It's impossible to determine your personal COVID-19 risks and frustrating to try

“How risky is being indoors with our 10-year-old granddaughter without masks? We have plans to have birthday tea together. Are we safe?”

What a strange question.

You are always under a risk in each situation of your daily life.

If you ask, are we safe? The answer is No.

You are not safe in anything.

In all situations of your daily life something can happen.

This here is the correct question to ask:

It’s much more practical to ask: What can I do to reduce the risk?

That is exactly what we are all doing every day in our daily lives. We reduce the risks.

But we also understand, that we can not bring down the risks to zero, and that there is always a certain amount of risks which we have to accept in all situation of our daily lives.

And that also counts for Covid.

Live your life and reduce the risks.

What does it mean for Covid to reduce the risks?

This is up to each person and each person should decide by themselves.

Some say I eat good and healthy food to reduce the risks, some say I wear mask 24h a day, some say I take the vaccine, some even say there is no risk...and so on...

Everybody should decide by themselves and evaluate by themselves what is the best acceptable personal action to reduce the risk.

*maybe you should just answer their original question, as to how risky it is.*

I also recommend you to read my post clearly.

Please read this from my original post. It is the third sentence from the top:

If you ask, are we safe? The answer is No.

If you ask, are we safe?

Um, no one asked that mate. Except you

Sorry, you really make me confused.

Did you even read the article???

The first sentence from the article...

*“How risky is being indoors with our 10-year-old granddaughter without masks? We have plans to have birthday tea together.* Are we safe?”

My post is related to that question from the article.

My recommendation to you:

No.1, Please read first the article

No.2, Then make a comment related to the article or my post, after you clearly understand the content of the article and the content of my post.

If you don't understand something, don't worry you are free to ask anytime.

You are not safe in anything.

Common sense allows people to understand the question is aimed to evaluate the degree of risk of a situation according to what experts know about it. Why would anybody ask it if there is no situation ever where the answer is yes?

What does it mean for Covid to reduce the risks?

This is up to each person and each person should decide by themselves.

The problem is when people decide based on false or misleading information being propagated by people that have a hidden interest in others acting with unnecessarily high risks, or by people that fail to understand the facts and push this misunderstanding on others, for example by thinking covid vaccines are not effective because they are not 100% effective like the other vaccines (a falsehood).

Everybody should decide by themselves and evaluate by themselves what is the best acceptable personal action to reduce the risk.

For this to be actually positive it is necessary to have veridic information to make those decisions, this means giving to the experts (and the evidence they present) a much higher degree of trust than what people without the expertise (or that have presented false, misleading information).

The person asking about wearing masks with their grandchild is obviously suffering from expert-induced crippling hypochondria though, which is really sad to see.

Experts simply issue recommendations and advice based on objective evidence, that do not induce by itself "crippling hypochondria", the question itself is not prolematic either, a responsible person looking for personalized guidance to asses the risk on a specific situation is something positive, she may already have an idea about how safe is to do something, but being something important asking an expert for confirmation is not wrong or negative.

Risk? LOL Life is full of risks, I'm not going to let a virus dictate how I live my life.

from a woman named Debby in California

Of course, California.

Risk? LOL Life is full of risks, I'm not going to let a virus dictate how I live my life.

Liu Jianlun-ism is not considered a positive way of living, at least in comparison with having a minimum of consideration for others and being rational about the risk you represent for yourself and others.

Liu Jianlun-ism is not considered a positive way of living, at least in comparison with having a minimum of consideration for others and being rational about the risk you represent for yourself and others.

I'm really impressed by your devotion to whatever the so-called 'experts' say despite being mistaken and proven wrong countless times. I don't agree with you but I respect your opinion, that said, I don't see why I need to be overly cautious to the point of losing my freedom just so a random hypochondriac feels a bit safer.

I'm not a doctor, but I'm sure doctors get dumb questions all the time, and this is just one case. You think they can assess it and give you an answer like 9-10.5% chance? And you'd trust him?

Common sense allows people to understand the question is aimed to evaluate the degree of risk of a situation according to what experts know about it. Why would anybody ask it if there is no situation ever where the answer is yes?

Incomprehensible.

The problem is when people decide based on false or misleading information being propagated by people that have a hidden interest in others acting with unnecessarily high risks, or by people that fail to understand the facts and push this misunderstanding on others, for example by thinking covid vaccines are not effective because they are not 100% effective like the other vaccines (a falsehood).

Sounds like a conspiracy theory.

El RataToday  07:35 pm JST

I'm really impressed by your devotion to whatever the so-called 'experts' say despite being mistaken and proven wrong countless times. I don't agree with you but I respect your opinion, that said, I don't see why I need to be overly cautious to the point of losing my freedom just so a random hypochondriac feels a bit safer.

