We make thousands of decisions every day. Under pandemic conditions, many of these mundane decisions have suddenly become life or death choices. No wonder anxiety is rippling through society.
Should we: get needed medical care; go to the park, see friends and family; go shopping; order-in; eat out; or send our kids back to school? Decisions must be made. New Yorkers, for whom eating out and ordering-in are practically rights of citizenship, have mixed feelings about that privilege. See the results of this recent nextdoor.com poll:
We need to conform to the CDC recommendations and local rules about mask-wearing and social distancing. But, the rules are not granular enough for many of these daily decisions. For example, I can maintain 6 feet of separation or wear a mask at an outdoor restaurant. Yet, it is not obvious that going out to eat is a good idea for me.
In an ideal world, we would make these decisions rationally, by comparing the estimated benefits to the expected costs and risks. We would have all the facts. We would know how susceptible we are to infection, based on the activity in question, and our physiology, including whether we are at “higher risk”. At least, there would be enough testing data to tell us how dangerous it really is out there.
Of course, we have little truly relevant information and guidance.
The risk of catching the virus is unknown. The information we have is both overwhelming and ambiguous at best. Maps of outbreaks and loads of statistics like positive test rates and cases per capita won’t tell us whether we can go to the grocery store. The picture is further muddied by mixed messages from political leaders who may be more interested in their re-election than our safety.
Avoid bad short-cuts.
And yet, we must decide. The trouble is, when a decision is hard to make, we will substitute an easier one. We will use short-cuts, such as what our neighbors are doing or what the government is encouraging us to do, rather than thinking for ourselves.
This is understandable, but dangerous.
In the absence of reliable information, analysis, and leadership, we are left with our gut feelings and decision-making short-cuts. Yet, in a novel pandemic, we lack the experience and expertise to form reliable and unbiased intuitions or know which short-cuts work. Unreliable short cuts include what the neighbors are doing or what we feel good about doing. We might not be careful enough, because we believe that “it can’t happen to me” or because of quarantine-fatigue. Or we might be over-vigilant, because the mental image of people suffering, perhaps loved ones, make the risks seem greater than they really are.
The “How could you be so stupid?” rule.
How to decide? First, follow the advice of the CDC and our doctors. They know the science, even as it evolves.
Second, we need to accept our deep ignorance of the risks and the “irreducible uncertainty” of our present world. Who could make accurate decisions under these circumstances? Being more mindful, realistic and forgiving about the context of our decisions may reduce anxiety. It can also help us avoid bad approximations or analysis paralysis.
Third, we can apply a risk management rule that was famous in the 90s at Citibank, where I used to work. We called it the “how could you be so stupid” test. In short, even a trade that wound up losing money could be justifiable, provided you had good reasons for doing the trade and knew when it was time to exit. Indeed, any decision can be a reasonable one, even if the outcome is bad.
How do we use this rule in a pandemic? Slow down and make sure you have good reasons for taking a risk. Imagine a bad outcome for yourself and others. Would you still feel it had been a reasonable risk to take, based on what you knew at the time? Here is an example. I am privileged to be able to take daily walks in the park. My reason is that I hope that the mental health benefits more than offset the limited health risks. I am confident that should I contract the virus (or accidentally infect someone else) as a result, that I will not say to myself, “how could you have been so stupid?” In contrast, eating at a crowded restaurant, even outdoors, does not pass this test for me.
Try a little gratitude and forgiveness.
We were living in an uncertain and dangerous world even before the pandemic. Perhaps we can feel grateful that the virus has illuminated this for us. We can use this knowledge of our ignorance to hold our leaders accountable while we accept our fallibility. We can be forgiving of our decision-making and tolerant of others’. We do what reasonable humans have always done, make decisions as best we can anyway.
This article originally appeared on Forbes.com on July 14, 2020.