Actually as a southern boy, I will have to disagree. Y’all is second person singular. Plural is all y’all. 
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We will just agree to disagree on this point. I evaluate risk for a living. Its my fundamental business. Look at the situation, evaluate the risks, understand what they are, actually plot it out, know what the tail is, then make a decision. I’ve been quite successful at it. Been dining out for the past year. Haven’t had any issues. But that’s me and what I’m comfortable doing. I also participated in youth sports. Broke a few bones. But it gives me great stories to tell. Bars I agree with you about.
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Not according to my 11th grade English teacher.
I do not know the grammar - but I do know the geography.
We have reached The South, when people stop referring to us as “you folks” and it becomes “y’all”. As in “Are you folks/y’all ready to order?”
By the by, I am a fan of the aforementioned Mr Keith.
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Mr. Keats is pulling appendages.
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Then you know it boils down to probability and impact as independent variables. The impact of COVID is huge. The environmental context is that many many people don’t pay enough attention and those who eat out likely engage in other risky behaviors, raising the probability of occurrence. If the impact was a hangnail I’d eat out. As things stand STFH.
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We all have different risk tolerances. Some people put their money in a CD at the bank, others buy emerging market bonds. I don’t think I’m being reckless. I have family members that are doctors and others that are scientists. I’ve talked to them a lot. I’m a data and numbers guy. I’ve built and reviewed models to look at the probability of all sorts of events. While the math is sometimes a beautiful thing to look at, it comes down to a decision of what to do. For some the event risk is quite bad, but for the vast majority its not a hangnail but it isn’t much worse than any other illness and in many cases even less so. Some will avoid all risk, other’s will embrace it and some will try to balance it all and do things to mitigate. The irony of the advice of STFH is that you can do that because others are not. We can work from home and order in food or what not because someone else isn’t at home.
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A problem in this discussion is that we are lumping together all of our situations. I would guess that these are far more dissimilar than alike. Infection varies greatly among as well as within our communities, as does mask adherence and other personal safely practices. In my community and certainly neighborhood, there are levels of risk. Many here mention that they haven’t visited a grocer in pandemic; we go several times a week…but to certain stores at certain times. San Francisco has been aggressive in setting up “parklet” semi-enclosed dining areas in parking spaces outside participating restaurants. They are extremely popular. Indoor dining is sticking its toe in the water. We have had one dinner guest recently, have accepted an invitation for the weekend. As Mr. Keats says, it’s all about personal risk assessment. There are no absolute right and wrongs. You gotta do what you gotta do.
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Oof, so true. And please let’s remember that so many around us continue to lose friends and/or family members due to asymptomatic spread.
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Heck, I can remember using “ed”, though I might be hard-pressed to remember how to do so now. On our Mac I use a combination of MS Word and vi, vi particularly on HTML files (Yes, I also write raw HTML in an editor.)
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What has become a pet peeve for me, is that I as a slightly passive aggressive Canadian, will say “excuse me” , “pardon me” or “sorry” with some tone, to a person who gets into my 2 m radius of personal space, cuts in line at the store, gets to close when lining up behind me, or reaches in front of me to get something from a shelf or freezer at the store , and their collective response during the past year has usually been "No worries ", or the silent treatment. So, sometimes, they receive the stinkeye,a huff, or a JFC under my breath, after that.
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It’s delicious how the intent of these three phrases can be so drastically modified by facial expression and tone of voice.
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This is not my business, but my business does include being a “role model” and a “leader”.
Does what you’re describing just include the risk for an individual, or for "a community "?
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I tried to edit my post, but got an error message about urls. Here’s what I’d rather say.
Quote
“I’ve built and reviewed models to look at the probability of all sorts of events. While the math is sometimes a beautiful thing to look at, it comes down to a decision of what to do. For some the event risk is quite bad, but for the vast majority its not a hangnail but it isn’t much worse than any other illness and in many cases even less so.”
Does what you’re describing just include the risk for an individual, or for "a community "?
Assessing risk and benefits in medicine is part of business, but my business also includes being a “role model” and a “leader”. I am also sometimes tasked with things some might consider "public health ".
I don’t love it.
This is at the core of disagreements with people I love. I don’t think either of us is right or wrong. I understand others see it, and live it differently.
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Such an occurance with me often generates a response of “You’re welcome”. If course, I don’t do the heavy sarcasm with folk who may be knife carriers or, indeed, anyone who looks like they could beat the shit out of me. Which does pretty much limit my preferred response to octagenarians.
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I have read too many books by prominent epidemiologists and science reporters, both aimed at educating a lay audience, to approach being in public with anything less than maximum stringency, even after vaccination. I will not consider indoor dining and will be masked for at least the rest of this year. Probably for years. Disadvantaged nations won’t have widespread vaccination for several years, and in the interim, they will be hotbeds for the development of new variants which we can only hope will be susceptible to the vaccine antibodies.
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And staying home and insisting on curbside makes the lives of those who cannot WFH safer. Curbside doesn’t ONLY making life safer for consumers, but for workers also.
We agree. If people would actually stop talking about masks, and distance, and lockdowns and actually COMPLY we’d be past this by now (<- opinion).
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I’m just talking about myself. How you may be impacted by illness is only known by yourself. I have the fortune of good health. I rarely get sick. I was that annoying 8 year old who got the perfect attendance certificate because I never got sick. I was an athlete through high school and college. I worked out regularly at the gym pre-covid. Then I became one of those nuts who bought a Peloton when I could no longer get to the gym. (By the way, I love that machine) So based on what I read and people I talked to if I got sick with no other health conditions, I wasn’t likely to have a severe illness. Your comment about being a role model and leader actually leads into the rest of my story. I am supposedly a senior manager of my firm meaning I have a fancy title. My firm is a global organization. The firm went into remote mode with the rest of the world in March 2020. I hunkered down at home like everyone else that could at the time. But in order to keep functioning, a core group was asked if they felt comfortable enough to come back to the office quickly. I figure if the clerks at the grocery store are coming in and making sure we have food to buy, I can go into work to make sure critical parts of the economy keep functioning. So I’ve been going to work almost 5 days a week to the office since the middle of 2020. Even take the subway everyday. I wear a mask and try to maintain physical distance. Was easy to do last summer, getting more difficult if not impossible now as there are just more people out. Been getting tested multiple times a week. The insides of my nose are quite tender now. There are actually a lot of others like me coming into work in the City on a regular basis to keep the lights on in a manner of speaking. We have more staff in now. You couldn’t ask people to come in if you weren’t prepared to come in. As I was heading out into the world everyday taking the subway to get to work, I figured if I was already taking the risk of leaving home, I might as well get a meal and a drink when I could.
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I live several blocks from a major Asian community. For years, Asian shoppers have worn masks. It is part of their culture since SARS. Not a big deal, nothing imposed on them, something they do because it has made good sense in their recent history. Pretty smart, I’d say. Now, of course, we don’t notice them because we have become them.
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We also have been out in our community. My criterion is time. How long I am willing to be in a stationary position with another person in close, under 6’, quarters. In my very unscientific reasoning, it is being in close contact or in same ventilation slipstream for over an arbitrary 15 minutes that becomes worrisome FOR ME. If I can move about, with mask, I really have had no fear.
