Correspondence on Delivery Disinfection Habit
A person has continued wiping down delivered packages with disinfectant spray for two weeks after their vaccination, without deciding to continue and without deciding to stop.
Correspondence on Delivery Disinfection Habit Counterfactual Analysis, April 26, 2021
The Situation
A person received their second vaccine dose on April 14. On April 26, they wiped down a delivered package with disinfectant spray before bringing it inside. They did this without thinking about it.
The Counterfactual
If the package had not been wiped: the person would have had the same outcome and would not have known they did not wipe it, because the outcome is the same.
This is not a new finding. The CDC guidance on surface transmission was updated in 2020 to indicate that surface contact is not a primary transmission route. The person read this guidance in 2020. The wiping continued.
Why It Continued
The behavior was established under conditions of genuine uncertainty. It is now maintained under conditions of resolved uncertainty, which means it is doing different work than it was designed to do.
What it is now doing: providing a moment of action between receiving the package and integrating it into the home. This is not nothing. It is a ritual that marks the boundary between outside and inside, which is a boundary that had meaningful weight for fourteen months and does not currently need to be defended with disinfectant but still exists as a felt category.
Consequence 1: The Spray
The household has purchased four bottles of disinfectant spray since March 2020. Supply constraints in the early period meant these were conserved. They are no longer conserved. Three-quarters of the current bottle have been applied to boxes that posed no measurable risk.
Consequence 2: The Habit Identification Problem
The person has not decided to keep wiping down packages. The person has also not decided to stop. The behavior exists in the gap between decisions, which is where most habits live until something forces a review.
Consequence 3: The Stopping Point
If the behavior were to stop, no review process would mark its end. One day the package would arrive and the person would not reach for the spray, and that would be the day the habit was over, and it would not be noted by anyone including the person.
This is how most pandemic behaviors will end. Not with a decision. With a day that was different from the day before it and was only recognizable as the last day from a later vantage.
The Governing Observation
The spray is still under the entry table. It will stay there until it runs out or until somebody moves it. The person knows where it is. This is the current status of the delivery disinfection habit.
That is a complete sentence and also a complete situation.