Life in the Pandemic XVI: The light at the end of the tunnel

The great sulk continues in the actual Whitehouse. The great contrast with the Bartlett Whitehouse continues (yes, I know it’s made up, but I’m still enjoying it). The great pandemic continues. Indeed in the land of the Whitehouse it is getting unbelievably worse. Each day in the US literally thousands are now dying, with the numbers still growing. No slick drama could cover this misery. Or the tearful frustration of healthcare workers at the end of their endurance pleading with people and politicians alike to do what can easily be done to ease the situation. We have our moments on this side of the Atlantic, and have endured our own share of political chaos and incompetence during the pandemic, but it does not seem to have reached quite the proportions of the Trumpian dystopia in the US. However, a light has now appeared at the end of the COVID tunnel.

Thanks to a remarkable effort and a ton of public money, there is now good evidence of no less than three effective vaccines, and slightly weaker evidence for at least two more. These have already been used on tens of thousands of people in various clinical trials. In the UK the first vaccine was authorised for use on the 2^nd December, and the needles were stuck in the first arms earlier this week. There are lots of people who deserve lots of credit for these achievements. Those who pioneered some of the underlying science behind the “Pfizer” and “Moderna” vaccines certainly deserve credit because they have come up with a new way of designing and producing vaccines which, at least in this case, appear to be amazingly effective. In the case of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine (not far from approval now), science plus some inspired guesswork appear to have produced the most usable of these initial vaccines. Because of its simpler production, ease of transport and robustness, this is the one that will perhaps have the most global impact. (Some) politicians and the regulators deserve credit too. There appears to have been little haggling over funding to push forward with trials, and real cooperation to expedite both trials and approvals without compromising safety. If there has been a conspiracy, it has been to advance as quickly and safely as possible, and it has achieved something of real and lasting benefit. And for once those on the outside of the rich, industrialised and wealthy world have not been forgotten. Yes, I’m sure grubby politics and grubbier economics will soon reassert themselves, but for now it’s worth smiling about much of this. But, of course, it is just the start.

There is a world of difference between a vaccine and vaccination. The real value of the work that has been done will only be realised when the vaccines end up in peoples’ arms. There are lots of other people we will need to rise to meet a whole different heap of challenges before we approach the end of the pandemic tunnel. Manufacturing enough vaccine for close to the whole human population of the planet is hardly trivial. Production problems have already reduced the rate at which the newly approved Pfizer vaccine can be rolled out in the UK. And after making the stuff, it has to be transported, and then distributed. For the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines this is a challenge because they appear to be rather delicate requiring very cold transportation and storage temperatures, and minimal handling. That's why it’s the Oxford vaccine, which is slightly more robust and happy at roomish temperatures, will probably have the global impact. Once all of these challenges have been overcome, there is the issue of the population’s willingness to bare their arms.

This will all take time. So for at least the next few months most of us will need to do what the media claims we’re all sick of doing. The routine of facemasks, social distancing, handwashing and lots of working from laptops at home where we can, will all have to continue. Restrictions on activities we all used to take for granted will also continue. And if we don’t stick to this, more people will die than would otherwise be the case. Maybe, just maybe, next summer we might be returning to something akin to what we used to think of as normality. The virus won’t have disappeared of course. And we don’t know how quickly our new-found, vaccine stimulated immunity will. So care will still be needed. There remain many unknowns. In reality we have a distance to travel in the tunnel, and the light, while reasonably bright, isn’t stellar yet.

Which brings me to what I’ve been reflecting on. The COVID tunnel is far from humanity’s longest or darkest. COVID vaccines, impressive as they are, are no solution to our biggest problem. Indeed, although they are vital, it would be a great mistake to indulge in any collective hubris about our achievements, before moving on to some other issue. After all, it was almost certainly human activity that led to the pandemic in the first place. And before most of us adopt a smug attitude because we know whose fault it all is (or think we do), there’s plenty of collective blame to go around for all sorts of abuses that have exacerbated the pandemic. Some of the very same things may well lead to the next global disaster. And that’s all before we get to other things like the climate crisis. It turns out that the inevitable progress of humanity has never been inevitable at all. And sometimes progress is not as progressive as is claimed. In economics, poverty abounds and seems only to shift rather than decline (although statistically until the pandemic progress had been made). In health as we’ve seen, old diseases may be conquered (if not eradicated) but new ones emerge. Even although poverty, illness, war and famine are avoidable, we manage not to avoid them. There are lots of good things that we can now do which previous generations didn’t even dream about. But for all that we appear to be largely stuck.

