Even though some return to normal, here’s why some of us are ‘taking one for the team’
Are you one of the many Idahoans staying home right now during the coronavirus pandemic, wearing a mask when you need to be out and practicing social distancing wherever you go? Are you putting off that haircut, staying out of bars and restaurants, not going to church and skipping the movie theater for now?
This weekend, bars reopened under Gov. Brad Little’s Stage 3 plan for reopening, and already, as expected, we saw people crowding into the bars, not wearing masks and not really socially distancing. For many people, it was a return to life as normal, and, for all intents and purposes, the social distancing guidelines really are a farce.
“Hey, I’m doing my part,” you might be saying as you begrudge others who are doing their part to spread the coronavirus.
I’m not staying home necessarily for my sake. Of course, I don’t want to get COVID-19, but I’m not staying home and skipping that haircut because I’m afraid of getting COVID-19, myself.
The reason I’m staying home is because I don’t want to contribute to the spreading of the disease.
Yes, I see Boiseans all panting on each other while they’re pedaling away on the bike bar (God, I hate the bike bar, even in non-pandemic times), and I saw photos of people crowding into bars over the weekend, as if the coronavirus just, poof, disappeared, just as the president had predicted.
Of course, the coronavirus is still out there, waiting to surge again, and without a vaccine, it still promises to be destructive and deadly.
So while some people may be contributing to the spread of the disease, if enough of us stay home, we can still prevent a major outbreak.
Yes, we’re “taking one for the team,” and our staying home, in a sense, makes it even possible for some folks to return to normal.
Even if these folks cause small outbreaks here and there, that doesn’t mean it’s ruined all of our efforts. People will keep getting COVID-19, and we’ll more than likely continue to have small outbreaks.
But the goal here isn’t to eliminate the virus; that’s just not going to happen no matter what we do.
The goal is to make sure that we limit the spread so we don’t have a major outbreak.
Of course, now that we’ve flattened the curve, some people will — wrongly — say we overreacted because, “See, it’s not so bad.” But it’s worth repeating that more than 100,000 Americans died in the past few months, even with stay-home orders. How many more would be dead had we done nothing? How many more would die if we all decided to return to normal?
At the very least, even if a small percentage of people go back to life as normal, we’ll still limit an outbreak if a large percentage of us stay home. That’s the way we should be looking at this: As long as many of us continue to practice caution, we can prevent turning 100 people with coronavirus into 10,000 people with coronavirus.
And to some extent, I’ll bet that’s part of the calculation that epidemiologists and state officials are making as they lift restrictions, knowing that many of us will exercise caution, even though some may not.
So for now, my hair is a little longer, I’ll continue ordering groceries online and I’ll keep streaming movies at home. I look forward to the day I can return to The Flicks, get a number 2 razor cut and shop for a new backpack.
But until then, I’m going to keep doing my small part to keep an outbreak at bay.
Scott McIntosh is the opinion editor of the Idaho Statesman. You can email him at smcintosh@idahostatesman.com or call him at 208-377-6202. Follow him on Twitter @ScottMcIntosh12. Sign up for his weekly email newsletter The Idaho Way.
