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May the odds be ever in your favour..

29 replies

swg1 · 05/10/2020 10:03

For people who are struggling with "but if I'm doing X this already puts me at a large amount of risk so I might as well do Y", try thinking of it as the Hunger Games.

Every social interaction gives you a certain amount of slips. School gives you 30 slips daily. Going to work in an office, 20 slips daily. Going to the pub, 20 slips. Going to a crowded football match, 50 slips. Visiting a friend outdoors, 1 slip. Visiting a friend indoors, 3 slips. Everything has a price. And no, having a slip is not a death sentence - everyone is going to need a certain amount of slips to live.

The idea is not to reduce your slips to zero, it is to keep them generally down. So, the price of sending your kid to school every day? Probably worth it. But if you are also going to the pub, inviting all your mates back to your house and so forth, then the amount of accumulated slips becomes overwhelming and sooner or later the odds are not in your favour.

(It's worth noting that I suspect the problem with pubs is on average very little to do with pubs themselves but more to do with the fact that the average person walking into a crowded pub right now is less likely to be viewing risk this way. So each one of them will have a higher than normal amount of accumulated slips, they are more likely to be carrying it in, and having carried it in are more likely to be visiting other places where they can spread it. This is unfortunate as there is absolutely nothing the pubs can do to prevent this.)

OP posts:
Leafy12 · 05/10/2020 10:28

Try thinking of our daily life like the Hunger Games? Gosh...are we there already?

frozendaisy · 05/10/2020 11:20

Or perhaps your kid only gets close enough for long enough to 6 slips.

And you go to the pub and only get close enough for long enough to the bar waiter us that 1 slip.

Or the other way your kid's 6 slips two of them have households of a 100 slips each are you now at 6 or 204 slips? The bar waiter has served 30 others before you today do you add their slips or their slip-slips?

Pointless exercise unless we know the full extent and amount of slips to include.

FourPlasticRings · 05/10/2020 11:28

I get what you're saying, OP. It's a tad patronising and convoluted though, and I don't think it'll change any minds. People who peddle the, 'In for a penny, in for a pound' thought process are basically just looking for excuses for what they were going to do anyway, they're not making decisions based on it.

It's kind of like the geniuses who say that unless you live like Stone Age man, you've no right to comment on them leaving their hot-tub on 24/7 just in case they have a desire to get into it immediately.

RedskyAtnight · 05/10/2020 11:46

Agree bit convoluted but this is the reason that it's not ok for you child to meet a large group of children out of school, just because they happen to be in the same (not magic) bubble.

If you interact with a person 5 times, then it doesn't mean it's risk free to meet them for an 6th time. It still increases your likelihood of transmitting infection between yourselves.

IncludeWomenInTheSequel · 05/10/2020 11:48

The papers were punting this a few weeks ago as a suggested way the government were going to try to rein in socialising, i.e. you get a certain amount of contacts per week to use up.

Heffalooomia · 05/10/2020 11:52

I think this is a useful way to look at it ....after the war we had rationing of food and other goods now we have rationing of social contact
I'm not personally bothered because I am an introspective reclusive sort of person and this is an excuse to do what I like doing anyway 😊

swg1 · 05/10/2020 12:15

@frozendaisy

Or perhaps your kid only gets close enough for long enough to 6 slips.

And you go to the pub and only get close enough for long enough to the bar waiter us that 1 slip.

Or the other way your kid's 6 slips two of them have households of a 100 slips each are you now at 6 or 204 slips? The bar waiter has served 30 others before you today do you add their slips or their slip-slips?

Pointless exercise unless we know the full extent and amount of slips to include.

But that's exactly why it's a risk factor and not a certainty.

If I told you that exactly 100 slips you get covid19 no doubt you'd stop at 99. That would be absolute risk, a hard stopping point beyond which you have gone too far. But it doesn't work like that. What I can tell you is that at 80 slips you have a higher chance than at 20.

I mean if I wanted to be really accurate I would tell you to take the cases per 100,000 in your area and then use that as a multiplier for the amount of people you meet in given situation and take away a percentage based on things such as "wearing a mask", "being outside", "given distance" but no-one's going to do that before going to the pub.

OP posts:
KitKatastrophe · 05/10/2020 12:33

Pretty patronising OP.

Mindymomo · 05/10/2020 12:45

I think it’s a good idea, especially for those who are not going out at all and still believe the minute they go out, they will catch covid.

RaspberryToupee · 05/10/2020 13:02

But in the Hunger Games, different districts had different risk to entering the Hunger Games. District 1 were career competitors, they wanted to enter the hunger games regardless of their risk to life as they were so certain they were strong enough to win and the risk to life is minimal. The people you describe in pubs (which isn’t every person visiting a pub) are so sure the risk to their life is minimal that they are basically career competitors. You won’t convince them otherwise.

For everyone in the other districts, we increase our slips as we need to to survive. It’s the balance between your family surviving in the district versus your child surviving in the hunger games. Either way it’s shit but if someone needs to increase their slips so they can survive, then so be it.

frozendaisy · 05/10/2020 13:04

I get the idea, but we have 2 kids in two different big schools. So I just can't begin to calculate whether we are over our definite number of slips already.