Maybe this is because fundamentally humanity’s big problems aren’t intellectual or technical. Therefore the really big issues do not have intellectual or technical solutions. The nub of our problems are moral, and beyond that, spiritual. The real tunnel we’re naturally stuck in is that we’re just not what or who we are supposed to be. But particularly at this time of year, we remember a light that appeared. And it appeared not at the end of our tunnel, but in the middle of it. It would be hard to put it better than John put it at the beginning of his Gospel:

^9 “The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. ¹⁰ He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. ¹¹ He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. ¹² Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— ¹³ children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.” John 1:9-13

Note to self: It’s time I stopped fixating on the pandemic, and considered again the events that culminated in the arrival in this very world of Jesus, who came to illuminate the way out of this very tunnel.

Life in the Pandemic XV: The big story…..

I’ve already confessed my liking for “The West Wing”, which for the record I’m continuing to enjoy. I know that at the very end of the umpteen seasons there will be an episode about the transition between the eponymous hero and his successor. It will of course, once again, stand as a stark contrast with the great sulk currently going on in the Whitehouse. If you need another reminder of just how different what is currently playing out is to previous US presidential elections, go online and watch the concession speeches of John McCain and Mitt Romney (both of the same party as the current occupant of the Whitehouse, conceding to a winner from the other party), or Al Gore (conceding to George W. after the Supreme Court halted the Florida recount). You’ll find a further contrast in how Obama and Biden handled the transition to Trump and Pence - they offered full and friendly cooperation, notwithstanding the nonsense, slander and ignorance that they’d endured for years from Trump.

Trump’s presidency began with chaos and incompetence. Apparently much of the transition advice and support offered to his transition team was spurned. Team Trump knew better and trusted nothing. They were the great disruptors, and didn’t need any advice from a corrupt Washington elite. It didn’t work out well, and it isn’t ending well. We then found ourselves listening to arguments about the size of the Trump crowd at his inauguration – poor Shawn Spicer had to insist that it was larger than Obama’s, when all the evidence was to the contrary (although Obama really wasn’t that bothered). This led to an early example of Trump double-speak introduced on his behalf by Kellyanne Conway – she of “alternative facts” fame. That all occupied a couple of weeks of Presidential and media attention while he should have been getting on with the business of governing. Some stuff didn’t get done. Other stuff (like the “Muslim ban”) was done sloppily and blocked, at least initially, in the courts. And then of course we had four more years of the same, ending with the grotesque incompetence of the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic. We can argue about the politics. But this last calumny has cost lives. It’s difficult to say how many, and all the blame should not be laid at Trump's door, but a big slice of it should. Now he apparently splits his time between sulking, tweeting and golfing. Meanwhile, more of his countrymen get sick, and more of them die.

Some will say, of course, that there have been real achievements in the US in the last four years, like a booming economy (arguable and now moot) and a much more conservative US Supreme Court (unarguable). But Mexico paid for no wall, the swamp was more than topped up, and US standing in the world was devalued (to the delight of autocrats and dictators everywhere). Partisan politics is one thing. But why over 70 million US voters find this so attractive a record that they voted for “four more years” has me stumped. I suppose at a minimum it shows that Trump has moved the dial with ongoing consequences for US and world politics when he goes (assuming he does). But does any of this matter? In a funny way I want to argue that in one sense that it really doesn’t. I should have my attention elsewhere.

