Dear Humans,

This pandemic has offered us a crash course in understanding risk and chance. I’ve heard many people talk about how they’ve done things the right way: they’ve socially distanced, they’ve avoided mass gatherings, they’ve worn their masks, etc. And when they say these things, they seem to be saying that they don’t deserve to catch Covid-19.

But if you look at that familiar picture of spiky Covid-19, you’ll see that it does not have a human face. And it does not speak human language. And it cannot be reasoned with. It’s just a bunch of RNA covered in protein that is doing the only thing it knows how to do: spreading to any host it can find.

So all we can do is set up obstacles in its path. We can’t guarantee safety. We can’t just make it go away if we wish hard enough or try to covince Covid-19 that we’re good people who don’t deserve to be sick. We can only take the hard steps to try to protect ourselves and one another.

Life is always like that. You never have complete control over its outcomes and you never really get what you deserve. All you can do is live each day with the ethic of being safe and being smart and doing all you can to create your own luck.

Sincerely,

Mr. Heimbuck