Please all, and you will please none.

Aesop

Regardless of what you think about the current pandemic in Alberta I think we can all agree that our government has tried to please everyone, and in doing so has pleased no one.

Now that there is light at the end of this pandemic tunnel I’ve been thinking about what I don’t want to go ‘back to normal.’

• Masking up when you’re sick (or just staying home). In Asia it has been normal for quite awhile to wear a mask when you are even a little bit sick to protect others. And just staying home in general when sick, I remember a friend who had flawless attendance in high school. But he quite often would show up sick to maintain his streak. I wonder how many sick days of others resulted because of this.
• More outside time. The pandemic pushed a lot of us to spend more time outside, including myself. Let’s keep it this way, it’s good for us after all.
• Proper hygiene. It’s always a shock when you’re in a public bathroom and someone leaves without washing there hands. And it used to happen more often than you would think.
• Less shared snacks at events. See above on proper hygiene. Nothing like someone diving with their hand into the shared popcorn bowl.

That’s it for now, I’m sure there are more.

This quote from Yaneer Bar-Yam on evidence based science really hits home.

Evidence based science is like standing on a train track facing east saying: I won’t turn around until you prove to me there is a train coming from the west.

Yaneer Bar-Yam

So relevant in today’s current global pandemic. You can find the entire thread on Twitter which is very interesting.

“Have you been in contact with anyone who has tested positive for COVID-19?”

In the next 6-12 months a lot more people are going to be answering yes to this question.

Better add “in the last 14 days” or “and is actively sick” or there is going to be lots of confusion.

Or more conveniently people might stop telling the truth to avoid explaining their circumstances.

…it’s worth taking a few minutes to read this Medium article by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

There is going to be a wave of people saying that ‘this whole thing was blown out of proportion.’

That nothing really bad happened so what was the big fuss about?

Unfortunately these people don’t understand the power of exponentiality.

We’ll hear things like ‘the over-reaction decimated our economy.’

Actually not acting soon enough decimated our economy. Thanks to exponentiality.

Hopefully we don’t make the same mistakes next time around.