Quarantiner's Dilemma

   

Two prisoners were infected with a biological virus. They had the option of going out in the world and then dying while making a lot of other people sick. They had the option of staying in prison until they got better, after a month or so. There was also the option of staying just with each other and not going out at all. The last two choices are ours. What are we accomplishing out with other people anyway, besides making them sick? This is a rather obvious and easier Prisoner's Dilemma and with more win-win options. Never saw the point to talking with a lot of people anyway! So, quarantined me is not in any dilemma. Life as I prefer it usually, except less alone than I like it.





Covid-19 enforced seclusion time for everybody almost everywhere. No complaints about that. I think about the three-year-old daughter of my friend on remission whenever my daughter complains about no school or no play-dates. It is for kids like her that we should all distance ourselves socially. One useful piece of advice was from CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta - "We are all interconnected"

We are all interconnected, which means some of our burning Amazon Forests, African Rainforests, Indian Flora, Australian Fauna or Alaskan Salmon all make a difference to each of us. So far, it looked like only coastal areas will die first, and then the rich and powerful shall have ample time to safeguard themselves, or so it seemed! What can you do about a Virus though? It's a great equity-agent. Social Inequities have no meaning now. That is very good. However, it will still be the poor and powerless who are going to die even if everybody could potentially be infected. Maybe it won't be too dire, but experience says it will always be worse for the relatively harmless than for the powerful and/or responsible. But, what will not help anyone is Fear. Immune systems work less than their best when one is afraid, which in itself is a good reason not to be.
My daughter told someone today(on the phone) that the earth created Coronavirus because it wanted to kill us like the Dinosaurs. Great Association between Global Warming, by dinosaurs and now humans, a comet and volcanoes killing Dinosaurs and now Covid-19 people. Corollary: The Earth wants to kill us. I try to restrict her flights of fancies to a basis of science and fact, so this view of a diabolic planet is distasteful to me. After explaining how all the remote viruses are coming out because of people's actions, and not the earth's - she again went back to her stated career goal of Global Warming Stopping Scientist. Good for her! High Expectation for self might keep us unfulfilled or perhaps even anal-retentive, but never lets us settle. There is nothing more criminal, in my not-humble-but-realistic opinion, that is, than to have potential and setting the bar low to match the average. The Ice Age movies had a number of prophetic visuals about monsters waiting to be released from melting ice, like right now.


Stay safe and keep your germs to yourself. If some of us die, so it shall come to pass someday or another. But let us keep safe those most powerless by staying in. I remember no press last year and the year before about the deadlier Ebola Virus Disease (EVD), which had a prognosis of 25-90% mortality. Between 2013 and 2016 alone, 11,310 people died and the case-fatality rate was 40% in this outbreak alone. The world didn't care. Why do we care so much about a virus with a predicted mortality rate of 3.4%, at worst, for the Covid-19? Would it have something to do with the economic impact of the dead? It leaves me feeling nauseous to understand that some human life will always be more worthy than others simply because of an accident of birth. If I were the Earth, I might be justified in actually creating a virus to kill a pernicious species like ours. The Earth, thankfully is not me or a diabolic man-made God that kills to punish. It just creates life. We live to kill. Our Bad!