Yeah, sorry for not being more clear, but I wasn't talking about that person, or the piano, or about the odds of someone contracting COVID from surfaces. I was using the quote to illustrate what I see as a difficult pair of values to balance that situations like masks in classrooms, or other shared-space restrictions, really throw into painfully high relief: how do we collectively, as a society, balance our own personal inclinations (i.e., in this case, to play the piano, or in OP, to let our kids go unmasked) with whatever risks we impose on other people (i.e., in this case, which for the record I totally agree is excessive, that the shared piano will help spread disease; or in the outer case, that fewer masks in the classroom could lead to, e.g., more sick grandparents, or teachers)?
In the case of the piano, it's very simple: anyone who is worried about catching Covid by listening to the piano is free to not listen to the piano. There's really nothing to balance.
Solid, got it. Next time I talk to criddell's kids' university's dorm administrators, I'll try to set them straight. Hopefully they'll be able to zoom out a bit from whatever conversation-impairing details they've latched onto.
This myopic focus on exactly one specific illness to the literal exclusion of everything else is not healthy. People need to accept the risks and move on.
