On the Calculation of Risk

Last weekend Team Powell came to stay, just for one night on their way down to Clovelly, the 'almost family holiday home' down on the Cornish/Devon border. A school friend of Cherry actually owns it but various members and combinations of the Till family have stayed there probably more than 20 times over the years. I went there to regroup immediately after Cherry died. The harsh conditions prevailing in the middle of winter after a long period without occupancy certainly gave me other things to think about  ! Anyhow I am mulling over whether to go down and join them for a couple of days. It would be within the current rules but undoubtedly comes with a degree of added and avoidable  risk.

                The experience of their overnight stay was illuminating. We all kept at a distance. That was fairly easy, even when, most inconveniently it drizzled during the barbecue so we had to gather under the overhanging porch of the Granny annex offering advice and encouragement to poor Chiff slaving over the charcoal briquettes under the apple trees. This was instead of our original plan of being spaciously arrayed around the back garden in the evening sunshine at a distance but within  semaphore range. Wondering whether anyone else had touched that particular bit of lettuce - or that tomato sauce bottle  certainly added a frisson to the proceedings. We were all as careful as we could be but the added risk could not be discounted. Probably the experts would say that we were relying too much on the unlikelihood that any of us actually had the bug anyway, since we were all rigorously observing the rules beforehand and were still effectively in lock-down as a near normal state.

                But one thing that does seem to me to have merged from the current situation is another nail in the coffin of the idea of the expert to whose opinion we should all defer. This whole idea was already under strain because of the extent to which the social media have elevated the status and apparent authority of personal opinion and gut feelings. Following the science is difficult when the scientists seems to disagree, but such disagreements are inevitable as more and more data comes on stream about how the pandemic is developing. In the absence of hard fact at any one time all we can do is go on 'balances of probability.'  We have to think about things properly, treat it all seriously and properly note who s saying what and why  So I conclude that yes there's a risk to going to Clovelly for a few days, but it's probably no higher than the risk of my being in a bad road accident on the way down. Almost everything we do has an element of risk in it. Avoiding it altogether means avoiding life.  Moreover all the evidence currently points to higher levels of risk later on, so its having a change now or not for a possibly long time to come.

                Another thing I have been surprised about is the sudden burst of interest in the UK in countering obesity because of the extra vulnerabilities to the bug that it brings. This seemed like a sudden revelation. Yet back in mid March when the lockdown in Rhode island was just starting, articles in the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal were already loudly pointing to the link between obesity and severe Covid-19 consequences. That was the reason why I started on my  faintly ridiculous keep-fit trails winding mindlessly around the trees of Ocean View in Newport. For the life of me I can't understand why in the UK we've been so slow to connect those two dots publicly.

 

                Of course I thought taking he necessary action would be much easier once back home. A smaller estate to wander around in certainly, as shown by the picture taken from the bedroom window with the new phone that Chiff supplied. But the estate is set in the splendidly open Marlborough Downs offering  nice walking everywhere. What I hadn't factored in was, just before leaving the US, getting a touch of 'housemaid's knee' which made walking uncomfortable. The routine fell off dramatically and is only just, after a month at home getting back to what it was. So far at least the price hasn't been too heavy, but I reckon that clambering up a few Cornish cliffs and doing a bit of surfing will help restore the programme.  So that's another, perhaps pretty feeble, reason to go to Clovelly !

                Naturally being with some of the family again after 5 contactless virtual months, on either side of the Atlantic, is another major reason to take this risk, as it helps to put everything into proper proportion. One other thing we did that brief weekend was to take a walk along the canal and of course, the kids couldn't resist putting the frighteners on their mother by sitting on the bridge over the canal in the way they did. Clearly I am not the only one engaging in a process of semi-calculated risk !