It takes an effort to remember what life was like pre-Trump, just like it takes an effort to remember what life was like pre-pandemic. So much has apparently changed in a relatively short space of time. And I have to confess much of the detail of the period has sucked me in. That’s partly because of the nature of what’s going on, and partly because I’m me – I like the detail of stuff. With the benefit of the interweb and the twenty-four hour news cycle, those of us who are so inclined have been able to hang of every vote tally, from every state, in the US election (if we wanted to). We’ve been able to overdose on commentary, counter commentary, claim and nuance. Through the pandemic we’ve been able to see the numbers from across the world, compare first peaks and second peaks, argue about the true value of “r”, fret about the number of recruits to phase 3 vaccine studies. And on, and on. But there’s a bigger, deeper picture to be seen, and it’s the one that should have been holding my attention. I don’t mean that the instead of attending to the minutiae we should instead track and discuss big claimed cultural or intellectual shifts or economic and political trends instead. Such things may or may not be of interest. What I do mean is that underpinning the detail and the “big shifts” there is an even bigger story, and that’s the one I should be focused on.

Let me illustrate with what might seem like a digression. There’s a lot of history in the Old Testament. It’s not quite history as we would find it today in a history textbook. That’s not because what is recorded is untrue (although I admit this is contested), it’s because the Bible’s concern is about motive and meaning as much as it is about times, places, people, comings, goings and doings. Buried away in the book of 2 Kings, you’ll find an account of the reign of a king called Jeroboam II summed up in all of six verses (2 Kings 14:23-29). In many ways Jeroboam was very successful and effective. If you or I were writing a history of ancient Israel we would probably have lingered over him much longer than the writer of 2 Kings does. If you lived in Israel at the time of Jeroboam II, you might well have thought that things were going rather well. For many people at the time things seemed politically, economically and militarily stable at home and even abroad (a rare thing there and then). Politics in his day wasn’t quite the same as today of course, but no doubt Jeroboam and those around the royal court thought this had something to do with them. Spiritually, they had hedged their bets. There was certainly plenty of religion around, some designed to keep God placated, and some to keep other “deities” happy too. They should have known better, and indeed could have known better by paying attention to what God was saying in their day. What He had to say to them can be found in two or three other OT books (Hosea, Jonah and Amos). It does not make for comfortable reading. Underneath the detail of those days, was the Living God working out His purposes. And that was the bigger story that got completely missed. What you’ll find in Hosea, Amos and Jonah still speaks today.

That bigger story is still being told and those same purposes are still being worked out. While the connection between the nitty gritty detail and the big picture are from moment to moment fairly opaque (at least to me), I have a whole Bible that makes clear the big picture, the direction of travel, and the purposes of God, which it turns out are far from mysterious. As with so many areas of life, not being able to understand everything is not the same as understanding nothing. It is this story I should be fixated on. While the West Wing may be diverting entertainment, and  CNN (other news organisation are available) may be a useful stimulus to informed prayer, the big story is His story. That’s what underpins, shapes or critiques every other story. That is where my attention really should be.

Life in the Pandemic XIV: The fictional and the fake……

I freely admit it. I’m a fan of Sorkin snappy dialogue. Aaron Sorkin is the screenwriter behind films like “A Few Good Men”, “Charlie Wilson’s War”, “Moneyball” and “The Social Network”. And I’ve just started re-watching his classic TV political drama “The West Wing”. This used to be my treat when I had to travel to conferences far away. Those were the days when we climbed into things called aeroplanes and flew thousands of miles just to give tiny little ten-minute talks and listen to lots of other little ten-minute talks. Those were the days when we felt blessed if our laptops had things called CD drives (or slightly later DVD drives) into which we placed discs containing films or TV series. While this meant that the laptop weighed about the same as a sack of potatoes, it provided a means of whiling away hours at airports, on flights or during evenings spent in mid-budget hotel rooms. So, spread over a couple of years I watched my way through the seven series of The West Wing in the mid to late naughties. 

