Breathing is Deadly

Today. 19 March 2020. Spot the skiers.

We’re learning, again and again and with greater confidence, that life is dangerous. At its most fundamental, being alive is a fatal condition. I’m not getting out of this alive; you aren’t either. As it pertains to diseases spread by airborne contagion, my inhalation is dangerous to me. And my exhalation is dangerous to someone else. The very act of breathing -nearly synonymous with “being alive”- is dangerous.

But, how dangerous is that next breath? We don’t know. We can understand some of the variables, but we don’t know them all. We all take risks and we all expose others to risk. If we can say that about the fundamental act of breathing, we have to say it about every damn thing we do. “I’m not a risky person” is bullshit. “I have no negative impact on my fellow humans” is bullshit. Being alive requires breathing. Breathing means inhaling and exhaling. Inhaling in a world that always has and always will contain airborne contagions is a risky proposition. Exhaling in a world that contains airborne contagions carries a great deal of responsibility. The risks and responsibilities associated with breathing were always there.

Now, there is a new contagion in the air (and on surfaces). That brings a slightly heightened level of new risks and responsibilities. But it feels like a whole new thing. It’s not a whole new thing. We’ve always assumed risk, just by being alive. We’ve always imposed risk on others. Always, and every one of us. Why is it, then, so damn surprising right now? Ignorance. We, collectively and individually, have a fucked up relationship with risk. We’re divorced from it, sheltered from it, scared of it. We act, intentionally and/or automatically about 15-20 times every minute, in a way that assumes risk and imposes it on others. But we pretend that we’re immune to it and that we are only good for one another.

This isn’t a new situation. We have always had control, with the very breath we exchange and with every other damn thing we do, over our own lives and the lives of others. But we didn’t acknowledge that. Now, we’re acknowledging that. By education, by conversation, by decree, by shame, by force. Unless your head is in the sand (and doesn’t that sound nice right now?), you have now had ample opportunity to realize that you are both vulnerable to and responsible for the health of others.

We can do things that increase our risk, and we can do things that reduce our risk. We do these things all the damn time. You put the knives in your kitchen in a heavy wooden block (and not mixed in with the spoons) to reduce your risk. You do that to reduce the risk to others. You probably aren’t going to store that knife block on a shelf over your bed. If you move to an earthquake prone area, you really aren’t going to store that knife block over your bed. Situations fucking change. The situation is changing. We have control. We don’t have any idea how much reaction is required. We can take action, but that is hard. More action is harder than less action.

Those actions have costs. But that isn’t new either. Your comfortable homeostasis pre-Covid19 wasn’t cost-free. Your life, then, would have been entirely different if you gave zero fucks about your own health or the health of others. No one gives zero fucks about their own health or the health of others. No one. This isn’t a whole new world. This is just a world where your risk and responsibility homeostasis has been disturbed. A new homeostasis will emerge. The change is damn hard. Any change is damn hard. Change is hard because we don’t have first-hand knowledge of the new state. Change is especially hard when we don’t know how much change is actually required or impending.

Yeah, I’ll make a mountain analogy. That’s what you’re here for. It’s what I do. I do professional level risk management, mainly in the mountains. I communicate and study professional level risk management, mainly in the mountains. We turn around from mountain travels, because of anticipated hazard, all the damn time. Shutting down businesses and staying at home is like turning around on a climb. On a mountain, we fricken love it it when we get validation of that choice to turn around. But we very, very, very (yes, very) infrequently get that validation. We give ourselves a margin that means we very seldom get validation. If we’re close enough to “the line” that we regularly turn around and then look over our shoulder to see the hazard materializing, we’re way, way too close. We won’t get much validation with this damn corona thing. We won’t ever really know if our efforts are worthwhile. We’ll want to know. We’ll try to know. We’ll tell ourselves that we know. But we won’t know. Get used to it. Uncertainty is as much a part of life as breathing, contagions, risk, and fucking swear words.