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Word of the Day: Lax
The initial response to the coronavirus pandemic was lax, and mistakes were made.
There is no doubt about it.
We can all see that now.
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Hindsight is 20/20 (twenty-twenty), as they say, and there is nothing we can do about the past.
When rules are not enforced properly and carefully, people are guilty of being lax.
To be lax means not strictly enforcing rules and regulations.
We must follow rules with care, attention, and control, or we’ll be lax.
Sure, that is true, but if we are even half as intelligent as we think we are, we will learn from those past mistakes and not be lax in our response to the second wave.
Right now, I’m thinking about the Japanese response to the outbreak on the Diamond Princess cruise ship.
They messed up royally.
By quarantining people on board the vessel, the authorities turned it into a petri dish of infection.
Testing was not carried out promptly, and then allowing so-called ‘uninfected’ people to disembark and take public transport home was a disaster waiting to happen.
Every way we turn, we now see that the implementation of quarantine protocols was lax.
If the second wave of infections does occur, we will have another opportunity to get it right and not be lax.
Of course, we are all lax sometimes and don’t follow the rules.
Sure, we become upset if a traffic cop gives us a ticket for not signalling when changing lanes.
We would prefer it if she chose to be a little lax this time and let us off with a warning.
However, the thing is, the rules are there for a reason, and when the authorities are lax about enforcing the laws, people can die.
That’s what happened on the Diamond Princess.
It can happen on the roads too.
I hope it doesn’t happen again.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least a 7th-grade education (age 12).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 70.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.
