Will you be going out (movies, restaurants, etc.) once the pandemic is over?

5 points by talmr ↗ HN
I personally miss going out and about and cannot wait to hit my favorite restaurants and venues once this is over.

6 comments

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At some point in the next six months, I'm going start ignoring restrictions on dining and most other extreme restrictions. I will have to, both for my own sanity and because more other people will have started doing also, for their sanity.

I hope, that this will be at the point that quarantining, testing, contact-tracing, and so-forth will have driven the infection down rate down to a very low level. And I'm hoping it won't be after the infection and fatalities have reached a maximum level due a premature opening up.

And I'm also hoping it will not be at a point where the state has reduced the infection rate by quarantining but has done nothing else and so left the rate to shoot up again when people indeed can't stand the situation anymore. However this later option sadly seems most likely given the idiocy, confusion and bureaucratic paralysis that seems to prevail so far.

If you are young and healthy, you have a good chance of surviving COVID19 and the next coronavirus. I am not as healthy and cannot take that risk.
Here’s how a 15-year-old asked me: If the fatality rate is 1% (https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...), how many jelly beans would you eat from a bowl of 100 jelly beans when one of them will kill you?

What if you’re craving jelly beans? Or are indifferent? Or don’t like them?

What if it’s 1/100 subway rides, or times you use an ATM, or days at the office? How many times would you do it with a 1/100 chance of a quick and miserable death, plus becoming a spreader until you have symptoms?

Maybe you are personally at lower risk. Or maybe you are not. How sure are you?

I will wait for the vaccine.

Once I’ve been either vaccinated or confirmed to have antibodies, sure. But the last thing I want on my conscience is the idea that I could have been responsible for spreading it (or starting a spread) to someone who ended up dying from it. Doesn’t matter how bored I am now. No film, no meal is worth that.
Nope.

Already worked from home.

Didn't really go out in public much before the pandemic, other than a biweekly grocery run.

I can make a better meal, spiced to my particular tastes better than any restaurant. I have enough books, movies, and games at home to fill a lifetime with entertainment (not even counting the internet). Friends have been scattered to the wind for decades -- phone calls and messaging are sufficient.

The wilderness is still open, so my solo backcountry hiking has remained unchanged...

If anything, I've been taken by surprise to find that people find going into public a necessity for their mental health instead of a detriment.