A Roll OF The COVID-19 Dice
If you’re like me, you’re no stranger to role-playing games. These are games like Dungeons and Dragons where the individual players create characters and put them through a scenario as part of a group. I often liken it to improvising a play with friends. Everyone creates a character with unique features and abilities, and then you tell a story together based on certain rules and settings.
One of the most engaging parts of these kinds of games is that they are dice-based. As good of a player as you might be, often times it literally comes down to a roll of the dice. There is an element of randomness to the game which makes it challenging to predict and therefore, a game.
Players compensate for this randomness through the character creation. Through the use of different equipment, skills, spells, or whatever that particular story calls for, characters can increase their chances of success in certain situations.
Example: I take a skill that allows me to navigate through the woods better than the rest of my party. In game play, I have a 60% chance of finding a safe path rather than their 30%. I still don’t have a guarantee of success, but chances are better. Maybe I also find a map in an abandoned cabin that compliments my skill. Now I have a 75% chance. If someone else in the party used it, they would have a 45% chance. Not great, but better.
Part of the fun of these types of games is that everyone has different skills and abilities and when we use them together, it makes the entire team stronger. One person is good at navigating, somebody is good at fighting, somebody knows the history of the area, and someone can heal everyone else when we did something stupid. The more we use our skills collaboratively, the more successful we’ll be.
I’m hoping I haven’t lost too many of you so far, because now is when we transition to the real-world application. This same approach of playing the percentages is what is needed with COVID-19.
From the start of this, doctors and scientists have been promoting risk reduction, not virus immunity. Nobody worth listening too said wearing a mask will make you immune to COVID-19. Wearing a mask decreases your chances of catching it. The same goes for 6-foot distance, washing your hands, and following the aisle arrows at the grocery store. None of those things is 100% protection against the virus, but the more we all do all of them, the better our percentage gets.
Many people I know, and probably people you know too, have been using the tactics as interchangeable. If I’m wearing a mask, I don’t have to stay 6 feet away. While that’s better than not doing anything, doing both would be ideal. Wearing a mask, keeping your distance, and washing your hands frequently: even better. Bonus points if you’re following the grocery arrows, (which personally I hope never go away).
This argument is nothing new. There isn’t conflicting information. There’s the information, and the complaints of those who find the information inconvenient. Confusing the two is why we are months behind most of the rest of the world.
If you die in a role-playing game, you create a new character and keep playing. This isn’t a game though. People are dying for real. Individually, we need to take every precaution we can, not one at a time, but collectively. The more of us that take those multiple measures, the higher we can get the community’s chances to beat the dice roll.
