Every Decision Is A Risk. Every Risk Is A Decision.

It has been a season of compromises, a season of bending the rules.

If I wear a mask and I keep my distance, I can go for a walk with a friend.

Hand sanitizer is a bulwark that allows my kids to play on an otherwise empty jungle gym.

?I believe the backyard has magical properties that will, probably, make it just safe enough to see people and talk to them.

In the sun and fresh breeze, we give each other air hugs from six-ish feet away.

Meanwhile, my hair grows, untrimmed, past my clavicle. When my friend, in some ways far more stringent on her social distancing and mask wearing than I am, told me about going in for her first cut since March, I winced involuntarily. I assume it’s roughly the same face that she made when I confessed my masked trip to a clothing store to buy some summer dresses.

Both of us know the safest thing — the thing most likely to prevent the spread of COVID-19 — would be to stay at home, alone. But we know we won’t do that now. Can’t do it.

?Disclaimer:?The information on this POST is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional advice. The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. All content, including text, graphics, images and information, contained on or available through this article is for general information purposes / educational purposes only, and to ensure discussion or debate.

Thank you...The idea of sticking with the safest thing has become almost as unthinkable as indulging in the danger of a movie in a theater or a drink at the bar. But in between those extremes, life has become a sticky bog in which we wade through evidence and convenience, hoping we’re stepping on solid ground.

We can’t live like we did before coronavirus. We won’t live like we did immediately after it appeared, either. Instead, we’re in the muddy middle, faced with choices that seem at once crucial and impossible, simple and massively complicated.

These choices are an everyday occurrence, but they also carry a moral weight that makes them feel different than picking a pasta sauce or a pair of shoes. In a pandemic that’s been filled with unanswerable questions and unwinnable wars. And no one can tell us exactly what we ought to do.

Not that there haven’t been attempts at providing structure.

Right now, you can go online and find multiple charts that will visually categorize what were once the activities of daily life by risk level.

Some of these charts are evidence based, compiled by experts and (in my opinion) genuinely helpful.

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Because it lays out not just the risk levels of various behaviors — getting a haircut, visiting the dentist, buying a new shirt — but also the underlying factors that can make an activity more or less risky.

In general, research has shown that indoors is riskier than outside, long visits riskier than short ones, crowds riskier than individuals — and, look, just avoid situations where you’re being sneezed, yelled, coughed or sung at.

But the trouble with the muddy middle is that a general idea of what is riskier isn’t the same thing as a clear delineation between right and wrong. These charts — even the best ones — aren’t absolute arbiters of safety:

They’re the result of surveying experts. In the case of Popescu’s chart, the risk categorizations were assigned based on discussions among herself, Emanuel and Dr. James P. Phillips, the chief of disaster medicine at George Washington University Emergency Medicine.

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They each independently assigned a risk level to each activity, and then hashed out the ones on which they disagreed.

Take golf. How safe is it to go out to the links?

Initially, the three experts had different risk levels assigned to this activity because they were all making different assumptions about what a game of golf naturally involved.

Are people doing it alone?

If not, how many people are in a cart?

Are they wearing masks?

Are they drinking? …. those little variables that can increase the risk.

Golf isn’t just golf. It’s how you golf that matters.