It centred on the goings on in the West Wing of the Whitehouse during the two terms of the fictional Bartlet presidency. The main protagonists were the smart, witty, morally-superior and, of course, left-leaning senior staff that surrounded the President. President Bartlet himself was of course a Democrat, and was a (fairly conscientious) Roman Catholic and ex-academic economist turned Governor of New Hampshire. The interplay between the President and his communications directors (Toby), or between Josh and the press secretary CJ, or between the President’s “body man” Charlie and Sam the speech-writer, or between any and all of them was a rollercoaster ride of wit and apparent, knowing wisdom. It could be a bit preachy at times, but occasionally dealt with serious subjects and there was the odd tear-jerking moment.  Despite the fact that I had very little in common with any of these characters, and that even the political system they worked within was (by definition) foreign to me, I was hooked within an episode. And even although US evangelicals (and by extension all of us, because we’re obviously a single monolithic block) got a good kicking in about episode 3 of series 1, I stayed hooked right to the very end as the Bartlet presidency came to its natural and inescapable end with the transition to a new (Democratic) administration.

The contrast between Barlet’s  fictional Whitehouse and the current Trump Whitehouse is fairly stark. In the fictional version, there was frequently chaos, but you always new that the chaos was more apparent than real and that things would probably work out. Everyone on the team basically knew what they were doing and why they were doing it. So there was a basic competence that ran deep, even if on the surface there was just a lot of running around going on. And at the top, Bartlet always led in roughly the right direction. Even when he had to agonise over difficult choices, he would think it through, within a broadly recognisable moral framework, and provide the lead that everyone else needed. Occasionally, because he was a politician, he dissembled, and wasn’t entirely transparent. There were secrets that were kept, and others that eventually exploded. There were mistakes, but Bartlet (this being fiction) was big enough and self-assured enough to admit them. All the time these were people who were at least trying to be truthful and decent.

For the last four years even the friends of a real, rather than fictional, president of the United States would have to admit that basic decency, empathy and truth have been in short supply. To be fair, Trump has delivered on some of the big promises he made, promises that persuaded less than half of the US voting population to vote for him. High on the list would be a considerably more conservative Supreme Court and a big tax cut. Of course, who knows what the new shape of the court will produce in the long-term, and the tax cut was of little use to the massed ranks of many of his supporters (although it was a big boost to rich Americans and richer corporations). As the 2020 election campaign heads towards its climax, this allows his boosters to counsel that the population of the US should concentrate on what the Donald has done (or at least some of the things he’s done), not who he is. One odd thing is that so much of both what he’s done, and who he is, is so much stranger than fiction. While not a fictional politician, Trump has turned out to be a fake. Fake outsider, fake man of the people, fake deal-maker, fake wall-builder, fake man of faith and Bible lover. Had Sorkin written a script that was anything approaching the last four years and tried to get it made into a film or TV series, he would have been laughed out of town.

I know that the Bartlet Whitehouse was made up. But basic competence and decency really should not be too much to ask. We all understand that hard choices have to be made, often between bad and worse alternatives. This is probably even more the case in the pandemic. But such choices require accurate information, careful thought and broad, civilised discussion, and should be both intelligible and explained (at least in a democracy). Even when disputed, at least a dialogue can ensue, and perhaps things improved for the future. A lack of accurate information is not always the fault of politicians, but a lack of careful thought is unforgivable. We all understand that wrong choices are occasionally made, particularly against a background of incomplete information. Politicians should be able to change course as more information becomes available without the constant chorus of U-turn media political catastrophism. U-turns are sometimes necessary, and if explainable and explained, probably forgivable. But we’ve seen none of this from the Trump Whitehouse, who have scrapped with each other, have exulted in ignorance and even elevated it above competence, and then resorted to complete fantasy. Fantasy that isn’t nearly as compelling or attractive as The West Wing. Leading the charge has been the Donald himself and then he wonders why he’s not loved.

Commenting on the outcome of the 2020 election, Sorkin himself said “I would write the ending where everyone does the right thing. I don’t think Trump will do the right thing, except by accident.” We’ll see shortly.

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.

Life in the Pandemic XII: What lies ahead?

