Thoughts on Covid and Social Life

Originally written during the second Covid wave in Europe in late autumn 2020, corrections have been done since.

Estimate and Adaptive Planning

While we often prefer straight plans, adaptive planning can be needed in Covid times - similar to games. Viruses are sometimes hard to predict. One reason is that virions don’t move on their own and so their movement is mostly random. Nevertheless probabilities can be estimated. E.g. a few days before visiting the grand grand parents, going out late every evening in densely populated pubs is not the best idea. However even if all precautions are taken, there is some probability that one falls sick before the visit, in this case the right step is possibly to withdraw from social gatherings.

For larger communities (above a few thousand people) planning works better since there is less randomness than for individuals.

Increased infection probability:

• Increased Exposure to Viruses: Being in a densely populated and poorly ventilated indoor spaces.
• Increased Susceptibility to Viruses:
  • Diminished immune system (e.g. long party nights).
  • Deep inhalation causes more particles to reach the lungs (e.g. sports, high altitude).

Keeping benefits and risks in mind:

• Whether, when and what to do and care about
• Whether to take additional carefulness otherwhere. E.g. in the Tour the France 2020 not a single cyclist has caught Covid-19 [to confirm] despite sports at the limits diminishes the immune system. Likely they were able to reduce exposure to viruses by being careful and a good overall organization.

Respect and Take Care

We all should be able to live the life we want, as long that’s respecting the rest of the world doing so too. That needs compromises. Every day compromises are searched, negotiated, found and enabled - thanks to everybody! We live in groups with complex interactions, so we stands for groups of friends, families, communities, societies, countries and even us all.

Respecting others to handle and view Covid differently yields an approach with base protections: enabling people to avoid it, but not narrowing others much.

• Precautions/Protection measures in place in public spaces which everybody needs to use.
• In non general public settings respecting everybody to take/resume/go on with the lifestyle preferred - a considerate lifestyle of course. Depending on the epidemiological situation protections measures can be community/local decisions. E.g. universities provide both on campus and off campus studying.

Note: In cold seasons, overall cases need to be kept lower, since self protection is more difficult due to aerosol transmission (e.g. good fit high filtration masks) and severe Covid is much more likely in indoor dry air (heated or air-conditioned).

Communities and Societies

Many tasks and challenges are solved best or can only be solved by groups. Even small groups often need some organization, guiding and rules to work. For large groups such as societies these points are even more important. The better group members understand each other, understand the task and work together, the more liberal the settings and relaxed the rules can be.

Controlling SARS-CoV-2 severe Covid (changed 16.11.21, SARS-CoV-2 is very widespread, the important is to control clusters of severe cases) is an individual, a local and to some extent a global task. The better everybody helps, the lesser the negative effects and the fewer rules and restrictions need to be put into place.

If there are many severe cases:

• Staying out of crowds and taking care even with mild respiratory disease symptoms, a runny nose is enough reason to stay home. E.g. home office/school (e.g. reading)

  much of the knowledge for this page I acquired by reading. Thanks to everybody making knowledge and articles available!

• To cure it well, situation adapted behavior. This doesn’t mean lying in bed 24 hours, some careful and situation adapted movement (e.g. some stretching) can be beneficial for a good recovery (Movement Chapter). It is known for various virus infections that they can become persistent

  Viruses persistently infect various parts of the body. Such infections are especially common on the skin, on the mucosal surfaces in the intestine and in the respiratory tract. Usually coronavirus infections are not disease associated and even can have beneficial effects as discussed in the virome chapter. Just if they replicate to very high numbers a disease or even severe disease can be caused.

• Respecting everybody who wants or needs (either directly since in risk group or indirectly since direct/indirect contact to persons who need/want to protect) to protect to do so. Long-term effects seem to be rare but experiences are still limited. Keeping severe cases low is good for everybody and the more people help doing so the better.
• Some slowdown of life: E.g. no party weeks, going home at time. For all, including the young, a good immune system in place is important, which detects infections early, induces symptoms and clears them.