Casting fate to the summer wind?… Risk-taking thinking during pandemic
By Dennis Archambault
Life is short. Summers are even shorter. With limited time and coming off a stressful pandemic lockdown and economic malaise, it’s understandable to want to get away and relax. But in a coronavirus hot spot??
It’s interesting how many people willing to take “calculated” risks to restore normalcy in their lives — arguably affluent lifestyles at a time of massive unemployment and storm clouds in the near future.
Yet 60 percent of people considering travel this summer may go to areas of the country that are hot spots (https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/news/2020/08/10/covid-travel-issues-didnt-dissuade-americans-visiting-hot-spots/3303424001/). Twenty-seven percent identify as “daredevils.” Even if you factor in the relatively low incidence of infection in the population, and low risk of serious, life-threatening illness, why risk the misery that will come if you do contract the coronavirus, which is much more virulent than influenza, which you can be protected from through vaccine?
As risk analysts will tell you, Americans are often irrational risk-takers. Consider the long struggle to get people to wear safety belts. It took a law…
What is it in the American lifestyle that can’t accept that this is a down year and that in everyone’s interest we should error on the side of caution until public health officials deem it “safe?”
Well, we don’t like to be fenced in or be told what to do by people who work in bureaucracies. And we’re often illogical and are prone to do things we regret later.
One of the guiding principles in this school of thought is, “It won’t happen to me.”
‘Pragmatic and cautious’: As some Americans avoid travel, others visit COVID-19 hot spots anyway
Twenty-seven percent identify as “daredevils.” Even if you factor in the relatively low incidence of infection in the population, and low risk of serious, life-threatening illness, why risk the misery that will come if you do contract the coronavirus, which is much more virulent than influenza, which you can be protected from through vaccine?
Most of the discussion around whether to travel is based on self-interest. However, José Miguel Polanco, a 27-year-old sales supervisor living in Peru, had a different take on whether to travel: “There was no question on whether to cancel the trips, it just doesn’t feel right to be out and enjoying travel when there are so many people in the Americas suffering either from health or economic problems.” He added that he has had relatives who have become ill with COVID-19. Perhaps experience with the disease makes one more sensitive to the greater good.
Dennis Archambault is vice president of Public Affairs for Authority Health.