We don't over socialise, we keep pub visits to just the family and our local the landlords are very strict with their Covid system.

Mr has to go work but his company is far more paranoid than us.

What else to do? Are we over our slips? More than some, less than some that have a work and school household.

Until bossed into it I am not going to stop seeing a couple of friends one at a time right now. But I trust them as well their slips are equal or fewer than ours.

We, of course, could still catch Covid-19 putting petrol in the car. As could anyone. Only takes one superspreader invected slip.

picklemewalnuts · 05/10/2020 13:12

I have very very few slips.
I'm not going to double/triple them by going to the pub, even if my total of slips remains very low.

If I were a teacher and my slips were already pretty numerous, I'd probably go to the pub. What's a few more slips when I already have loads.

Heffalooomia · 05/10/2020 13:16

If I have 10 slips and my friend has 10 slips, does that mean that if I meet my friend I now have 10 + 10 slips, 20 slips
Or does it mean that I now have 10 x 10 slips, 100 slips
Everyone's slips are multiplied together surely?
We all have to exist in separate test tubes.... it's the only way 👀

OneFiveFour · 05/10/2020 13:19

Isn't that all risk?

i.e. if I cross 50 roads, all other factors being equal, I will have a greater risk of being hit by a car than if I crossed 10. Only, this is life and all other factors are never equal. One pub is not equal to another. One school not equal to another, and so on.

I am not sure a Hunger Games analogy helps make risk clearer tbh...

HereWeGoAHen · 05/10/2020 13:19

@picklemewalnuts funny you say that- I have a good friend who is a teacher and I thought would be quite cautious over social distancing etc. But when another friend of ours advised she wasn't feeling great and maybe shouldn't meet up with us, it was teacher friend who said "come anyway, I spend every day with loads of kids- if I'm getting it, I'm getting it".

swg1 · 05/10/2020 13:20

@RaspberryToupee

But in the Hunger Games, different districts had different risk to entering the Hunger Games. District 1 were career competitors, they wanted to enter the hunger games regardless of their risk to life as they were so certain they were strong enough to win and the risk to life is minimal. The people you describe in pubs (which isn’t every person visiting a pub) are so sure the risk to their life is minimal that they are basically career competitors. You won’t convince them otherwise.

For everyone in the other districts, we increase our slips as we need to to survive. It’s the balance between your family surviving in the district versus your child surviving in the hunger games. Either way it’s shit but if someone needs to increase their slips so they can survive, then so be it.

Entirely right which is why aiming for zero slips is unrealistic. We need to eat, we need to exercise, we need to survive. Not even in the national hard lockdown did we manage zero slips. (I mean you potentially could by going full out nuclear bunker but right now probably not worth it. Get back to me on that if this goes Mad Max on us though..) So, it's not about getting zero slips, it's about being conscious that actually each action does involve a small additional risk and just because your kid is in school is no reason to give up entirely.
OP posts:
Heffalooomia · 05/10/2020 13:26

If I'm getting it I'm getting it
Getting it is not a binary on or off thing though, is it 🤔
you can get a light dose with a small viral load or a big dose with heavy viral load
If I'm getting it I want to get a light dose that I can recover from easily

Lumene · 05/10/2020 13:28

This:

I get what you're saying, OP. It's a tad patronising and convoluted though, and I don't think it'll change any minds.

picklemewalnuts · 05/10/2020 13:28

[quote HereWeGoAHen]@picklemewalnuts funny you say that- I have a good friend who is a teacher and I thought would be quite cautious over social distancing etc. But when another friend of ours advised she wasn't feeling great and maybe shouldn't meet up with us, it was teacher friend who said "come anyway, I spend every day with loads of kids- if I'm getting it, I'm getting it". [/quote]
Absolutely. Individual risks look small in comparison to the accumulated risk you already carry.

Unless you carry very little risk, in which case the additional risk looks massive.

miimblemomble · 05/10/2020 14:07

I don’t disagree with the theory, bug until you can put objective numbers to it, it won’t convince people.

If I’m choosing to “spend” my slips, I need to know how many I have to begin with and what specific choices will cost me. Otherwise it’s down to subjective, individual assessments of risk - and we all know how great humans are at making those.

LH1987 · 05/10/2020 14:38

What is a slip? I have googled and can’t find it! Sorry, not the point of the thread, but I have to ask.

JesusInTheCabbageVan · 05/10/2020 14:49

@LH1987

What is a slip? I have googled and can’t find it! Sorry, not the point of the thread, but I have to ask.
Everyone in the districts had a certain number of slips (except I don't think they were called that. Tokens, maybe? Can't remember) which went into the lottery. You could take extra slips in exchange for food or fuel. The more slips you had, the greater your chances of getting picked for the games.

Anyway, it's one way of looking at it I suppose. Can I be Katniss?

LH1987 · 05/10/2020 14:51

@JesusInTheCabbageVan, thank you!

IncludeWomenInTheSequel · 05/10/2020 14:58

I do this already a bit subconsciously; we had a week where we saw a lot of people and I began to feel a bit twitchy and pulled back.

We're generally keeping fairly low profile overall really.

ChardonnaysPetDragon · 05/10/2020 15:01

Or like slimming world.

You have your syns and you budget around.

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