In his most recent book Talking to Strangers, Malcolm Gladwell discussed the concept of a “default to truth” — i.e. our fundamental reaction to the receipt of new information is to believe it. We assume that people (especially those in positions of authority) are generally honest.
We have witnessed a default to truth surrounding the B.1.1.7 strain of COVID-19, often referred to as the UK mutant strain. Journalists, politicians and even chief medical officers have breathlessly warned about it. Last week Brisbane and surrounds areas were locked down for three days due to a single case, and the federal government abruptly halved the quota of returning residents.
It has been widely reported that the mutant strain, announced on December 14, is up to 70% more infectious than earlier strains. Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan confidently claimed: “This is the British strain which is highly contagious and obviously causing mass deaths.” Queensland Premier Annastasia Palaszczuk warned: “This highly contagious UK variant … is a new ball game.”
These are dire warnings indeed. COVID-19 itself is a highly infectious pathogen (far more infectious than the lethal SARS-1 and MERS). A mutant seems downright scary, according to these expert premiers.
There’s just one problem: there is minimal data to justify the sensational predictions.
The timing of the new strain was certainly convenient for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who had been battling a weary population and a strident right-wing of the Conservative Party unwilling to accept further lockdown measures.
On December 19, five days after the strain was announced (albeit it had been circulating for months), Johnson gained political support to impose a lockdown on the UK. However, he was far from equivocal, noting:
Early analysis suggests the new variant could increase R by 0.4 or greater. Although there is considerable uncertainty, it may be up to 70% more transmissible than the old variant. This is early data. It is subject to review. It is the best we have at the moment, and we have to act on information as we have it because this is now spreading very fast.
It appears the world was being plunged into a renewed panic based on a variant that “could increase” transmission, albeit with “considerable uncertainly” based on “early data”.
Since Johnson’s comments a small number of studies have been released which, to be sure, did report a higher reproduction rate. But these studies have not yet been peer reviewed.
The highest-profile research was produced by the Imperial College of London which is led by the controversial Neil Ferguson. Ferguson once predicted that 150 million people would die from bird flu (282 people died) and in March produced modelling that claimed 600,000 would die in the UK alone from COVID (81,000 have died).
Shortly afterwards, Ferguson breached the UK lockdown to conduct an affair with a married woman.
Ignoring his somewhat torrid history of accuracy, the Imperial College also warned that the “new medical research … has yet to be evaluated and so should not be used to guide clinical practice”.
This also wouldn’t be the first time a mutated version of COVID-19 has proven to be a false dawn. As Emma Hodcroft from University of Basel noted, scientists had initially thought the B.1.1.177 strain from Spain “had a 50% higher mortality rate, but that turned out to be purely messy, biased data in the early days [and it was] a very strong reminder that we always have to be really careful with early data”.
The issue with the current British strain is whether correlation equals causation.
Because B.1.1.17 has become the dominant UK strain (upwards of 75% of UK cases) and case numbers are rapidly increasing, the obvious conclusion was that the strain alone caused the higher number of infections.
However, there are strong arguments to suggest that any correlation is coincidental rather than causal.
Infections increase in winter, with dry, indoor air aiding spread of the respiratory virus. At the same time, the UK has significantly ramped up testing (from a pitifully low base), so it was inevitable that the reported number of infections would dramatically rise in November and December.
The new strain hit the UK in September, when the percentage of positive tests started increasing. This dropped in November, and then rose sharply as the far colder winter took hold in December. The percentage positive chart (which adjusts for increasing test numbers) in the UK shows a largely expected increase:
The United States, which has reported only very minimal proliferation of the allegedly so highly transmissible mutant strain has a near identical chart of positive tests:
In fact, the seven-day COVID average is less in the UK than in Ireland (which has a lower proliferation of the allegedly contagious strain) and below the Czech Republic and Slovenia:
It is certainly possible the British strain is more contagious. Or the spike in UK infections could be due to more thorough testing, poor social distancing practices and naturally higher infections in winter.
But there is a fairly obvious retort to the contagious claims: if the British strain is so much more contagious than earlier strains, why are other countries reporting far higher infection (and many other European countries reporting similar) levels?
With no peer-reviewed data and scant evidence, the only thing that appears certain is Australian governments — both state and federal, Liberal and Labor — as well as virtually all the media, have grossly exaggerated limited and untested data and imposed potentially highly unnecessary restrictions on movement.
And it seems that pretty much no one, from journalists to scientists to the opposition, has bothered to question it.
Have politicians and experts been too quick to accept claims about the UK COVID-19 variant? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say column.
Alright, here’s a question for a tourism industry shill masquerading a journalist: As a government leader, do I assume the pessimistic case until I have better information that allows me to dial back my response, or do I assume the optimistic case and try to make good once my hospitals are overflowing?
Supplementary question: Casting your eye around the globe, how would you characterise the relative performance of the latter approach?
Yet another ‘I didn’t understand it, but didn’t bother to interview any expertise that does’ Adam Schwab article.
True enough Ruv but, in the same vein, just what percentage of subscribers would be in a qualified position to make a start on the invitation from Cky : Have politicians and experts been too quick to accept claims about the UK COVID-19 variant
Should I bail out a fourth time I doubt if there will be a fifth time. The question itself is irresponsible but the recognition is undoubtedly lost on whomever scrawled the question.
Erasmus asked: in the same vein, just what percentage of subscribers would be in a qualified position to make a start on the invitation from Cky : Have politicians and experts been too quick to accept claims about the UK COVID-19 variant
I agree, Erasmus: it’s rantbait.
Crikey’s lame attempt to propose a debate question is a direct consequence of Adam’s lame article, but that’s also why it’s not the question that most offends me.
