The Summer of Calculus: As States Reopen, Our Lives Are About to Get More Complex

Summer is in the air. The weather is getting better. The school year — whether online or not — is ending. And most states are lifting restrictions on self-isolation that kept many of us in our homes for three long months.

With summer upon us, it’s tempting to think that now we have free rein to plan backyard barbecues, days at the beach, and to catch up on those haircuts/pedicures/dentist appointments. Everything’s back to normal, right?

Wrong.

First and foremost, the threat from COVID has not diminished. In fact, in more than 20 states, cases are on the rise. And as more people move around, case numbers will continue to increase, as will the risk of catching COVID.

While we will have the flexibility to do more than we have been able to recently, there is no carte blanche to go back to our former lives. This may be hard to believe, but the months ahead are going to be harder than those behind us.

Why? Because if you are taking the risk of COVID seriously, every activity that you undertake will require a complex calculus problem before heading out the door.

Let’s start with the risk versus reward for every activity we are now allowed to do. The list of questions and assumptions required are almost infinite: How much do I want that pedicure? Has my favorite salon adapted their procedures to allow for safe social distancing? Are the staff wearing masks? Are the basins properly cleaned and does COVID remain on that surface?

Add to that your personal risk factors: age, health condition, geographic location. Once you’ve conducted the mental gymnastics required to go through that evaluation, that pedicure may be less appealing.

Now repeat the process for your trip to the grocery store, your doctors’ appointments, a get-together to celebrate a friend’s birthday. Suddenly, everything that you used to do needs to be put through a complicated algorithm.

If you have children, particularly teenagers (as I can attest from experience), these complexities can be hard to understand. While self-isolation has been hard, the careful calculations of this next phase are challenging to adjust to. In their minds, quarantine had a start date and will have an end date. A switch will be flipped and life will go back to normal.

Therefore, the permutations of this risk/reward calculus on every single activity are unlikely to be appreciated by adolescents who have been cooped up without any social activity for months. If I can see one friend, why can’t I see two? If I could go to the beach, why can’t I go to the pool? You get the idea.

But wait, there’s more! Every time you leave the house, you should wear a cloth face covering. This doesn’t need to be a formal mask — it can be a T-shirt, scarf, or anything else to cover your mouth and nose.

Since wearing face masks has never been part of the culture in the United States, there is a lot of confusion about why they are so important. You wear a mask to protect your friends, family and strangers that you pass in case you have COVID. To someone that is feeling perfectly healthy, that’s another hard concept to wrap our minds around, but it is an insidious disease that can be present in your system for up to two weeks before you have symptoms. And even though you may feel fine, you may actually be contagious. Therefore, in our new post-self-isolation world, cloth face coverings need to be worn whenever you are around people outside of your immediate family or roommates.

If you have decided, after all of this calculation, that the risk of catching and/or transmitting coronavirus is outweighed by the reward of going out⁠ — or you have to go out because of your job or for other serious reasons⁠ — you still can and should take steps to reduce the risk for yourself, your family, and your community. Wearing your mask goes along with the advice we have all heard from public health experts all year: Wash your hands, don’t touch your face, and stay distanced from others even when you’re outside. These are simple steps we should all follow now and in the long-term.

There was great news out of New Zealand this week that, for the first time in months, they had zero cases of COVID. So, we know it can be done. But until the U.S. looks like New Zealand, we need to prepare for the summer of calculus ahead.