A conceptual framework for reopening our society during the Covid-19 pandemic

Decisions about how to go about the necessary task of re-opening our society in the midst of the Covid-19 (CV19) have been paralyzed by our extremes. But we can neither afford to insist on a zero-risk response, nor can we pretend that the risk does not exist. What is needed are tools to rationally triage the risk. To this end, we propose a novel ‘risk index’, which is the intersection of two components of risk: 1) the risk of an individual becoming infected due to action ‘X’; and 2) the likely probability of death (or serious harm) if that individual develops CV19. The risk index allows risk to be compared across different scenarios, and may reveal that seemingly very different situations constitute similar degrees of risk. With risk measured in this way, one can then contrast different levels of risk against the social benefits of absorbing that risk, allowing actions to be sorted into those that are tolerable, debatable, or acceptable. While these concepts are presented in abstract based on approximate estimates of risk and influenced by our judgements about social desirability, the concept itself can be refined as more accurate approximations of risk and broadly accepted values of social desirability are derived empirically. In short, this is a tool intended to provide a useful empirical framework for rationale decision making about CV19.