The new normal looks like this: Social lives carefully built around “risk reduction,†rather than the strict and absolute safety of isolated sheltering.
“We need to balance our needs with what we know about coronavirus,†said Stanford University communications professor Jeff Hancock, founding director of the Stanford Social Media Lab who is studying compliance with stay-at-home orders.
“Abstinence doesn’t work. Plans that are practical and recognize basic human needs will be more successful than those plans that don’t,†he said. “Do we need a vacation in Costa Rica with lots of friends? No. Do we need intimate and social moments? Yes.â€
Risk isn’t binary, experts agreed. All-or-nothing approaches both have bad consequences.
Emerging research shows that the most dangerous settings are large gatherings of mixed social groups, where people who don’t know each other are close, sing, chat and commingle. Think San Francisco’s Outside Lands festival, where music lovers from far-flung locales are crowded together for hours. Indoor and confined areas, like bars and restaurants, are much worse than more solitary outdoor recreational activities, such as golf or hiking.
And time matters: brief moments of contact are better than hours.
soapbox needs less airtime and other sane Republicans need to weigh in).