No human being can tell the future. Lot’s of us try to guess the future, and claim that we’re making a prediction. If enough of us do that enough times, someone is  going to guess well and apparently predict the future correctly. But this will be apparent rather than real. There are those who make a living out of (apparently) predicting the future. This is not because they are good guessers, and it’s certainly not because they know something not knowable by the rest of us.  Often it’s because their “predictions” are so vague as to be interpretable as being fulfilled by something at some time. Of course this means that there are also so vague as to be of no practical use. Perhaps the best evidence of this is that they make their living making “apparently” reliable predictions, not by actually predicting winning lottery numbers or placing big bets on unlikely events. And of course because of selection and confirmation biases, we tend not to notice the predictions that aren’t, and take to twitter about their successful guesses.

Deep down in the pandemic we’ve all become familiar with another kind of prediction. From early on the media has been awash with dire warnings based on the reporting of predictive scientific models used to project the future course of the pandemic. Some of these have been extremely influential. The Imperial College model developed by Professor Neil Ferguson and his team is credited with persuading the UK Government to enforce a UK-wide “lockdown” back in March. Their model suggested that without appropriate suppression of the virus the UK might be facing up to 500 000 deaths, breaking the healthcare system and devastating the economy. However, this model, and models in general, have been fiercely criticized in some quarters as being scarcely an improvement on Mystic Meg. It’s claimed that they are not only failing now, but have performed poorly in the past.

But it’s important to understand what scientific models do and don’t do. Firstly they are inevitably based on what is known when they are constructed and on assumptions. Even what is known is usually not known with certainty or great precision, so choices always have to be made leading to uncertainty being baked in to any model. Where important information is missing, then assumptions have to be made. Bad assumptions lead to a poor model. Secondly, no model captures everything; any model is a simplification. It is, after all, a model and not reality. Uncertainties around inputs, plus simplifications in construction, mean that the outputs of any model tend to provide a range of possible outcomes, along with estimates of precision. Even in a model that perfectly captured all that was going on in a given situation, small changes of input assumptions and parameters, would have a big effect on outputs. There are no certainties to be found here, just sets of likelihoods. This is better than guessing, and may offer a way of avoiding complete disaster, but it is not a means of predicting the future with precision and certainty. And models are not proscriptive they are ultimately descriptive. They don’t tell how things must be; they describe how they might be.

However, as with other situations in life, it’s important not to confuse our inability to know everything, with the inevitability of knowing nothing. It’s not that we know nothing about the future course of the pandemic. If we take certain actions then the course of the pandemic will be altered in certain ways.  Not being able to know everything about the future, is not the same as being totally ignorant of the future. So what are we to make of where we are and what’s going on? The pandemic is a perspective-shaping event. It should have reminded us all of how fragile our lives, both individually and collectively, are. It has forced a re-evaluation of what really matters. And that re-evaluation should include considerations about where things are headed.

It seems to me that we are at an intersection of events that are significant. In addition to the pandemic, there are other events that are worth pondering. Earlier in the year Australia was ablaze. According to ABC News, over the 2019/20 Australian summer over 30 million acres went up in smoke, killing animals in their hundreds of millions, and affecting the health of a large proportion of the human population. This would be bad enough. But in the western US over the last few weeks, forest fires in unprecedented numbers and of unprecedented size have already destroyed of the order of 4 million acres and are still burning fiercely. Add to that fires in the Amazon and Siberia, and you have impacts on a planetary scale. This is likely to exacerbate the climate impact of human activity, about which we have heard much in recent years. To public health and climate events, add the political instability now been seen in what has historically been a politically stable country, the US. It’s hard to underestimate just how troubling Donald Trump’s recent pronouncements about the peaceful transition of power have been. This is playing with fire of a very different kind. In the worlds largest economy and most powerful military power this matters to us all. It might just be the craziness of one strange individual. But, taken together all of these goings on seem to be very unlike business as usual.

Given what I’ve already said about prediction, I am not now going to claim any special knowledge on my part that can illuminate where we are and what’s going on. But it is perhaps worth pointing out that there is a source of knowledge available to all of us that is always worth taking note of. My conviction is that neither history nor the future just happen; they have a shape and a trajectory, and we needn’t be completely ignorant of either. Underpinning and driving all that has and will happen is the God who reveals His purposes in His word, the Bible. If you’re looking for key explanations this is where to turn. And you’ll find a prediction or two. Because while none of us knows what’s ahead, this isn’t such a big deal for a God who is eternal.