Excellent point.

And we never get to learn who these "experts" really are other than that they are "experts".

It takes a lot to recognize not being able to understand 3 very clear lines of texts, what is the part that confused you? it should be simple that asking for the level of safety do not imply it is absolutely safe no matter what, or that you could only call a situation safe if there is no risk of anything.

Propagating misleading information do not require any conspiracy either, people do it all by themselves, be it by ignorance or personal gain.

The trick Is finding actual medical experts to rely upon.

Many people make the mistake of blindly following the word of non-scientific institutes, such as the agency known as WHO.

Thankfully, many Asian countries, such as China, ignored the advice of that agency. Remember this "advice"?

WHO stands by recommendation to not wear masks if you are not sick or not caring for someone who is sick

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/30/world/coronavirus-who-masks-recommendation-trnd/index.html

Many people make the mistake of blindly following the word of non-scientific institutes, such as the agency known as WHO.

The WHO is a scientific institute and is recognized as a scientific authority by other scientific institutions around the world, how else can it become a scientific authority?

The whole point of being a scientific authority is that their recommendations and conclusions are taken with more importance, this means they come with a valid appeal to authority.

WHO stands by recommendation to not wear masks if you are not sick or not caring for someone who is sick

This does not prove the advice of the WHO should be ignored, having no information about the efficacy of mask at the very beginning of the pandemic was something common to all the scientific institutions of the world, coupled with the described scarcity it would mean recommending something without scientific data to support it fully knowing it would make impossible for masks to be worn in the few situations where the evidence of efficacy was already there.

The WHO is a scientific institute and is recognized as a scientific authority by other scientific institutions around the world, how else can it become a scientific authority?

Medical professional do not even rely on the WHO advice, because it is an agency, according to its own website (unless you know some secret information others don't).

https://www.who.int/about

This does not prove the advice of the WHO should be ignored

Medical professionals know the Covid crisis would be much worse if the world relied on that advice.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/30/world/coronavirus-who-masks-recommendation-trnd/index.html

Medical professional do not even rely on the WHO advice, because it is an agency, according to its own website (unless you know some secret information others don't).

Do you have any source for this idea of yours? because manuals and recommendations by the WHO still base a lot of the guidelines and regulations that say what is what medical professionals should do in their work.

And as said in the other topic where you repeat this false idea, institutions can be agency and scientific at the same time, and in order to become a recognized scientific authority it is indispensable for the institution to be scientific in the first place.

Medical professionals know the Covid crisis would be much worse if the world relied on that advice.

Lack of evidence and scarcity is the one that originated the advice, no scientific institution in the world had data driven recommendations for masks at that time, and scarcity mean recommending the general population to wear masks would have made hospitals and clinics to stop using them, that would make it much worse advice precisely because any scientific institution can only recommend things after scientific data is there to support the decision.

Do you have any source for this idea of yours? because manuals and recommendations by the WHO still base a lot of the guidelines and regulations that say what is what medical professionals should do in their work.

Do you have any source for this idea of yours that medical professionals rely on WHO advice?

Lack of evidence and scarcity is the one that originated the advice, no scientific institution in the world had data driven recommendations for masks at that time, and scarcity mean recommending the general population to wear masks would have made hospitals and clinics to stop using them, that would make it much worse advice precisely because any scientific institution can only recommend things after scientific data is there to support the decision.

China and Japan rejected the "advice" of the WHO agency, and instead followed the advice of scientific institutions and scientific experts.

China rejected the advice of the WHO and spread the pandemic on the world, Japan did the opposite and it has been doing fine in comparison with the average in the world. The WHO is an authority on health matters of the world and it does not take a doctor to know it.

thaonephilToday  10:22 pm JST

China rejected the advice of the WHO and spread the pandemic on the world, Japan did the opposite and it has been doing fine in comparison with the average in the world. The WHO is an authority on health matters of the world and it does not take a doctor to know it.

Correct--China rejected WHO's advice that masks were not necessary.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/30/world/coronavirus-who-masks-recommendation-trnd/index.html

And calling WHO and "authority" is just an opinion, especially when it refers to itself as an "agency".

If I were ill, I would seek treatment from a medical doctor; I would not seek medical advice from an insurance agent.

But to each his own!

Rejecting something in spite of lack of evidence is not something that can be done regularly, in this case it could be done because in China there was no scarcity (Japan never disobeyed the WHO).

As mentioned, this disobedience is part of the reasons why China did not act according to well kwnon guidelines for the reporting and isolation of suspicious cases of emerging infectious diseases that ended up causing the pandemic to spread around the world. These recommendations is what make the WHO an authority according to the experts.

Is your argument now that the WHO is an insurance agent? because that makes even less sense than saying China acted correctly by letting the pandemic spread.