When you pick one activity, consider what you will forego.
Manage your COVID-19 risk so that for each permitted activity you do, you sacrifice another.
If this is the week you choose to get your haircut at a salon, you might instead choose to postpone dining outdoors, get takeout or cook at home. You might choose to give more time between visits to the grocery store or bank.
Each activity adds risk, and by framing your activities in terms of trade offs, you can lower your risk level. For those over 60 years old or with underlying health conditions, choose fewer activities to more tightly manage your risk.
"There are now more options at the buffet of activities," said Dr. Lisa B. Hernandez, Berkeley's Health Officer. "But, in terms of physical proximity with others, COVID-19 still forces us on a distancing diet. Don't go for everything on the table."
While budgeting risk, maintain daily habits
While making tradeoffs to choose activities, everyone should always do the essentials: stay home when sick, wear face coverings, wash hands frequently, and keep physical distance with those not in your household.
When leaving the safety of home, use three questions to help assess the risk of a particular activity: Where will you go? Who will attend? What will happen?
These questions should guide you to limit activities within a small, stable group of no more than 12 people that meets outdoors and uses both face coverings and distance when with other households.
These questions should also help you avoid confined spaces, crowds and close contact with those outside your household.
No one should choose to do all available activities. Budget your choices. When new options arise, such as indoor haircuts allowed by a new health order to start on Friday Sept. 4, choose what other activities you will forego.
See Appendix A of the Health Order for a list of all available activities.
Trade-offs enable more options, increase community resilience
The vast majority of people in Berkeley appear to be wearing face coverings. Merchants throughout the City have implemented safety measures. These trade-offs and implemented safety measures accumulate, lessening risk for individuals and for our community as a whole.
This measured approach to risk not only reduces an individual's chance of getting the virus, it also limits spread if you or others get infected.
Budgeting risk and limiting activities makes it easier for contact tracers to find others who may have had close contact to an infected person. Once they are quarantined, that further limits spread.
If your child is on a soccer team, consider giving up something else. Instead of getting a haircut, pedicure and manicure, choose one.
We want more activities to be allowed. When schools reopen, families should choose to restrict other activities -- and such a change would not open the door for more socializing among kids.
"Each mask worn, gathering avoided, hand washed or tradeoff made increases our community's resilience to this virus," said Dr. Hernandez. "Each person's actions to avoid risk every week helps strengthen our public health response."
