Perfect information and risk

I find that I use my economics background from undergrad an awful lot as an adult.

Of course, it's not like I'm reviewing my papers and tests about tort remedies, but I think the mindset that economics promotes is a very good thing.

For example, in my decision to forego teaching full-time 16 years ago 1, I definitely considered the opportunity costs of working; what I would be giving up if I worked full-time.
Regardless of what decision a person makes, there is always a cost.

I considered the tangible benefits/costs (more income versus more childcare expenses and fewer savings) and the intangible benefits/costs (memories with my children versus professional neglect).

A lot of times we think about costs only in terms of money, but there are lots of costs.
You know the saying, "Time is money."
But there are psychological costs and physical costs and intellectual costs (and probably a lot more).

When I canceled my gym membership in January, I didn't do it because of the financial cost ($15/month); I canceled because I wasn't going much. and it was hanging over my head--a constant "You need to do this, but you're not doing this." The psychological cost bothered me, so I canceled even though the monetary cost was minimal.

Economics is a social science that makes it a cousin of sociology and psychology, but it also has business/accounting applications, which is why it gets housed in business schools.

I actually had a higher GPA in Econ (4.0) than I did English, which is kinda funny given what my professional life has been.

As a person who has definitely run more "emotional" over the course of my life and struggled with moods, the economics side of my brain has helped strengthen what is a fairly weak "logical" brain.

One of the things I keep thinking about during the COVID-19 pandemic is the basic economic idea of perfect information.
The idea is that people make better/best decisions based on having reliable and extensive information.
People lacking information can make very poor decisions.

Part of what makes the pandemic so consequential is that we have poor virtually nonexistent testing opportunities, which means we are having to make a lot of assumptions that may or may not be correct.

Right now people are assuming they have the coronavirus and everyone else does not OR they are assuming they do not have the coronavirus and everyone else does.

Also, there hasn't been enough time to thoroughly study the virus to know much about its transmission, who is more or less likely to be impacted, etc.
A lot of what we know about anything is learned after-the-fact.

Although I am a very risk-averse person, I am not sanitizing my groceries that are delivered to my house or that I pick up curbside.

I am avoiding in-person shopping because the risk of that appears much higher than the risk of me picking up coronavirus from my milk.

There can never be zero risk.
It is a lot like opportunity cost; it just exists although you can determine what is more or less risky.

Is there a risk that COVID-19 could enter my house from a box of lightbulbs I've ordered from Home Depot?
Yes.
What is that risk compared to the risk of me going to Home Depot with who knows how many other people who are much more likely to transmit COVID-19 to me than a cardboard box?

Heck, there is a risk to my life by getting in my car and driving to Home Depot, which is much more likely than the risk of a delivered cardboard box helping me contract the virus.

There is a risk to living, but what we are doing now is minimizing that risk to the smallest, least likely amount that I can.

I think back to a stressful episode with an invisible enemy I experienced when N was an infant. I developed mastitis while breastfeeding and then a yeast infection in my breast.

Now, this was BEFORE my anxiety medication, but fighting this invisible enemy just about did me in psychologically. I was boiling pacifiers and any plastic toys she touched. I was scrubbing everything down to kill the yeast. I used paper towels rather than washing linen ones.

I felt a lot like Lady Macbeth in her futile mad attempt to get that damn spot out.

The economic impact of the pandemic is also a place where we have imperfect information because of imperfect testing.

Without knowing the full extent of the virus in the population, we can't make good decisions about business operations.
There are at least two scenarios:
The first is what we have now; lots of unemployment in the service industry because we assume everyone has it or everyone doesn't have it.
The second is potentially worse. We assume everyone has it when everyone doesn't have it and allow businesses to open up causing huge spikes in hospitalizations and deaths.

The resulting full lockdowns and surges collapse the health care system, inducing even greater panic than what we saw the first week or so of the quarantines.

Both scenarios suck, but if I have to pick one of the two, I'm picking the option we're doing now. 

Yesterday felt like screaming into the void

Yesterday just felt like a shitshow, but I guess some days are like that...
even in Australia
even during a pandemic quarantine.

It just felt like all the wrongs were happening.
(And even though they were wrongs in my world, I know full-well they were minor wrongs compared to the frustrations that other people are dealing with in the midst of the pandemic.)