One final aside. One of the odd by-products of the pandemic, is that it's easier than even to lurk unseen in church services. If taking God and the Bible strike you as strange but you're intrigued, there are lots of places you can find out more. We'll be "at church" shortly; feel free to join us online.

Life in the Pandemic XI: Why science can never be enough.

In the interests of transparency, I should make clear from the outset that I think science is, without doubt, the best way of obtaining sound answers to certain types of questions. And just at the moment, some of those questions are pressing. Here in the pandemic we desperately need to know whether convalescent plasma treatment works, and if it does, how well.  We need to know if any of the vaccines currently being investigated confer immunity to the SARS-COV-2 virus, and if so, how long that immunity lasts. Despite claims by the Presidents of both the US and Russia, these questions remain open. The only way they can be answered is properly constructed clinical trials, which are ongoing. The answer/s will come when they come. Spin, propaganda, political will or economic desperation will not bring them any sooner. Such claims as have been made, appear to be based on political considerations and (sometimes wilful) ignorance, and those making these claims are seeking to exploit the ignorance of the population at large. That they have been perpetrated at all is just one line of evidence that science on its own is never enough.

Part of the problem is that science does not take place in any kind of vacuum, be it political, cultural or ethical (the one exception being science done in a vacuum!). It is a human activity carried on by human beings. Its results, and what flows from them, be those novel medical treatments, new technology, or new answers to age-old questions and problems, have to be understood and then used (where they have a use) by human beings. While as an institution and community science is, at least over the medium term, fairly critical and self-correcting, it can and has produce flawed results and wrong answers. The practitioners of science (ie scientists) are, as individuals, as flawed and fickle as the rest of humanity. Most try to practice their science in a competent, professional and serious way. A minority are known to have behaved fraudulently, with the intent to deceive, usually for some sort of gain. There is sense in which science is under attack from within by this minority. And their activities devalue the whole enterprise. It certainly means that the scientific enterprise is much less efficient than it might be. However, it also risks bringing the whole scientific enterprise into public disrepute (much as has occurred with journalism and politics). So, to bolster science’s self-regulation and self-correction functions, various mechanisms have been introduced, like the US Office of Scientific Integrity or academic and scientific integrity processes in individual institutions. But policing science, practicing it properly, upholding commitments to honesty, decency and transparency, is not a scientific matter, it’s a matter of ethics. And ethics isn’t science. These things really matter for the continuing ability of science to get good answers to tough questions. But they are not themselves scientific. Another example of science on its own not being enough.

Science’s foundations, its method/s (there isn’t “a” scientific method), and lots of elements of its practice are also not themselves “scientific”. What I mean is that they do not proceed along those classic lines from hypothesis, to predictions, to tests and measurement leading to results. They are the stuff of starting assumptions and a necessary framework of commitments that make science work. If science had been proved not to work, then I suppose they would have come under more scrutiny. But now they are so baked in they have become invisible. Philosophers and historians of science have largely given up trying to crack “the” mystery of how science works because so much of it is about all this invisible, intellectual “dark matter”. But this is another way in which science on its own isn’t enough. Scientific method, properly conceived, isn’t entirely scientific.

One of the things science is really good at is making measurements in an organised and objective way, so that the results once obtained can command widespread agreement. This isn’t just about the results themselves, but it’s also about the scrutiny that all scientific results have to be placed under. This is the sort of community activity most commonly seen in the processes of publishing scientific results via peer review, exposure at conferences and the like. This is a key part of the process that leads to sound knowledge in any given field which provides the launchpad for the next phase of progress. In a given field, once the basics are established, there’s no need to go back to square one each time, and so effort can focus on extending and refining explanations and knowledge, making them more powerful in the process. But as powerful as scientific explanations and knowledge might be, they only provide information about, and control over, natural processes by way of statements of facts. The conundrum is that usually this is not really what interests people. David Attenborough documentaries about the state of the planet only get you so far. What occupies most people most of the time isn’t the answer to the what and how questions, but the answer to why questions. And establishing what “is”, is far from establishing what “should be”. We may be cooking the planet, we may be imperilling biodiversity on a global scale. But beyond the notion that might not be in our long term health or economic interests, why is this a bad thing? That’s not a question of science, but a question of values. It’s these values questions that are the important and tricky ones, and science can never give us the complete answer to them.

