Life in the Pandemic XIII: Living, doing and knowing……

Here in the England’s northwest, the second wave has well and truly arrived. In Liverpool, our cases and hospitalisations are up and rising, and we have just had new restrictions imposed on us. I have discussed modelling and predictions previously, but we didn’t need a model to predict the predicament we now face. In the Spanish ‘flu pandemic of 1918/19 there are reckoned to have been three waves, with later waves more deadly than the first. Talk of the second wave of COIVD19 has been around since the early summer. In France case numbers began to climb in early August, and deaths (still mercifully low) in September. In Spain it was slightly earlier (and may be receding now). The actual number of cases detected is not the key statistic to focus on because it depends on the testing regime, but the trajectory is clear enough (you can see the relevant plots in the Worldometer Coronavirus site). But, given we’re now into month nine of the pandemic (if we assume it started for real in February), and given the effort that has gone into learning about this new virus, why are we again on the verge of major lockdowns, with all the misery and damage such a state of affairs implies?

It’s not that we haven’t learned anything. The spread of the virus has been followed and probed and information about how transmissible it is has been gleaned. Spread is not just dependant on the properties of the virus, but on the characteristics of the populations exposed to it. But this too is increasingly well understood. How the virus is spread, how long it can survive in the air and on surfaces, have also been the subject of study and debate. And of course who is likely to (and not likely to) get seriously ill, be hospitalised, need ventilation and in some cases die, is now better understood. There are now treatment options available to combat both the virus and its effects, which of course the President of the United States recently availed himself of. All of this hopefully means that in second and subsequent waves, fewer will die than in the first wave, at least proportionately. We are about to find out. And on the horizon there are multiple vaccines, although decent evidence of their efficacy is still not available, and their arrival is not certain.

Perhaps more important than all of this is that we’ve known for months how to combat the virus, and its spread, in inexpensive, simple and effective ways. These are methods that almost all of us are capable of adopting, and in practical terms they don’t interfere too much with all the things we all have to do day to day in our daily lives. Currently in the UK they can be summarised using the Government mantra of “hands, face, space”. Frequent handwashing, wearing facemasks and keeping a reasonable distance between folk from different households, if followed by most of us, would have perhaps saved thousands of lives in the first wave (when effective treatments were still being developed), would have prevented the expected second wave (probably), and could still save thousands of lives now that we are in the midst of the second wave. At least in the UK these measures remain relatively uncontroversial, unlike in the US where they’ve got caught up in politics. So what’s the problem?

The problem is us, all of us. Most of us, as individuals, haven’t experienced the virus (yet). We may have heard of friends or family members who have experienced it first hand, but in many cases their experience was of a mild illness. And although daily cases in the tens of thousands sounds like a lot, it is a small proportion in a population of millions. And even this low level of actual experience is very patchy. The media have worked hard to expose us to the sights and sounds of the trouble the virus can cause. But this is relatively out of kilter with the lived experience of most of us, and comes from a media that various segments of the population distrust. Many appear just not to get it (as an example see this report). None of this is to deny the seriousness of the virus, or to in any way minimise the experience of those who have lost loved ones to it. There are far too many of them (more than there should have been). But it remains the case that this experience, horrible and tragic as it is, is a minority experience. And the problem is that we live in a culture which prioritises experience over knowledge. So while “science” is relatively clear, and the warnings that flow from it are fairly dire, many feel that none of this really applies to them. They will escape and don’t have to heed the warnings. Mask wearing and the rest of the actions they should take, don’t have to be taken too seriously. There isn’t really a need to err on the side of caution.

The problem then becomes one of compliance; we know what we should do, we know what the “scientists” say we should do. Their claim is that if we do these simple things across the population, there is abstract information showing that it will be a good thing and lives will be saved. But we just don’t do it.  Compliance falls. And it is always easier to blame others for the situation that results from this. “Others” may be culpable of course. Government may have been inconsistent, the elite may have got away with flouting rules, some of the modelling may have overstated the impact of the first wave, and all of the modelling comes with a degree of uncertainty. All this may be true, but while it may provide me with excuses for not doing what I should be doing (because it’s mildly inconvenient), none of these are reasons. Meantime, cases, hospitalisations and deaths all climb, although much of this was probably avoidable. My “truth”, what is true for me based on my actual experience, trumps the truth.

Given all of this, I find it completely understandable, that when I try to explain the existence of a whole other aspect of reality, folk are generally sceptical. I concede that the idea that a person who died a long time ago and a long way away has any relevance to anyone today is, on the face of it, far fetched. And as for the claim that the same person came back to life, and that His death and life have both personal and cosmic significance? Well I can see why this might not all compute. And of course, all of my evidence for this is beyond experience, and comes from an ancient book. All this in a culture that prioritises experience over truth. I see the problem.

Doesn’t mean it’s not all true of course.