The computer (due to the latest update) no longer reads my iPod, which I didn't discover until after I'd done a phone interview for a magazine article and needed to transfer the audio file to the computer.
So that frustration then bled into other frustrations and responsibilities (like G having teletherapy and me trying to get the boys to do some school work), all of which would feel petty and minor under normal circumstances but feel monumental right now.

And then I read Twitter about the president suggesting life go back to normal by Easter, and that just completely set me off in anger.

I felt like I was standing on a precipice, screaming into the void that if the economy is bad now, just imagine what it will be if the health care system completely collapses and if people are dying by the multiple hundreds each day.

Inside my head, I was screaming that only the most inhumane people would say sacrifice the elders. I was screaming about the absurdity of people who claim to value "all life" and then take risks with other people's lives (by not quarantining until they get the official word that they have coronavirus; I'm talking about you, Rand Paul.)

And while I was internally railing, I recognized with greater clarity than I usually have how little control I have over anything.

But I never have control, whether there is a pandemic or not.

The great delusion we tell ourselves is that we can control our lives.
We control our choices, but we don't control the outcomes of our choices.
A person can make all the "right" choices and life still goes in whatever direction it goes.
The person who eats right, exercises, and doesn't smoke, can have a fatal heart attack at age 40.
Certain choices may help propel life in a certain direction, but not necessarily and with no guarantees.

The boys have rediscovered the old Xbox and, because it is older than the hills, it promptly died when they turned it on and tried to use it.
This brought G to tears because he closely associates things with his childhood memories.
If something breaks or I get rid of it, he has always said I'm destroying his "childhood."

His therapist is working with him on understanding that everything changes; we lose everything.
Because OCD is all about wanting to have control over everything; wanting things that don't make sense to make sense.
Sometimes it seems like OCD therapy combined with the principles of Buddhism.

Last night, when I comforted G about his sadness over the Xbox breaking, I told him about Buddhism and impermanence.
Nothing lasts.
Everything changes.
Everything dies or breaks or falls apart.
The memories are not in the Xbox but inside his head and heart.
(I didn't add that one day those will be lost to impermanence when he dies because that is just too, too heavy right now.)

In telling him about this, it served as therapy for me.
A reminder that this moment in time is impermanent.
I am impermanent.
My grasping at control is futile.
I can only make my own choices, which are to quarantine and keep my family safe.
I cannot control anything else.
Craving, grasping and clinging cause me suffering.

Quarantine(ish), Day Whatever

I bounce from Facebook to Twitter, and I hope between the two, I find some balance.

Right now Facebook is all "let's share pictures of our weird little pinky toes" and other try-to-feel-light in this moment of definite not-lightness.

Twitter is all "THE WORLD IS ON FIRE," which I think is actually more true and realistic.
But I'm already sad and scared, and I really do not need or want to ramp it up to suicidal.

I am not even remotely trying to keep a schedule beyond everyone getting ready for bed at 9 pm and still reading to the boys.

I am asking them to do a little school-work each day, and I mean a little.

I am trying to do a little of my own work each day, and I mean a little.

There is absolutely no sense in attempting to keep anything normal when nothing is normal.

If there was ever a time to ask, "Will this particular minuscule thing matter in 5 years or 5 months?" now is that time.

The only thing that matters is keeping my family safe.
Food, shelter, clothing, and sanity.

How far ahead or behind they are in math? Doesn't matter right now.
Whether their MAP score was higher in inference or main ideas? Doesn't matter right now.
Spending too much time playing video games? Doesn't matter right now.
Eating more Girl Scout cookies than I'd like them to? Doesn't matter right now.

I'm content with meeting the red and orange in Maslow's pyramid.
The fact that we are all together in our house forces us to deal in the yellow.

I'm very good at handling one crisis at a time.

When my mother was diagnosed with her first case of breast cancer in early 1997, I put mine and D's wedding on hold.
I could not proceed with a wedding until I knew what we were dealing with for mom.
Once I had a handle on that, I could move forward.

Life with COVID-19 is much the same.
I am doing what I have to do with meh effort.
Once I (and everyone) has good information, I can move forward.

Charles Dickens had it right in an age of anxiety

The first paragraph of A Tale of Two Cities are applicable to right this moment:

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. We had everything before us, we had nothing before us. We were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way."