And here’s the real kicker. Science is all about reason. This is a problem. Because individually and collectively all human beings are not merely rational. Reasons other than reason often drive our behaviour and influence our decisions. Indeed, even if it were true that on average the human population did behave rationally, given human variability that simply means that there will be a lot irrationality about. And science on its own can’t help with that (beyond measuring accurately the irrationality). This type of irrationality can be viewed almost nightly on news channels where people deny the pandemic, and state quite openly that no way will they accept vaccination against the “fake flu”. Only a minority need to adopt this irrational stance (it flies in the face of the evidence), to undermine the usefulness of a C19 vaccination for everyone.

So, deep down here in the pandemic we certainly need science. It will provide us with desperately needed tools. But on its own it cannot guarantee that those tools will be used effectively. Never confuse science with salvation.

Life in the Pandemic X: Exacerbating uncertainty

 Many things in life are uncertain (apart from death and taxes obviously). And many things are uncertain in science. Indeed identifying, controlling and quantifying uncertainty is a key aspect of the practice of science. We’re so keenly aware of uncertainty that we try to dissuade students of talking about science “proving” things, as though in any given situation absolutely all uncertainty can be removed. We don’t think that it can be, and we can therefore never be “certain”. What we seek to do is accumulate evidence supporting a particular explanation for a given phenomenon so that it moves from being highly provisional (a hypothesis), to being fairly probably the correct explanation (a supported hypothesis), to being the best and most highly supported explanation we have (at which point it’s  usually elevated to the status of a theory). This takes time and effort. Even so, we also accept that the most accepted theory, with apparently lots of supporting evidence, can always be superseded by a new theory. This might be an extension of the original theory, or indeed a contradiction of it. But this whole approach raises  problems. It is tricky to explain (as you may have noticed), and it’s not the way most people think or speak most of the time. These problems (and why they matter) have been amply exposed by the pandemic.

Let’s start with the language problem. There are situations where certainty is conflated with clarity. In a startling reversal of form for the particular bunch of politicians currently running the UK, the pandemic mantra has been “We’re following the science, therefore….”. This is a reversal because it suited them in a previous situation (ie the Brexit debate), to downplay the view of “experts”. But as I’ve noted before, in the pandemic, this has changed. Experts are in; but uncertainty is not out.

Politicians and the media, are very keen on what they call clarity. But COVID19 is a virus new to  humans, and therefore new to science. Nothing was known, indeed could be known, about it (although things could be inferred). Early in the pandemic, at the time when many key decisions were being taken, the science was more than usually uncertain, and therefore the scientific advice to politicians had to be highly caveated (this is an assumption on my part, I wasn’t privy to it). But this doesn’t make for snappy press conferences. And it almost certainly guaranteed that the advice would change, and therefore the instructions issued by politicians would have to change (example: face masks). The media don’t particularly help in such situations. Their stock in trade is the language of u-turn and climb-down. It might have been wise to clearly communicate from the start that the course of action being embarked upon was based on a consensus of what, given the evidence at the time, was reasonable. Not certain, but reasonable. Problem is, would any of us reacted as we need to if the politicians had spoken this way?

