You can manage your covid-19 risk by setting your own ‘contact budget’

When it comes to covid-19, we all have different levels of risk we’re comfortable with. Setting a weekly “contact budget” can make it easier to decide which risks are worth taking

By Carrie Arnold

Carrie Arnold: How did you come up with the idea of a contact budget for interactions with others during the coronavirus pandemic?

Eleanor Murray: Back in March and April, most people had clear guidance about what they were allowed to do, and it wasn’t very much. That made life somewhat unpleasant, but it also made life easy. When things started opening up, everybody had to make their own decisions about what they are comfortable with and what might be risky.

The way I was thinking about it is that there is a level of risk I am comfortable with. If I go to a grocery store during a really crowded time, to keep my average risk level constant, I’m probably not going to do something risky the next day. We are all familiar with the idea of financial budgeting, it is easy to translate to this situation.

How do we make a contact budget?

There are four metrics to keep in mind. First is how much risk you can tolerate. If you or someone in your household has a medical condition, then your tolerance is going to be lower.

Next is how comfortable you are knowing that you could get infected and transmit that infection. That’s something we don’t talk a lot about, but people have told me how guilty they felt afterwards.

The last two pieces are the amount of contact we need for our job and for our mental health.

If you are a healthcare worker or grocery store clerk, a certain amount of contacts are required as part of your job. Then there are …