COVID 19: The possible and the probable.

Spire of Metropolitan Cathedral, Casco Viejo, Panama City

"Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened." ~ Thomas Hardy in Notebook, 1871.

Somewhere around 1982, we decided to spend Christmas in Victoria B.C. And because we’d be away for a few weeks, we asked a daughter of friends to nip into our apartment in Thompson, Manitoba a few times to water our houseplants. In Victoria, we became bored and decided to take the ferry to Vancouver for a few days. We stopped in at a mall—quite at random—and at lunch time, wandered up to a cafeteria on the second floor where a queue had formed. Before us was a young couple and at some point the girl turned around, and it was the girl we’d commissioned to look after our plants back in Thompson, some 2,000 Km away!

Thomas Hardy was right; there’s nothing so bizarre or unbelievable that it could never happen. In fact, given the infinity of space, the enormity of the numbers of galaxies, stars and planets, the eternity of time, the likelihood of even the strangest, most unbelievable event not happening somewhere even now would be the oddity. That is, unless in all this universe the accident of planet earth being the only one among gazillions to have the right conditions for life turns out to be a fact. But how likely is that?

An old adage says that if you put enough monkeys in a room with enough typewriters, they will eventually write the Bible, simply by their random pecking at keys. The use of enough makes this a tautology; if no Bible has been written, it’s because they haven’t been given enough time. Is this literally true? Or is it just a way of illustrating 1) the randomness of the universe, and/or 2) the lack of constraints on what shape probability will take. If you roll a die 1000 times you’d likely bet that the number of times each number turns up would be about the same. But if you roll one die 6 times, it’s not only possible but not unusual to have the 6-side come up all 6 times.

It will happen eventually, only because it’s possible.

The odds against winning a lottery are, they say, slimmer than the odds of being struck by lightening. Yet someone always wins. And even the man who goes out in a thunderstorm thinking the odds favour his safe return will eventually be struck by lightning if he persists in this behaviour. Or not. It’s not probable but it is possible that he’ll never be struck by lightning but that his neighbour who stays indoors during storms is victimized by lightning . . . multiple times!

Bizarre and unexpected as they may be, things don’t happen or not happen because of probability; they happen because of possibility. The events we consider bizarre, even miraculous by the odds, happen all the time. When they do, it’s easy for us to postulate a guiding hand . . . how else could something so unlikely happen?

When we do something—or avoid doing something—on the strength of probability or improbability, we’re gambling; we do it all the time. We get into a car and drive to the city because we know that statistically, for every 10,000 or so cars making that trip, very few end up in a crash. But my car crashing on this trip is possible and friends hearing of my misfortune—should it happen—would be shocked, but probably not surprised.

Everything we need to know about cause and effect, probability and possibility, degrees of risk can, of course, be learned by paying attention in Math class, or by thinking deeply about the COVID 19 pandemic and people’s and governments’ reactions to it. To this point, it’s become clear that the possibility of becoming infected exists world-wide. The probability varies according to a number of factors including the ability/non-ability to survive in relative isolation. So far, the most common approach has been to lower the probability by reducing human contact and possible transmission of the virus. Cases documented have shown that even when probability is muscled down to near zero, the possibility can’t be ignored; a man related that his bout of COVID 19 infection could only be traced—as far as he could tell—to the touching of a doorknob. It was possible. It happened.

As we attempt to normalize our world again, we’re called upon as individuals to assess our risk of becoming vectors for the virus. Every unguarded human-to-human contact contains the possibility of setting off a geometrically-spreading chain of infection. Indeed, that’s the only modus operandi of the COVID 19 spread as far as we know. People will undoubtedly respond differently. Some will see the loosening of guidelines for gatherings as a signal that the storm has passed and its business as usual again. Some will continue to isolate until they’re satisfied that the probability of infection is so low that caution no longer makes sense. The majority, I think, will vacillate, alternating between mask wearing and not wearing, for instance, thereby opening the possibility and the probability doors wider than necessary.

Apparently we assess risk differently; as I write this, New Brunswick—a province that was on the verge of being COVID 19 free—went back into social distancing mode because a doctor had traveled to Quebec, returned and continued treating patients, bringing upwards of 100 people into contact with the virus he’d picked up in Quebec. Not only did he break cross-border, isolation-after-travel protocols, but he suspended his professional judgment and banked on the low probability of catching COVID 19 . . . and ended up playing Russian roulette with the health of many.

To make a province and finally the country free of COVID 19, we must make our decisions on the basis of what’s possible, not what’s probable. If necessary, those too uninformed or too defiant to stay with the prevention program may well have to be subjected to severe penalties. Come to think of it, the New Brunswick doctor might well be subject to a charge of criminal negligence and/or criminal negligence causing death depending on the consequences of his error. But what about the person breaking protocols without any harm done? Would that be like getting a ticket for speeding in a school zone even if you didn’t hit a child?

The risks with COVID 19 are not like the risk one takes when setting out in a boat on a stormy day. With the virus, any risk I take imposes a risk on anyone with whom I have contact. That alone must give me pause before I leave my mask at home and say, “Jeez, it’ll never happen.”

“Nothing is too strange to have happened,” Hardy wrote.

"When there's a professional in the house, don't go to your horse for advice."