How to manufacture doubt among the ignorant:
In this article we can see Adam lifting the ‘pro’ bar’s burden of evidence to an over-all global increase in infection rates associated with the UK strain documented under formal peer review.
In other words, he’ll only be convinced once the strain is entrenched globally AND scientists have spent months in an editorial process before formulating policy. (The reason we’re not doing that just now is that the virus doesn’t wait for formal review before doing whatever it likes. :p )
The bar for Adam’s ‘con’ argument? It’s not high: he didn’t interview a single expert to understand what the genomic data say about this strain outcompeting other strains.
And Crikey is complicit in this rantmongering by first publishing this ill-researched tripe and then perpetuating the fiction that it’s informative enough for the public to formulate opinions from.
I recall encountering what was allegedly Gobbls (intentional misspelling) list for effecting FUD and although longer your list covers all the main aspects.
Fray made no attempt to summarize the subscriber wish list that he invited about six months ago. It is all about revenue and (as I have learned of late) sementalism. I don’t recall the extensive convictions of Mr G. Floyd being published here.
An obsession with Murdoch has appeared (an entire issue) but not accompanied with articles that justify it. Yet, another single issue.
Perhaps it is a need for drama that I am observing. As recently as this evening I was invited to read yet another article concerning John Horgan (a yankee liberal) but the likes of Mearsheimer are not, could we say, given equal (nay any) time.
Thus we, it seems, have no right to be surprised when topics of an empirical nature are treated with contempt. The disenfranchised (those with no university ‘hard’ science) that CP Snow identified 60 years ago become “religious” with their certainty whereas, as Bertie Russell pointed out 90 years ago, it is the informed that are so full of doubt.
Erasmus wrote: The disenfranchised (those with no university ‘hard’ science) that CP Snow identified 60 years ago become “religious” with their certainty whereas, as Bertie Russell pointed out 90 years ago, it is the informed that are so full of doubt.
I want lawyers and trained journalists to take an interest in science. Scientists are killing themselves doing communication in a politicised, and commercially-conflicted world. Lawyers and journalists are already paid to do that, and they need only learn to do it in an area where the standard of evidence is higher than their own.
I.e. they can’t just be lawyers and journalists: they need additional knowledge, so they shouldn’t critique scientific veracity until they at least understand the way scientific evidence works.
Adam’s biggest dishonesty in this article is his ambit claim that ‘there is no data’. How the hell would he know when he hasn’t interviewed the dedicated experts who think there is to ask them what they’re looking at?
A more honest and balanced statement is that he either hasn’t seen the data or hasn’t recognised the evidence in it when he saw it.
Which is fair enough: I haven’t either…
…but I have been tracking the genomics since January and know where the data can be found. Adam clearly doesn’t understand why genomic information is more useful here than headline infection rates. But since I do, I’m happy to take the expert judgements on faith for the moment.
I also don’t agree that there’s no peer-review: there’s at least peer consultation because virologists and epidemiologists are fascinated by the genomics unfolding in real-time (the genomic data sets are being hit so hard you now have to show cause to get access) — and beneficial mutations are among the most interesting to single out.
Adam has conflated his self-satisfied ignorance with insight: he’s been doing that in all his contributions to pandemic management so far and he lacks even the humility to ask whether he should continue, given how wrong he has been on his few significant predictions.
And Crikey has not only let him, but mistaken his paranoid rantings for balance, which indicates how weak is its own editorial appreciation of science..
Kudos for wanting insightful, cutting-edge science reporting, but how many other journals hire an unemployed travel agent to do it?
I agree all the data is not in, and nobody understands exactly what is happening. So an ok ‘on the other hand’ article up until the end.where you talk about how governments … ‘imposed potentially highly unnecessary restrictions on movement’.
Do you have no idea of risk management? Or is risk to $s more imprtant than risks to lives? An even more contagious version of COVID19 in an Australian environment of very low numbers of active cases makes it a very high risk possibility, with questions around probability. But the probability is not insignificant, and the results could be catastrophic. So acting to head off the risk makes sense, more so in a country like Australia compared to countries with high infection levels.
In relation to the 3 day lockdown here in Brisbane – the prevailing view seems to be ‘better 3 days now than 30 days later’. As it happens there seems to have been a problem with infections in the quarantine hotel and the escape from it may be quite limited. The lockdown meant tracing people was able to occur with out extra spread being allowed.
Schwab can’t help himself. Makes one point that might be valid then just keeps writing, until every subscriber is begging him to please just stop regardless of their own position.
I blame the editors, they could save us all, including Adam, from this situation. Get him onto business reporting and find someone who knows what they are talking about.
I’d like an article from Adam explaining why the Second Fleet was really just an early Luxury Escape.
Excellent comment. As to motivate : consider revenue aka Rupert.
Risk management, or the cautionary principle. You don’t have to believe it, you just consider the likely outcomes as if it was established fact until better information comes to hand. It’s not difficult to understand.
Unfortunately a lot decision makers do not want to know. Working overseas I tried to put a risk analysis in as part of any new policy I was involved in developing. Without exception the local bureaucrats said ‘oh no. We never tell the politicians there are risks’. And it was especially important if it was the polly’s pet idea.
I learned to do risk analysis in the APS – but even then it was not the norm. I strongly suspect the current government is not really interested in risk analysis. I do wonder if the APS does it for their own well being in preparation for when things go pear shaped.
I would prefer my public health officials and politicians to apply the precautionary principle when presented with indicative but incomplete data, and apply adaptive management and policy setting as more data comes in.
Adam, it seems, would prefer that they take a more laissez faire approach.
One of these ways lie dragons.
How does this idiot get a gig as a part time journo????
The gig economy ?