Here we go again
As the number of new confirmed Covid-19 cases is exploding with numbers doubling every week or so you can feel the sense of urgency building among people including politicians. As expected once again the stress is now shifting towards health care institutions since the number of hospitalization explodes and only weeks are separating us from a major capacity issue. It seems like a déjà vu.
As explained in many of my previous articles, Covid-19 belongs to existential risks that are dynamic, multiplicative, non-linear, and fat-tailed. Guess what, this is something that we knew back in January. In the face of this risk the best course of action is to kill it in the egg because once it’s there, hell breaks loose and it costs way more to get it under control. Very few understood it and acted accordingly. China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand got it right because measures have been and are put in place BEFORE the problem appears. In Europe, US and many parts of the world it’s the loser’s game. We have been implementing very costly half-measures throughout the process and will probably continue to do so.
When the number of positive cases was low almost everyone was shouting that the problem had never been, was over, or was inflated. Some so called scientists along with professors have been arguing that lockdown was ineffective and decisions should have been evidence-based. PEOPLE STILL DON’T GET. It feels that there is something deep inside the western culture that hinders from seeing the issue as it is. Maybe it’s related to post-enlightenment rationalism, maybe it’s about post-Newton determinism that gets in the way of thinking as an intelligent species that separates us from animals. Education has probably something to do with it. We were taught that the world is linear with straightforward cause-effect relationship whereas almost anything around us is non-linear. We were taught that what matters is the individual and his liberty and forgot that we are part of a whole. We were taught that life is a like a machine, but the real world is more complex and adaptive. And finally we were taught the order of this world instead of its network and randomness.
Karl Popper the philosopher of science said that a scientific theory is a theory that is falsifiable. And this is only possible with evidence. But what happens when you don’t have full evidence like in the face of fat-tailed and non-linear events, does it ring a bell? This is at the very core of the limit of Popperian scientific philosophy. According to John Gray, Darwin and Einstein theories, when first presented, were at odds of early evidence and would have never passed the test of science back then. Evidence that supported them became only available later. At the end of the day science is not about evidence, science is about properties until evidence become available. Covid-19 has well known properties which are smiling at our face but for reasons that I can’t fathom evade the common mortals.
Due the first wave, where thousands of people have died one would argue that we didn’t know what to do which in itself not forgiving at all especially for decision makers. But what about now? We have a reference point and we know more about the virus and its transmission means than earlier this year.
We live in a world of our making that proven to completely overwhelm us these days because we fail to see the truth staring at us. Until we comprehend its universal properties - magnified through Covid-19 – there is no way we get through this.