Pascal’s Wager, (or how I learned to stop worrying and love Purell)

It started about two years ago. Visiting friends to see their brand new baby, we were prevented from entering their home until we covered our hands in Purell. It was done politely and, happy to see their daughter, we would have stripped naked in the snow had they asked. But something about the request struck me as wrong. Millions of children are born each year, most in parts of the world that don’t have the benefit of Purell. They all seem to be doing fine. On another level, this child, any child seems to embody the very idea of freshness, pureness, and unblemished nature. Why the need to apply chemical toxins to your hands before touching her?

We all know those parents that seem just a bit too nervous for their own good. The ones that hover all the time, that can’t relax unless little Johnny is wearing his helmet and mouth-guard before going to day care. These are parents seemingly deserving of our pity and unsolicited advice. Somewhere in the metric of being a ‘good parent’ has to be a score for level-headedness. Not being terrified at every potential danger, taking things in stride, staying RELAXED. More importantly, not instilling your daughter with unreasonable fears she’ll pay $200/hr some day to dispel.

Now we’ve done our fair share of research into the dark world of all things that can go wrong. It feels irresponsible to not have, and we have no regrets. But recently we heard of a baby (anonymous to protect the innocent) that had a pretty good scare. RSV, an immunity issue that can lead to a form of infant Pneumonia brought a newborn to the emergency room for days, parents sleeping by him day and night. He’s fine now, and back with his family, but it does get one to thinking.

Another set of friends work in the NICU (newborn medicine) in Boston. They are by far some of the more relaxed parents we know, showing that knowledge does not directly lead to paranoia. They SWEAR by Purell, especially for newborns, especially in the winter, especially for the first month.

Which brings us to Pascal.

Trying to convince heretics to believe in god, he proposed what came to be known as “Pascal’s Wager”. It does not cost you much to believe. If there is a heaven, the rewards are infinite. If there is no heaven, you have only lost a few hours each Sunday. If Infinity is divided by X such that X is any finite number, the results will in all cases equal infinity. Regardless of the probability of there being a Heaven to look forward to, mathematically it’s a good bet to make.
(for the counterargument, consider Pascal’s Flaw)

Applying that math to our child, for at least the first month after she’s born, we’re going with the safe bet and ask people to disinfect their hands before poking our daughter. It doesn’t cost us much (we’ll supply the Purell, now with Aloe to prevent dry skin), and the costs of not doing so could very well be infinite.

We haven’t refined our policy on helmets yet.