible, however, that two or three of these people at the bar were infected but had no symptoms. It’s also entirely possible that one of these asymptomatic people talked to three other women while waiting in line in the crowded ladies’ room. As they laugh about the goofy bartender, some infected droplets spray from her mouth and onto the others. After they go home, two of them get sick. Before one of them had symptoms, she visited her elderly mother a few days later. Her mother ended up on a ventilator and died a week later.

I keep hearing, “everyone is going to die of something.” That’s 100% true. A lot of people die in car accidents, with or without intoxication involved.

But the reason we enact laws for public safety is to reduce the risk of harming or killing other people. Wearing a mask in public during a pandemic is as practical and important as NOT drinking and driving, or taking the keys away from someone who drank too much.

Wearing a mask in public is like taking the car keys away from someone who drank too much.
There’s an even more compelling reason to social distance and wear a mask. The man who got home safely, may wake up the next morning and recognize how lucky he is. He may vow to never again drink and drive. Should that happen, he will never have or cause a wreck due to intoxication.

The woman who unknowingly passed the virus to the ladies in the restroom may see how quickly it’s spreading in her community and decide she’s now going to be more careful. She vows to keep a social distance, wear a mask in public, and do what she can to keep others safe. Even if she does that starting now, the people she infected last night can continue spreading the virus, exponentially. The two people she infected can spread it to four, and those four can spread it to eight and so on.

So why would we intervene to prevent death by drunk driving but not intervene to prevent death by social distancing and wearing masks in public? https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812864  In 2019, “only” about 10,000 people died as a result of drunk driving, but most of us feel compelled to strictly enforce the law to prevent those needless deaths. No one complains about the government violating their constitutional rights by enacting drunk driving laws.

As I finish writing this article, ten times as many people, more than 100,000 people, have died as a result of COVID-19 in just few months, with many other people barely hanging on. It’s far more deadly than drunk driving.

--

The above video is on Snapchat in the Lake of the Ozarks? Unreal. What are we doing?

pic.twitter.com/m0qsEQ4KLp

— Max Baker (@maxbaker_15) May 24, 2020

Continue ReadingLet’s Apply the Drunk Driving Argument to This Pandemic Pool Party

Our Sphere-Shaped Petri Dish, Courtesy of COVID-19

I find myself repeatedly contemplating the potentially vast predictive power of Terror Management Theory in light of this cold blast of mortality salience related to COVID-19. This is the biggest flare-up of mortality salience since 9/11 and much of the resulting frenzied societal dysfunction was foreseeable, including the fact that so many modern-day tribes are so vigorously circling their wagons.

COVID-19 is a such terrible thing to grapple with. Many of the people we care about are going to be hurt, physically and economically. We are particularly taunted by COVID's invisibility because, as a species, we rely so heavily on brain systems related to vision. That said, we human animals are now living in a huge sphere-shaped petri dish. It's difficult to imagine the huge number of dissertations and research papers that will result from this upheaval. My speculative hope is that as a result of this pandemic we will learn something critically important about how to get along with each other. Whatever we learn, we need to learn it both in our hearts and our minds. We so desperately need some sort of reboot down here on Planet Earth.

Continue ReadingOur Sphere-Shaped Petri Dish, Courtesy of COVID-19

Print and Laminate This Card for Your Friends Who Insist that COVID-19 is “Like the Flu.”

Are you getting explainer fatigue these days? Those people who insist that COVID-19 is "like the flu" seem to be everywhere these days. And now, as many states are "opening up," they can be expected to become ever more vocal and insistent. As a public service, I am offering this image for printing and laminating. Instructions for Use: Pull this card out and hold it at a reading distance from those who insist that COVID-19 is merely like "the flu."

Continue ReadingPrint and Laminate This Card for Your Friends Who Insist that COVID-19 is “Like the Flu.”

What to Say When You Notice Someone Sneezing in the Age of COVID-19

The traditional response to noticing another person sneeze has never worked well for me. Why would I invoke the name of a deity in such a situation?

Even if a such deity actually existed, why would he/she/it/they care about someone sneezing? Path dependance explains a lot of things we do and the "God Bless You" people often say (often with a concerned look) is one of those many things we do merely because we've always done it that way. 

COVID-19 has made our concerns about sneezing much more legitimate. I noticed this yesterday while I was outside in my backyard (alone) eating pretzels. I had a mouthful of pretzel when I had a strong urge to sneeze came upon me. Maybe God made me do it. I didn't hold back, even with my mouth filled with mostly-chewed pretzel. It was a world class sneeze, I can proudly say, but it was also a science experiment. I watched as the pretzel particles sprayed several feet from me. If I were contagious, that would have been pretzels AND COVID-19 micro-particles and I assume that the virus would have sprayed even much farther than the pretzel dust. This was a visual reminder that it is good advice to sneeze into your elbow these days, if you can't hold back your sneeze while with others.

I've had long been puzzled about the traditional sneeze response ("God bless you"). A bit of research today showed me that the phrase might have first been uttered around 600 A.D. to try to protect people from the plague.  For many years, however, we've used that same expression when there was no fear of any plague.  

In modern pre-COVID times, however, the phrase has been an overly-quaint response to a perfectly natural and harmless bodily action, especially around allergy season. Sneezing is one of those fascinating complex series of coordinated actions that our bodies do (along with swallowing, vomiting, and orgasms) where our animal bodies seem to take on a life of their own for a short period, independent of our control once they reach the point of no return.

But what, exactly, is it that a God would supposedly do by "blessing" me following a sneeze? The obvious answer (it would seem) is to help me to stop sneezing in the future. Armed with this speculative conclusion a few years ago, I asked my nephew Dan whether he could help me with a new logical yet pretentious thing to say to a person who just sneezed. Dan had recently majored in Latin as well as computer science. His suggestion was to say: "Consiste sternuere!" He assured me that this phrase is Latin for "Stop sneezing!"  If you say this phrase with a stern face, carefully pronouncing each syllable, it might appear (to certain credulous people) that you are saying something useful and that you might even be wielding other-worldly powers.

If you are interested in joining me to help to make this new cutting edge expression viral, simply utter "Consiste sternuere!" instead of "God bless you." It is pronounced. ConSIStay stern-you-AIR-eh.

Thank you, Nephew Dan.

Continue ReadingWhat to Say When You Notice Someone Sneezing in the Age of COVID-19