Told my wife, "hey, after everybody has pawed over the produce section and you come along to pick something out, picking up that orange or apple to see if it is okay then put it back and check out another one, ... how many people have done that? Plus, oh my God, they BREATHED over them! Gaaa...choke! And we touch them???
I hear you that. The only fresh food we buy are vegetables that can be washed and peeled or ones we intend to cook. No leaf lettuce for us. When we wash we use lots of running water, a little soap, a vegetable brush and when were done a quick spritz of rubbing alcohol. (The alcohol evaporates, so there is no risk of alcohol poisoning.)
As I think about my behavior and what I am willing to do and not do, I think of it in terms of probability and then the consequences. The risk of coming in contact with a sufficient quantity of C-19 virus to cause me to become ill vs. the positive outcome of my behavior, such as buying essentials at the grocery store like food and beer.
The math that addresses this risk is
conditional probability, that is the math that determines the probability of several events occurring in a sequence or together. So the question is what is the chance that I see someone in the grocery store, who has C-19, who spews sufficient virus to cause an infection, that is close enough to me that I contract the infection?
In my county, there are as of yesterday, 301 active cases of C-19 out of a population of ~470,000. The odds of randomly running into one of them is less than 1/1000. To account for error and that not all have been tested, we can assume there are 10 times the known active cases, so there are 3,000. The odds of randomly selecting one ill person is 3000/470,000 or a little less than 1/100. Assume there are 100 people in the store, then it is likely that one of them is infected, and there is a 1% chance that I might have contact with that person. Let's further assume that I come within 6 feet of 20 people in the store. The probability that one of those 20 people is the infected person is .002 or 2/1000. This is conditional probability, it is calculated by multiplying the first probability by the second probability, thus .01 * .2 = .002, or 2/1000.
This seems counter intuitive and that's a well known cognitive bias. Humans tend over estimate the probability of two independent (unrelated) events occurring at the same time. This is an example of the
conjunction fallacy.
I am not in any way advocating not following CDC guidelines, they are important in order to reduce or slow the spread of the virus. I am advocating that we approach the risks and threat in a rational and informed manner. Part of that approach requires us to be cognizant of our cognitive biases. In the example I used, if I maintain a safe social distance of 6 feet, the probability of becoming infected gets even smaller. And on those occasions when I leave the house to shop, I sanitize the cart, sanitize my hands and move quickly and deliberately through the store to get what I need and get out. Whatever I pick up I buy, so in the very unlikely event I am shedding the virus I do not leave the virus behind and to reduce the chance that I pick up the virus.
We all need to stay safe and sane through this.
Hope you find this helpful.