This House is Clean! (well, maybe not yet) - COVID-19: Compliance or Complicity?
       Depending on your age, you will readily recall a scene from "Poltergeist" (if you are from the You Tube generation, please briefly view) where a medium has just declared a family's house to be free from evil spirits, shortly after which we find the declaration to be premature. We can now all relate, as we have heard various viral forecasters imply, if not explicitly declare, that the "virus has left town...come on in, the water's fine!...it's time to get back to normal...". Only to find out as recent as June 26th "...the state of....has had to rethink opening up after a record number of COVID cases were diagnosed, apparently related to mass gatherings in such public places as...people refusing to wear masks or hand washing..." As individuals and as a society we have been at this place so many times, you think we would have learned by now. Did we think we could simply wish the virus a quick good bye after having enough of sheltering in place, or that we could collectively 'will it' away, or is it in part contempt for any intrusion on our individual freedom?
       Seat belts were mass produced in cars in the 1950's. About three decades later surveys reflected a large majority of us felt they were a great invention, that we understood their role in keeping us safe. In 2000 the State of Michigan, after discovering a disappointing degree of noncompliance, passed a law allowing police to stop drivers suspected of noncompliance ("click it or ticket"). So it took a law to enforce behavior we had endorsed as being instrumental to our individual and collective welfare?! Studies of such noncompliance have revealed a number of relevant factors, ranging from contempt, to inconvenience (e.g. "it's a hassle, it messes up my clothes"), to simple neglect/forgetting (of course, we now have annoying chimes and a voice resembling Alexa to remind us). 
       Historically, medical studies have also amply demonstrated the role behavioral and lifestyle choices play in a number of chronic health conditions. Concurrent studies have also offered encouragement regarding the favorable impact of simple, ongoing lifestyle modifications on "...rapid, clinically meaningful, and sustainable biometrics in laboratory and psychosocial outcomes...".
       And here we are again, at a critical cross section of the uncertainty of when it is truly safe to completely 'open up' and the certainty regarding the role simple, well documented 'anti-COVID' habits play in mitigating transmission. So this much is certain: the rate of viral transmission and our ability to return to 'normal' is critically related to our ongoing behavioral choices (parent to child: "Make good choices!"). So, what do you choose, compliance or complicity, "click it or ticket"? 

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