Protecting an Old Man From Coronavirus
Walking into my house you will encounter two doors. The front door now behind you, and a second door to the left. A chlorinated odour stands there to greet you. It’s a flat smell hanging perpetually in the air. The air is no warmer than the winter’s day outside. A low din reverberates from the freezer.
This small pocket within our universe is a transition point between life and death.
Almost every item entering this house will be rubbed down with bleach. Letters, parcels, packaged food, loose change, and even your keys. Soap and water are ready and waiting for you to wash your hands. It had better be for at least twenty seconds.
Pushing open the second door and closing it behind you reveals a warm home. It’s a little messy and somewhat cramped, but that’s okay. An elderly man sits in his chair painting some faraway landscape. A radio crackles in the distance and bacon simmers on the stove. The elderly man smiles and talks, animated over his new painting. It’s an oil painting.
I am trying to protect him.
I would survive a coronavirus infection. Most of my friends and family would too. But not all. Each move I make, every interaction or visitation is weighed in my mind. Much like a neural network, I’m trying to minimize error. My training set is everything I observe as incorrect behaviour in other people.
Certain behaviours merge — forming modules. I have a setting for entering and exiting shops. There is a module for interacting with friends and for handling food.
Each module is short and to the point. An internal checklist with inbuilt fail-safe mechanisms. Contaminated hands touching a door handle initiates “bleach spray protocol”.
Now, within the United Kingdom 60,000+ deaths have resulted in a cautionary air hanging over each town and city.
I have been watching for inherent risk bias within myself. What do I mean by risk bias? If we imagine a risk (such as the risk of coronavirus infection) gradually increasing, yet no individual encounter with the risk itself, my actions could become more dangerous over time. The idea being, since I have not encountered the risk it is not dangerous.
Imagine walking past a pride of lions, their bellies are full of zebra. Then concluding the danger is minimal because you were not ripped limb from limb. Next time, you decide it’s safe enough to stroke the lions. You get away with it, and think to yourself “there is obviously no threat here”. The third time the lions have dinned on buffalo, everything works out great. You are lucky enough to play with a cub. The fourth time a hungry lioness decides to take a bite out of you…
We cannot become complacent and let our guard down. Taking a risk-averse approach after encountering the coronavirus is too late. Instead, we need to focus on advice from the scientific community and protect our loved ones.
We can wield protective equipment and use some common sense. We can beat this virus. Vaccines are on their way. It’s only a matter of time now, a short amount of time. Keep washing your hands. Keep wearing a mask. Keep putting one foot in front of the other.
We are almost there.