These words have popped into my head amid the COVID-19 pandemic. We will see both the best in humanity as well as the worst. It will be a time of glaring selfishness (ALL the toilet paper) and a time of kindness that will make you cry.

Twice since Thursday, I have caught myself brought to a feeling of tearfulness over the kindness that someone has done or said. And I am in no way, shape, or form a tearful person.

We are currently seeing the wisdom and the foolishness--the people who are being mindfully aware and heeding scientists' instructions, and the people who think this entire thing is a joke.

Internally, I am struggling.

Although anxiety medication keeps me calm on the surface, I can feel a rumbling underneath.
I imagine it is what a volcano feels like in the days before an eruption.
From the outside, things appear calm; from the inside, there is much churning and roiling of hot liquid flames.

I suspect I am either experiencing a weird form of stress-induced neuralgia, or I'm having the early stages of a shingles outbreak.
A spot on my abdomen, which was fine on Monday, is now tingling and weirdly uncomfortable.

I am having to manage my own anxiety while trying to dampen my children's anxiety.

Trying to remind them that this is temporary; that this is one of those valleys that life throws you; while we may not be at the deepest part of the valley, eventually it will rise.

All the things I'm thinking about the pandemic

1. Now everyone knows what it feels like to have OCD. The panicky feeling of uncertainty. The catastrophic "what ifs." Imagine experiencing that for everything, all the time, when there is not a global pandemic. 

2. I have spoken to my doctor about COVID-19, and I know people who work in the ER. COVID-19, as Italy is showing us, has the potential to bring the health care system to its knees. While I am not necessarily worried about me catching it, or my children catching it, I am concerned about what it could mean for all the people who end up needing non-COVID care if the hospitals become overwhelmed with providing COVID-19 care. 

What I think about is that IF you experience a heart attack and go to the hospital, your care could be compromised.

IF you are in a car accident and are rushed to the hospital, your care could be compromised.

IF you have a kidney stone attack and go to the hospital, your care could be compromised.

IF you develop appendicitis and go to the hospital, your care could be compromised.

IF you are shot and go to the hospital, your care could be compromised.

IF you have an accident with a tool or a kitchen knife and go to the hospital, your care could be compromised.

IF you develop symptoms of a stroke and go to the hospital, your care could be compromised.

IF you have an allergic reaction to something and go to the hospital, your care could be compromised.

IF you are pregnant, begin experiencing complications, and go to the hospital, your care could be compromised.

Even if your care isn't compromised, you could end up catching the virus from all the people at the hospital who have it, if it comes to that. 

Of course, those are a lot of ifs, but people need emergency or urgent care for lots of reasons all the time. Our hospitals can only handle so many patients with so many critical needs. 

3. The people who are blowing this off seem to lack imagination and empathy. 

4. The people who are blowing this off are also scared. Fear can make you do a couple different things. One of those things is FIGHT. In the case of COVID-19, it is taking precautions and doing everything possible to fight against getting it. The other thing is FLIGHT, which can be denial. 

"Oh, it's no big deal."
"It's just like flu."

"It's the media overhyping everything."

Maybe you think you are coming across as assured and confident, but I read it as FRIGHTENED, just like the rest of us. 

5. If this virus blows over, and the US doesn't experience a huge increase in cases and deaths, it will be because of public health experts and people heeding their advice. And possibly luck. 

I suspect that people who wonder why they had to learn about exponential change in math because they would NEVER need it in real life are finding out why they needed to know something about it. 

That annoying middle child made me proud

Yesterday was kind of a banner day for G, and he doesn't often have banner days.

He woke me up before 7:00 am, fully dressed in nice-for-him clothes (khaki pants and a collared shirt), telling me he had already practiced his speech for the regional science fair. He even wore a long-sleeved shirt under his collared shirt which, had I asked him to do this, would have been sensory hell for him.

He had been working for weeks on wearing these pants and getting used to them so he could attend the science fair dressed appropriately.

Even though I offered him his Ipad to play with while he waited to be judged, he turned it down.

He found friends to have lunch with and left his mom alone (which made mom really happy).

I was super proud of him...not because he got some special award or won anything at all...but because he showed responsibility, didn't complain, and took being in an unfamiliar setting with unfamiliar people in stride.