What do we mean by safe?

Steaming cliffs - is this a risk

In his third year of university my son jetted off to New Zealand on a student research scheme. It was one of the main reasons Jethro had chosen that university and he was genuinely excited at travelling to Christchurch University to filter milk. All packed up and laden, he set off to New Zealand via Los Angeles. Somewhere between London and LA this happened:

At 12.51 p.m. on Tuesday 22 February 2011, a magnitude 6.3 earthquake caused severe damage in Christchurch and Lyttelton, killing 185 people and injuring several thousand.

We messaged Jethro and made a sort of assumption that the authorities would simply turn him round and ship him home, but his flight to Auckland was listed and he was getting it - "we'll see what happens". We still sort of expected to hear him disappointed and headed back to Britain but no, the next we heard was he'd arrived in Christchurch (flying down from Auckland with a lot of relief workers and volunteers), been shown to his accommodation and given a shovel.

It all seemed somewhat matter of fact but we still felt his visit might be cut short. Instead, the University said to Jethro, "bugger off round our lovely country and come back in six weeks to do the research project" and the next we saw was a Facebook posting of the boy throwing himself in a swallow dive off New Zealand's highest bungee jump.

What do we mean by safe?

When we were in New Zealand earlier this year, with the coronavirus looming, the words "stay safe" or "be safe" were on everyone's lips. While we were locked down in Taupo, however, I joked that we were hiding from the risk of a virus in one of the world's most geothermally active places. It was only in December that the Whakaari eruptions in the Bay of Plenty - about 200 miles from where we were staying - had taken place killing 23 people and seriously injuring nearly 30 more.

Everywhere you go in New Zealand there's evidence of earthquakes and vulcanism yet nobidy says to folk living in Christchurch "stay safe" in reference to the likelihood of an earthquake or to Rotarua residents who might be fearful of a huge volcanic eruption. I guess these things, pretty "unsafe" if you ask me, are factored in to the reality of life. Indeed, when NZ went into lockdown so it could "stay safe" during the pandemic, this was announced by a klaxon on everybody's mobile phone accompanied by a message from the PM - a system NZ has because of those earthquakes and eruptions.

Right now we're debating whether it is "safe" to go back to work, if it is "safe" to reopen schools, and when it might ever be "safe" to let people go to the pub again. But at no point do we consider what we actually mean by "safe". Teacher unions are telling their members not to mark schoolwork because it might be contaminated by the virus while others are saying "can we get on with it please" as they see these things as reasons not to open up the country again.

"Safe" cannot mean zero risk so it has, therefore, to be some sort of judgement. But at the moment our attitude to "are we safe from infection by coronavirus" does appear to be just that, zero risk - top journalists are literally asking questions like "minister can you guarantee there will be no risk to children in reopening schools". I appreciate that these top journalists (given they all went to Oxford and got top degrees) know full well that this is a daft question that can never be answered in the affirmative - questions such as this are the main reason politicians have a reputation for dissembling in answering, they really have no choice. But this approach simply indicates that "safe" means "no risk".

I'm not saying this because I think schools should open (or, for that matter, not open) but rather that we need to get our minds round the idea that any change in situation carries risk. Most epidemiologists tell us that the risk is pretty small but then these folk haven't exactly covered themselves with glory in their predictions of the virus and people are, understandably, hesitant. And there's a bunch of folk - union leaders, politicians, broadcasters - who want to make a story or an excuse out of a judgement call of "this is safe" or "this isn't safe". It's probably true that children going to school now are more at risk of getting run over than of catching the virus (certainly of dying from catching the virus) but this isn't an assurance to parents and teachers who've listened to weeks of relentless messaging about how it isn't safe: "stay home it's not safe out there" has lodged in people's minds and, even when it is much safer, there's still a hesitancy, a feeling that "maybe a little longer, just another fortnight".

Politicians - as the decision-makers - face an impossible task here. On the one hand they've experts telling them it's safe "enough" while the sense of fear developed by the "stay home" campaign means a lot of people genuinely feel it isn't safe. And next to all this there are tearful businessmen posting videos about how they have to close down, unemployment sky-rockets and the economists predict (as is their preference always) assorted varieties of doom and gloom. Whatever choice is made is going to be, in the eyes of some of these people, the wrong one.

And, at the end of all this, we still are no closer to a better understanding of what "safe" means. Today New York bans flavourings for e-cigarettes effectively banning the entire market (unsurprisingly adults prefer to get their nicotine tasting like cherries that tobacco) meaning that thousands of smokers will keep on with the much higher risk of smoking old-fasioned fags. New York's reasons were that flavoured e-cigs would tempt children - something with precious little evidence to support it and, even so, something that would mean less risk than those kids taking up smoking. Millions were bunged (mostly by ex-NY mayor Mike Bloomberg) at telling parents that vaping was a terrible evil cooked up by Big Tobacco so as to catch their kids into addiction and inevitable death - all based on scare story rather than anything like facts or evidence.

I worry that the same fact- and evidence-free campaigning will result in a more authoritarian "safety" environment as a result of coronavirus. A load of "social distancing" measures, restrictions of operating and draconian controls will be justified by "stay safe" when there is pretty much no calculable risk, just a vague lingering fear of what has happened this year.

As I asked, what do we mean by safe?

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