To be fair to them, there have been some sceptics and deniers who have been happy to jump up and down and accuse them of exaggerating the danger of the situation for nefarious political ends. They have pointed out that for all the talk of half a million UK dead and the NHS overwhelmed, this was not the disaster that developed. But this is to miss the point. The one experiment that could not be done was the one that involved doing nothing and essentially letting COVID19 run its course. So on the basis of (suitably caveated) advice, we had our lockdown. And while we can’t be certain (that is, after all, the point I’m making), the difference in case and death curves (eg see here) between most EU countries (including the UK) and others like the US and Brazil, suggests that this was indeed a sensible course of action. As an aside, we have to now hope that we don’t blow it, and revert to the earlier trajectory that could lead to disaster. However, at least some of the critics seem to suggest that with all the uncertainty involved, essentially nothing should have been done. Action should only have been taken once all doubt had been removed. But then that would have meant nothing would have been done. And many thousands more would have died, deaths that we have almost certainly avoided. It will perhaps be possible to demonstrate this statistically, once more  evidence has accumulated. But at the point the big political and economic decisions had to be taken, actual evidence was scarce.

We have heard this sort of call to wait for certainty before, both in another contemporary context and historically. And it’s here that the language problem, and the complexity problem intersect. Climate change, its cause, effects and what we should do about it (if we can do anything about it), is undoubtedly complex. The idea that it is caused by human activity (primarily the burning of fossil fuels from the industrial revolution on, increasing atmospheric CO₂) has been a matter of overwhelming scientific consensus for decades ie we’ve gone beyond hypothesis, supported hypothesis, and theory to consensus. Even still, scientists in this area will probably be unwilling to say they have no doubts, that the relevant theory/theories have been “proved” in some absolute sense. That’s just not the appropriate language of science. But that allows others to come along and say that the science is uncertain, there are alternative explanations or the whole thing is just a hoax. Here, a legal analogy might help.

I served on a murder jury some years ago. We were faced with the weighty decision of whether the prosecution had proved its case beyond reasonable doubt. Notice that you can still convict and have doubt. The question is whether the case is proved beyond reasonable doubt. One can always come up with lots of “could be’s” and “might have beens”. But if they fly in the face of the evidence, or are not supported by evidence, then they are not reasonable. And if they are not reasonable, they is no reason to pronounce the defendant “not guilty”. If the scientific consensus around climate change were a defendant in the dock, although there are doubts and uncertainties, they would be ruled out by the evidence as unreasonable, a guilty verdict handed down, and the jury would go away and sleep soundly, their duty done. And yet the uncertainty, complexity, and the language of science conspire to provide a space for those who say we should do nothing because we are not 100% certain, precisely at the time when action has to be taken.

At least some who operate in this space are following in a fairly inglorious tradition that has been exposed several times. They seek to foment doubt and increase complexity, obfuscate evidence and exacerbate uncertainty. They explicitly seek to sow doubt, of the unreasonable sort. The approach was famously summarised by a cigarette company executive in the 1960’s in a now infamous memo which stated “Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the general public.”(1). What followed was essentially a well funded disinformation campaign of epic proportions. Meanwhile, cigarettes continued to be manufactured, sold and consumed and contributed to the early deaths of millions. The story of this and similar campaigns is expertly revealed in its gory detail by David Michaels in his books (2,3). And there’s evidence that there are commercial and other interests playing the same game with climate change. Stir up doubt, exacerbate the uncertainty, and the public will conclude that either the issues are so complicated and unclear that it would be premature to take action (like ban smoking or increase tax on gas guzzlers), or that the inconvenience of action is not worth uncertain benefits.

This kind of thing is happening in the pandemic. Reasonable people are not taking reasonable actions because, particularly in the US, misinformation is being spread and uncertainty is being exacerbated. The scary bit is that when the much hoped-for vaccine becomes available, we all know it’s likely to start over vaccination against COVID19. But, to resort to some unscientific language, you can be sure that wearing a mask and washing your hands frequently at the moment, and getting vaccinated once one or more vaccines have passed through the requisite trials, is a really good idea. I don’t doubt it.

 1. Michaels D (2005) Doubt is their product. Scientific American 292(6):96-101 (available on Research Gate: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7806937_Doubt_Is_Their_Product)

 2. Michaels D (2008) Doubt is Their Product. Oxford Univ. Press

 3. Michaels D (2020 )The Triumph of Doubt: Dark Money and the Science of Deception Oxford Univ. Press