Richard P. Boyle PhD, director SSA
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Welcome to Solving the Problems of the World Our mission is threefold. First: Pandemic Project Second: Global Warming Project (to be posted at a later date) Third: Awakened Consciousness Project (to be posted at a later date) A better world is possible. This is an important way science can contribute. |
Mission One: Pandemic Project
I was watching an NBA game on March 11 when word arrived that Rudy Gobert had coronavirus and everything began coming to a stop. People looked for ways they might help, and being a retired research sociologist I decided to do what I know how to do, make data tell their story. I started tracking cases and deaths for each state and then for seventeen nations comparable with the United States – rich, well-educated democracies. [LINK] It seemed a bit pretentious, but as the events I was tracking went from interesting to calamitous some very strong conclusions emerged.
First, any nation or state can stop the Covid-19 pandemic if it follows the scientific guidelines for top-down control by government and bottom-up effort by most or all [LINK: what %] of its citizens to voluntarily follow the scientific guidelines for individual behavior. Together they protect people from infection and prevent transmission of the virus from one person to another. This produces the same result as herd immunity, because the virus has such limited opportunities to feed on fresh humans and multiply. Call it behavioral immunity. Of the seventeen nations I tracked, fourteen have reduced their daily death rate from often very high peaks to below 1.0 per million population. Italy, which was the first European nation hit and provided an example for others to learn from, peaked at 15.4 deaths but 74 days later was down to 1.0. France peaked even higher, at 16.0, but took only 53 days to reduce this to 1.0. Meanwhile, Sweden peaked at 10.6 deaths per day but as I write, 73 days later, is at 3.4 and going up. The United States peaked at 8.4 but currently is also at 3.4 and increasing.
Second, even nations which peak at high numbers of deaths per day can bring that rate down to one death per million population within 2½ months. If Italy and France did it, others have no excuse except failure of government and people, working together, to produce behavioral immunity. We can track this by charting a country’s death rate from zero up to its peak, and from the day it begins to curve down significantly to the day it reaches one death per million. One death per million means that the rate of new cases has declined enough to allow quick and thorough tracking of people who might have become infected, testing them, and quarantining the positives. Social scientists who have done tracking know that it is a difficult and labor intensive job; it is great for keeping new cases down once control guidelines are relaxed, but first you have to reach a point where it is manageable. So one death per million is a reasonable marker of success. All fourteen of the successful nations I tracked not only achieved this goal but continued on to bring their death rates below 0.5. Seven got below 0.1.
[LINK: “New Zealand and Taiwan have had zero deaths for more than six weeks. South Korea, Australia, Finland, Japan, and Denmark averaged below 0.1 during the week of June 20-26 [explain Spain]. The Netherlands, Norway, Italy (!), Germany, and France averaged below 0.5. That leaves only Great Britain, which peaked at 13.9 but 73 days later but now seems stuck around 2.0.”]
Third, the most important issue is not only how high the peak is or whether 1.0 is reached but the slope of the curve connecting the two. A slope that descends steeply means that behavioral immunity is being achieved and controls can be relaxed in relatively short order. A slope that descends more gradually means that fewer people are practicing safe behavior. Countries that began efforts to protect against infection early caught Covid at much lower peaks [LINK: below 3.0 deaths per day for Germany, Norway, Finland, and Denmark, and below 0.3 for Japan, Australia, Taiwan, New Zealand and South Korea]. The former group brought their rates down to 1.0 in an average of 20 days; the latter were already there. They all suffered much less and hence suffered less from it much less. [LINK: Taiwan as example of loosening up: Taiwan was in lockdown for only two weeks, never closed …] The United States, Great Britain, and Sweden, meanwhile, have gone through 65, 72, and 63 days, respectively, of enduring the sickness and death of the epidemic, some level of lockdowns to control it, and an economy in recession. Note that Sweden did not escape by accepting sickness and death. Their economy is not doing well either [GET STATS] and neighboring Norway and Denmark have closed their borders to keep Swedes out.
There is one complete and overpowering explanation for the success of fourteen nations and the failure of three. The successful nations accepted what science had to say and followed it as best they could. The other three either denied science or (in the case of Sweden) ignored it. I have never seen such a dramatic test of the value [I use the word value rather than validity…] of science, here carried out with the world as its stage. Science denial has been a counterpart to Western culture for a long time, going back to the Dark Ages, and it lies at the heart of the culture war splitting our country into opposing camps right now. But people deny science only because they want to live in a fantasy world. You may be able to do this for a long time, but eventually reality hits you in the face. Sars-Covid-2 doesn’t care about your constitutional rights, or what Fox News and Trump say. The only things important to Sars-Covid-2 are whether you allow yourself to be infected and how many people you spread it to.
So here we are, in quite a pickle. A totally unnecessary pickle, and the only relevant question is, How do we get out? Well, democracies have one of the characteristics of science: they usually, hopefully, are self-correcting. For another seven months the U.S. is going to have to continue without national leadership, relying on our governors to carry their states forward. Governors, of course, are a mixed bag. The states of the United States seem to be following trajectories much like the nations of the rest of the world. Some have accepted science and are proceeding much like the successful 14. Others have either denied or confused science and are proceeding like the three led by two buffoons and a simpleton. So the first, most important thing we can do is vote them out.
The second thing we can do is improve the level of information available to the public. Many people have commented on this, and apparently our underfunded and overstressed CDC cannot be solely blamed. But if the government is not going to supply full information and make sure it is communicated to all relevant audiences, it is imperative for we the people to do it. This is particularly true for younger people, because they are most likely to catch it and least likely to know what to do. I hear a lot of bad-mouthing of young people, but I have seven grandchildren in the Gen-Z/Millennial range and the generation I see through them is full of promise. But they need to know what is going on. If one of them has a good time partying with their friends, gets infected, and then goes to a family gathering a few days later, I’m not many know that they could be symptom free and still kill their grandparents. They need that kind of information, and they are most likely to get it through the internet, so it be readily available. Especially on TikTok, apparently.
Third, we all need to understand that successfully controlling the coronavirus requires a team effort. Cooperation, a sense of common purpose, and a government that people trust are key features of the nations most successful in starving their population of coronavirus. [LINK: They are still under constant of infection from people entering their country. Here in New Mexico we understand that well because we are threatened by pestilence on both sides.]