Various governors, officials and network anchors pontificated that we should not have met for the holidays in family groups larger than 10 or two family units, and that we certainly should have avoided eating with strangers.

Let’s examine the logic behind these pronouncements. Say you have N family members living together. If you never go out of your cave, you will be safe, but if each member goes out every day and contacts (whatever that is) M people, you can’t be absolutely safe.

When you all gather back together to eat at night, there will be some level of danger because of the M contacts each person has had. Maybe the actual danger will be delayed for several days, but it won’t lessen.

Now rather than eating with your N family members, you go out and eat with N strangers, each of whom has contacted M people every day. Will your level of risk be increased by the fact you are eating with strangers rather than family members? Does the virus care if you are related to an infected person?

What the politicians told us wasn’t logical for Thanksgiving certainly wasn’t any more logical for Christmas. Does this mean that social contact is without danger? No, but it is small and well defined by categories of age and health.

Let each American act according to his own level of tolerance of the unknown (or measure of faith) and stop with the East German totalitarian tactics.

John B. Allison

Washington Township, Westmoreland County

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