Sanitary measures | Next step: learn to manage risk

Are we seeing friends or not? Are we going to the restaurant or are we waiting? These decisions have long been dependent on health measures. But in the future, it is obvious: they will come back more and more to individuals. People’s tolerance for the risk of contracting COVID-19 varies enormously. And it evolves.

Catherine Handfield
The Press

When they take their respective children to play in the park, Gabrielle Caron and Michèle Dorion – two good friends – are the same kind of moms. You will never see them climbing up the pods to watch over them. They let them play.

But for COVID-19, the two Montrealers quickly realized that they did not have the same risk tolerance.

Both follow sanitary measures and both are vaccinated. That is not the question. “What we differ on is how quickly we drop the last constraints. Me, I always have three steps back, confides Gabrielle. Michele is faster. »

Moreover, last Wednesday, Michèle spent a superb evening at the restaurant with a friend, without feeling the slightest concern. What fun. “It felt like a breath of fresh air to me,” she says.

Michèle can be anxious about certain things, but the fear of contracting COVID-19 has never inhabited her. It’s a bit like her life, being surrounded: the drama teacher rubs shoulders with some 350 students. “What affects me the most about the pandemic is the sociable side,” she says. I need to socialize. »

Gabrielle Caron, humorist, is more of a homebody. She’s not afraid of COVID-19, but she doesn’t feel like contracting it. In his entourage there are more anxious people and health care workers. She also wants to protect her mother, whom she often sees.

When she does a show, she makes sure with her manager that the sanitary rules will be respected (she has had no problem to date). “With children, I can’t see myself spending two weeks in confinement or coughing until the end of time,” she sums up.

Before Christmas, Gabrielle went back to the restaurant, to the cinema, “even to Carrefour Laval,” she says, laughing. “But I’m slower. I prefer that the others go there before me. »

At his lab at McGill University, Assistant Professor Ross Otto is interested in how people make decisions. Decision-making, he says, is greatly influenced by how we deal with uncertainty. And the propensity to take risks varies enormously from person to person.

Especially since risk tolerance can vary from one area of ​​our lives to another, he says. For example, you can love the parachute, but invest your money carefully.

The COVID-19 crisis has brought to light “enormous variability” between individuals, variability that is more noticeable when sanitary measures are relaxed, notes Ross Otto. According to the global trend, in the future, it is individuals who will decide the risk they are ready to run, believes the professor.

“It will become, in a way, an individual trait,” he predicts.

widening gap

Factors may explain differences in COVID-19 risk tolerance, such as age, health status, social or financial situation, and people around you.

Still, studies show a growing gap between perceived threats – terrorists, pandemics, etc. – and the real dangers, underlines the D^D Cécile Rousseau, child psychiatrist and professor in the Department of Psychiatry at McGill. “Risk perception has no direct relationship to actual risk or risk exposure,” she says.

She gives the example of a research project she worked on during the first wave and which demonstrated that health care workers – more exposed to the virus – did not have a more acute perception of risk than others. In contrast, the D^D Rousseau met many people who were very low risk but locked up in their homes, “convinced that the virus was going to kill them”.

Among the most panicked people at the start of the pandemic, a number adhered to conspiracy theories out of avoidance, the D^D Rousseau. Others remained in this state of fear (“you feel it when you walk down the street”).

And, of course, many have softened over the waves.

Evolution in the time

The perception of risk is changing. Toby Wise, a postdoctoral research fellow at the California Institute of Technology, studied the question with a cohort of Americans during the first nine months of the pandemic.

In March 2020, people were not at all inclined to take risks, but “within a couple of months they were already much more willing to do so, explains Toby Wise, contact in London. Without being completely back to normal, they were much more likely to see a group of 10 people. The researcher attributes this change to a decrease in uncertainty about the virus.

Although the avoidance level of March 2020 was never recovered, risk tolerance tended to decrease as cases increased, the researcher said. Overcrowding in hospitals has also had a deterrent effect, notes Toby Wise.

Between stress and relief

Psychologically, is it a good thing to make choices about risk? It depends for whom, answers Ross Otto, of McGill University. Some people don’t want to deal with the stress of choosing and living with the consequences of their choices, he points out.

That said, humans are used to making choices when it comes to risk, and generally don’t like being told what to do, notes Toby Wise. Support for health measures is also declining in Quebec. Same observation in the United Kingdom, where Prime Minister Boris Johnson, splashed by party scandals during the confinements, lifted the last measures.

While at the start of the pandemic many preferred to rely on governments’ risk assessment, “as we become more confident in our own judgment of risk, we can see a disconnect between what we believes to be a good judgment of the risk and what the government is telling us,” says Toby Wise.

According to the D^D Cécile Rousseau, the question of the risk associated with COVID-19 remains tinged with moralization. Differences in perception have led to conflict within the health system, she says, with some accusing the other of putting everyone at risk, and others accusing the former of crippling the system.

“If we want to work together and survive the pandemic, we will have to develop a certain tolerance towards these differences in risk perception and interpretation of health measures”, estimates the D^D Rousseau. She cites the “brilliant” idea of ​​these American companies which invite their employees to wear a colored bracelet – green, yellow or red – to signify their level of comfort with physical proximity.

Gabrielle Caron and Michèle Dorion, for their part, have always respected each other. The more time passes, moreover, the more their positions come together, observes Gabrielle. “It’s not for me to convince her to be more careful, nor for her to convince me to be more lax.” We each go there at our own pace. And that’s very cool,” says Gabrielle, who you might see at the restaurant soon.