Coronavirus Tip: When Appropriate, Become Schrödinger's Shopper

The lockdown during Coronavirus is excessive because the law is too low-resolution to capture the full and complex gamut of human needs. While there's definitely a spectrum ranging from essential trips (key workers doing their jobs, food shopping, getting medication for a vulnerable family member) to non-essential trips (parties, barbecues, sports events), there are definitely trips out that are currently deemed illegal that are both harmless and socially beneficial.

Here are some fictional cases I just made up. Take beloveds Jack and Jill, who both live on their own and work from home, but who visit each other because they love and miss each other. Take Bob, who suffers from depression, and who finds solace in his weekly catch ups around his best friend Frank's house. Take Margaret, who lives alone, but who takes inspiration from going out to paint landscapes, and needs to keep busy and creative for her own well-being. Or take Belinda who has started dating Jack and doesn't want the seed of something special to fail to germinate; or Wendy who comforts her brother and recent widower David with hugs and help with his domestic responsibilities.

While we can easily sympathise with the spirit of the current social restrictions, there are many safe, low-risk ways to go out that impose no significant danger for anyone else but the participants, but that would be prohibited under the current lockdown laws, and constitute an unfair imposition on the people involved.

To those people, my light-hearted tip to get around this problem and avoid having to lie to the police if you're stopped is this: become what we might call Schrödinger's Shopper. That is, when you go out safely to see your beloved, or safely to provide a hug and comfort for your lonely friend, or safely to buy the paints you need to stimulate your life with meaning and avoid the doldrums of mental inertia, adopt a Schrödinger-esque superposition state of being both a shopper or not a shopper depending on whether you get stopped by the police.

 

If you're travelling to see another person in safe circumstances, then if you make your trip without getting stopped by the police, no problem. If however you do get stopped, tell the police you're about to go shopping, and then go shopping, make your visit to where you were going, then drive home with your shopping (or shop for the person you are visiting - the world is your oyster), ensuring no lie has been told, and you've covered yourself by being both a shopper or not a shopper depending on whether you get pulled over and asked what you're doing out.