There’s a pithy gem of popular wisdom, reminding us that “pride comes before a fall.” There is perhaps no better moment to reflect on this than in the wake of one of the most disastrous social engineering experiments of modern times.
Much of the far-reaching collateral damage of pandemic policies, including the erosion of civil rights, the epidemic of depression and loneliness, the increased dysfunctionality of health services, the collapse of many jobs and businesses across the world, and the effective transfer of wealth from small businesses to large multi-nationals, could have been greatly mitigated if scientists, public health officials, and political leaders had swallowed some of their pride and recognised the limits of their own knowledge and power.
Scientists pridefully thought they could use mathematical models informed by sparse empirical knowledge to make actionable projections about the consequences of different public policies. Political leaders pridefully thought they could, for the first time in history, snuff out a highly transmissible virus by putting their citizens under house arrest, placing vaccine checkpoints at every border crossing, and forcing healthy citizens to cover their faces.
These interventions broke with prevailing conventions surrounding pandemics, and had a relatively weak grounding in established scientific knowledge. They were, at bottom, shots in the dark, supported by unverified, and - at least if the results are anything to go by - untenable, scientific hypotheses.
Hubristic interventions based on scientifically weak assumptions got us nowhere. Countries that adopted more modest and tried-and-tested measures, such as Sweden and Florida, did no worse than their more interventionist, heavy-handed neighbours, in terms of hospitalisations and excess deaths, and arguably did a lot better overall, given the fact that they managed to avoid many of the unintended harms associated with coercive lockdowns.
Both scientists and political rulers dramatically over-estimated the extent of their knowledge and power, and seriously under-estimated the complexity of social reality, which is not easily domesticated by a mathematical model or a simplistic, scattershot solution.
These interventions were, at bottom, shots in the dark, supported by unverified, and ultimately untenable, scientific hypotheses. Both scientists and political rulers dramatically over-estimated the extent of their knowledge and power, and seriously under-estimated the complexity of social reality.
Revolutionary policies, with the most noble of intentions, often do far more harm than good. Typically, modest interventions supported by well-established knowledge and conventions are far more appropriate than highly ambitious and risky interventions that gamble with the lives and destinies of our fellow citizens.
Sound governance and successful scientific inquiry demand something that goes far beyond mere intelligence or technical competence, namely, at attitude of genuine humility. The good scientist, no less than the good ruler, must accept that immensely complex social problems are not readily susceptible to quick-fix solutions.
But if you are either drunk with power, or infatuated with your own scientific or intellectual prowess, the “boring,” conventional, and unspectacular path of modest damage-limitation may not prove especially appealing.
If governments and their advisors had humbly acknowledged that they could not play god against a highly transmissible respiratory virus, they might have devoted their energies to sensible and tried-and-tested policies of disease mitigation like expanding healthcare capacity, supporting emerging treatments, offering vaccines on a voluntary basis, and providing focused protection for care homes. They might have applied traditional methods of pandemic relief instead of indulging in arrogant and reckless illusions of social engineering.
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"tried-and-tested" would have also included rapid testing option that people could choose.
Planning to visit friends but have a slight cough: test....our industrial medical complex and tech companies are great at such things.
In fact, Zuckerberg spouse's foundation built free covid testing but no one could use it for one stupid reason...they couldn't enter zero cost for the test in the medical billing system. Humility from hospital admins could have said f#ck the billing system, order it!
The Ego can be a very dangerous thing,,, The" I am right and you are wrong" seems to hold fast in the more educated classes,, It seems just because they have gone to college and learned to repeat what has been told them again and again they get into a cult like mindset that they are far superior than someone using critical thought and questioning the status quo. Common sense is missing because they are up their own arses so to speak...