"WHEN the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” Or so John Maynard Keynes is said to have declared, on a zillion quotations sites.
Does it change your opinion to be told that he never said anything of the sort? And if the general sentiment is indisposed to think it true or untrue because it was attributed to Keynes? Would some other observation – “There’s no such thing as a free lunch”; “Man is born free but everywhere he is in chains”; “Extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice” – be more or less accurate if it had been expressed by Hitler, or Plato? We should deplore appeals to authority as much as the ad hominem argument, since they’re basically the same thing in a different shirt.
What’s more, though it’s a snappy line, it’s not obviously true at all. Facts, being statements of truth about particular moments in time, can change – like the way doctors ask people with concussion who the Prime Minister is at the moment. OK, maybe that’s a bad example. But we usually think of a fact as an objective, unchanging truth.
What does change, however, is information, or understanding. It’s perfectly likely, indeed, almost a certainty, that the authorities made mistakes in their initial handling of the coronavirus outbreak. That’s probably true whether we’re talking about the UK Government, or its scientific advisors, or Public Health England, or Health Protection Scotland, or their equivalents in the dozens of other countries dealing with this emergency.
By definition, some countries and health systems will have done better than others. Establishing which measures have been most effective in curtailing the spread of the disease is a matter, not merely of interest, but of vital importance in enabling us to contain and manage the crisis. The role of trusted media in asking such questions has seldom been so important, even if it has seldom been so difficult.
It is difficult not merely because epidemics, and their occurrence, severity and distribution involves complex microbiology and statistical analysis: a surprising number of people on social media (often the same ones who were experts on EU tariff regulations a few months ago) will assure you that they are much better informed on those subjects than world-renowned scientists. That’s one reason why traditional, rigorously fact-checked, reporting from established sources is crucial.
But it is problematic, too, because to put it bluntly, there is no other story apart from this one and, consequently, there is a constant search for answers that are not going to be available for some time. If you doubt this, consider another major global health emergency: HIV was identified in 1984 and although our understanding of it, and ability to treat its effects, is now fairly good, there is still no vaccine, despite the fact that we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on research.
It is reasonable – essential – to ask questions such as: does wearing a mask do much in the way of preventing the spread of disease? Or, if you have recovered from coronavirus, do you have a degree of immunity? And if so, for how long? But unfortunately, the answers may not be forthcoming, and you may get different ones depending on who you ask. Science has – as with smallpox or cholera – triumphantly produced answers to such questions, but does not invariably do so, and usually not quickly, or without a great deal of careful analysis and discarded theories.
It’s therefore – at least apparently – easier to ask questions about policy. Whether the Government has bungled its response, whether it could have held meetings a few days earlier, and whether it ought to have funded programmes differently; these are all the kinds of things that seem to be news, fruitful avenues of inquiry, and where we might get some kind of definitive answer. And no doubt, in the long run, we shall.
There are, however, plenty of reasons to be cautious about rushing to judgment even on those questions, and for examining our motives and conclusions carefully. It would be bizarre, for example, to argue that the UK Government response has been shoddy, while approving of the Scottish Government’s approach, since it would be difficult to put a cigarette paper between the two. And while it’s worth noting that Ireland’s statistics look much better than the UK’s, that can’t be entirely because of policy, since Northern Ireland has the same guidelines as the mainland, and so far a lower rate of infection than the Republic.
There will inevitably have been errors in strategy and deficiencies in the approach of almost everyone in dealing with this pandemic. It’s important that, over time, these are scrutinised and lessons are learned from them. But we need to resist any temptation to make them the basis for partisan point-scoring.
If the UK Government has got things wrong (as it will have), then it will hardly be alone. And the questions that arise will need to be directed not just at politicians, but to the scientific advisors and public bodies that have directed their approach.
Like almost everyone else, I think it likely that, for example, Donald Trump’s seat-of-the-pants approach to this crisis will turn out to have made matters much worse for the United States than it might otherwise have been. But even if I think the President’s an idiot, that may not be the salient factor.
It could be that terrible figures from New York may be primarily to do with the fact that it has, after London, the world’s second biggest transit airport. Similarly, only time will tell whether Sweden’s approach – not imposing a lockdown at all – works and (in the event that it does) whether that tells us anything about the disease, or only about the demographics of Sweden.
In the face of a terrifying pandemic that strikes with random and unpredictable force, we’ve all come to realise that only by constantly testing and challenging our responses and prejudices – medical, scientific and political – will we get through. But the urgent priority is finding the best approach, not attributing blame.
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