You Can Get COVID Even If You Do It Right
The incidence of the disease is growing exponentially . If you didn’t already know someone with COVID, you will soon find out. As the virus becomes more prevalent, the likelihood of infecting people who take precautions increases.
This is in part because our security measures are not perfect, but also because this spring and summer did not prepare us emotionally for the world we live in this fall. So, here are some reminders of how you can catch the coronavirus, even if you are doing your best to avoid it.
Your bubble is bigger than you think
If you’ve created a bubble with a few family members and close friends, you might think it’s safe to spend time with them indoors and be physically close without a mask. But how do you know if these people are actually COVID-free?
In most cases, this is not the case. Your bubble is not just these people; in a sense, these are the people, plus everyone with whom they closely communicated. ( This diagram illustrates the concept nicely.) Once you start including people from several other households, your network of potential carriers of COVID will expand to tens, or more likely hundreds, of people.
It’s tempting to think that if you know someone well, they should be in your bubble. But if someone has a job where they engage with the public, or if their child goes to full-time school, or if they occasionally hang out with a friend who isn’t as careful as they are, there’s a big hole in that. this bubble. The number of people who actually have such a safe bubble as they think is vanishingly small.
Rules don’t always protect you
If you are doing everything “right,” how do you define it? In many cases, we do this by following instructions: if you returned to gyms, hairdressers, restaurants and your workplace when they reopened, you probably assumed that the precautions taken were sufficient to protect people. In the end, responsible people made decisions that were supposed to protect us.
But these rules are not always enough to keep us safe. They often sacrificed security in favor of other goals, such as allowing business start-ups and political pressure on governors and other leaders to weaken it. Textbook example: A flash in an indoor cycling studio where all the rules were followed . The only problem was that the rules allowed people to practice together in the same enclosed space for an hour at a time, wearing masks. Of course, people got sick.
There are no perfect security measures
Even when you keep a close eye on the size of your bubble, even when responsible people have set reasonable rules, even when you do your best, the coronavirus can still pass.
Another useful illustration is the Swiss cheese model , where each layer reduces the risk. Distance is not ideal, but it reduces risk. Masks are not perfect, but they reduce the risk. Spending time outside is not ideal, but it reduces risk.
The Swiss cheese model is good: even if one of the levels of intervention is missing, others can protect you. Stacker Precautions Together protects you further, just like how you wear a seat belt and keep your car’s brakes in good working order and drive carefully.
But that also means there are no guarantees. Even if all the layers are stacked together, each layer only reduces the risk; no one will completely eliminate it. You can do absolutely everything “right”, but a few viral particles still make their way.
The numbers in your community matter more than any specific actions you take.
Since there are no perfect precautions, what’s going on around you matters. If it’s February and there is only one person infected with COVID in your city, you are unlikely to catch the coronavirus with little or no precautions. When there are several dozen cases, precautions will become more important.
By the time the virus begins to rage in your area, it is more likely to exceed your precautions. Think glitter crafting: If you only give the glitter a few minutes to finish off your project, you can save it and you can vacuum up the random bits you missed. But if your child went on a field trip to the sequins factory and swam in things, there will be sequins in your sock drawer the next day, even if you do your best, starting with watering her off before she comes into the house.
If you live in a place hit hard by the coronavirus, you are probably familiar with this concept. But if you don’t personally know anyone who contracted COVID until recently, you’ve essentially taught yourself over the course of eight months that whatever precautions you take were good enough. As the number of cases increases, the balance between risk and benefit changes. And yes, you can catch the coronavirus now, even if you follow the precautions as well as before.
Ultimately, this means that some people who take all possible precautions will still contract COVID-19. So will some people who tried their best but slipped in some places – or those who could not avoid certain risks, such as going to work. There is no need to feel ashamed or stigmatize the diagnosis, as it is more difficult for us to honestly talk to each other about it. Take every precaution you can and try not to view positive cases as personal flaws. Sometimes we really try our best.