Mitigating Risk: The risk mitigation involves development of mitigation plans designed to manage, eliminate, or reduce risk to an acceptable level. Once a plan is implemented, it is continually monitored to assess its efficacy with the intent of revising the course-of-action if needed.
Risk mitigation planning is the process of developing options and actions to enhance opportunities and reduce threats.
On some levels, this is part of our daily life both personally and professionally, without thinking that we are making a plan… for example – the route we take to work is mitigating the lesser traffic route to eliminate or reduce the risk of being late, taking care of ourselves with rest, eating well, taking vitamins and supplements reduces the risk of sickness, and so on. A lot of our daily habits and decisions are actually based around mitigating risk – without thinking of it in that way.
During Covid was probably one of the only times in our life that we really thought about mitigating risk. From the mask, washing hands, gloves, use of disinfectants, etc. we thought about risk differently.
I struggled with the mask mandate...
To give you a different perspective on some of my belief:
We were designed a very specific way – not in my words but see the excerpt taken from https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health-topics/how-lungs-work#:~:text=When%20you%20inhale%20(breathe%20in,and%20is%20essential%20to%20life.
When you inhale (breathe in), air enters your lungs and oxygen from the air moves from your lungs to your blood. At the same time, carbon dioxide, a waste gas, moves from your blood to the lungs and is exhaled (breathe out). This process is called gas exchange and is essential to life.
So, I breathe in oxygen and breathe out a toxin – carbon dioxide. Simple really. But have we put much thought into it as far as risk mitigation – I have in the last two years especially. Why you may say. Well to make it brief:
I breathe in oxygen and breathe out a toxin – carbon dioxide. But in the past two years I have been asked “for my own health & safety and the health and safety of others” to cover my mouth and nose with a mask and continue to breathe in the air that I was designed to “get rid of for my health and safety” and that this process is essential to my life (stated above) – Hmmmm.
And then it is expected that because I am doing this for my health and safety that I will not contract the horrible infection that is attacking our respiratory system – our lungs…
So again – I’m covering my face – breathing in a toxic air and not going to get the awful lung infection that is going around the world. So by wearing a mask, am I not putting myself at more risk of getting a lung infection by continuously rebreathing the toxin that my body is meant to expel?
This has been my thinking in the past few years and for this, I have limited my mask wearing as much as possible to mitigate my risk of getting Covid. It is the exact opposite of what we have been taught to do, however, it has made the most sense to me. I have not put others at risk, as I have respected the mandates and others when I am around them, but I have done my absolute best to limit my mask wearing as much as is possible. I have, in my opinion, mitigated my risk of getting Covid externally and internally.
Not many people have thought that way – I know that just from the people in my circle and when we openly discuss it, respecting each other’s views, the response has primarily been the same – “oh, I didn’t really think about it that way, but damn that makes sense!”
Questions to Ponder:
What risk mitigation decisions do you make on a daily basis that you don’t necessarily plan or think about but rather just do?
Remember, it is your freedom of choice to make your own decisions on how you move forward in this. However, you choose to do it, it is a personal decision that you need to have peace with. Others may comment on it and have their own opinion on it, but regardless, it is your choice and you have your reasons for making your own choices. Do what you need to do for you and your family – you have to live with your choices – nobody else does.
They may comment on it, but it is your life…your journey.
