Ignorance, Karl Friston, Multi-tier Pricing
Admitting Ignorance
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Wisdom, John Francis Rigaud (1742-1810) Photo Credit: City of London Corporation [CC BY-NC] |
... I have a pet theory that much of what is wrong in the world derives, one way or another, from our inability to admit ignorance. You are far more likely to get hired, promoted or elected if you spin seductive stones to answer complex questions rather than expressing doubt and ignorance. The upshot is that the upper tiers of business, politics and the media are stacked with bluffers. They assail us with catch-all narratives to explain Britain's level of excess deaths. The most popular is that it is all down to lockdown being imposed too late.
That might have made a difference but is it really the primary explanation? Why, in that case, have those countries which have now lifted theirs not seen a sudden resurgence in cases and deaths? Why is Norway wondering whether lockdown made much difference at all to its Covid outcome? Japan had no formal lockdown. Nor did Sweden, famously, and while deaths there are well above European averages they are, crucially, only a fraction of what epidemiologists warned of in the event of an uncontained spread.
... Unlike politicians, scientists have been at pains to emphasise the degree of uncertainty.
... Decades from now we will still be debating what really happened with Covid-19 in much the same way as epidemiologists still argue about the Spanish flu and economists the Great Depression. We will probably still be debating how much difference lockdowns made. But the wisest souls will realise then, as they realise now, that there is no simple narrative that can encompass an event of this scale.
(Ed Conway, The Times, 2020)
When was the last time you heard or saw someone answer a question on the radio or television by saying: "Sorry, I don't know the answer to that." or "I know nothing about that subject."
Karl Friston
Karl Friston is a neuroscientist who advises Independent Sage on Covid-19. This group was set up as an alternative to the UK government's official pandemic advice body, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage). In an interview, one of the questions he was asked was:
Once the pandemic is over, will you be able to ask which country's response was best?
"That is already happening, as part of our attempts to understand the latent causes of the data. We've been comparing the UK and Germany to try and explain the comparatively low fatality rates in Germany. The answers are sometimes counterintuitive. For example, it looks as if the low fatality rate is not due to their superior testing capacity, but rather to the fact that the average German is less likely to get infected and die than the average Brit. Why?
There are various possible explanations but one that looks increasingly likely is that Germany has more immunological "dark matter" - people who are impervious to infection, perhaps because they are geographically isolated or have some kind of natural resistance.
This is like dark matter in the universe: we can't see it, but we know it must be there to account for what we can see. Knowing it exists is useful for our preparations for any second wave, because it suggests that targeted testing of those at high risk of exposure to Covid-19 might be a better approach than non-selective testing of the whole population."
(Laura Spinney, The Observer, 2020)
So Germany, perhaps, has more people who are impervious to infection than in the UK. This begs another question. Why is this the case?
... The title, repeated like a mantra throughout the book, gains in significance with each story. Social problems beget or exacerbate mental and physical ones, so that the people most in need of help often have such an overwhelming tangle of needs that nurses can ever only hope for a temporary solution; caring in these circumstances requires extraordinary resilience and takes a toll.
That might have made a difference but is it really the primary explanation? Why, in that case, have those countries which have now lifted theirs not seen a sudden resurgence in cases and deaths? Why is Norway wondering whether lockdown made much difference at all to its Covid outcome? Japan had no formal lockdown. Nor did Sweden, famously, and while deaths there are well above European averages they are, crucially, only a fraction of what epidemiologists warned of in the event of an uncontained spread.
... Unlike politicians, scientists have been at pains to emphasise the degree of uncertainty.
... Decades from now we will still be debating what really happened with Covid-19 in much the same way as epidemiologists still argue about the Spanish flu and economists the Great Depression. We will probably still be debating how much difference lockdowns made. But the wisest souls will realise then, as they realise now, that there is no simple narrative that can encompass an event of this scale.
(Ed Conway, The Times, 2020)
When was the last time you heard or saw someone answer a question on the radio or television by saying: "Sorry, I don't know the answer to that." or "I know nothing about that subject."
Karl Friston
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Three Chinese Sages, unknown artist Photo Credit: Wellcome Collection. [Public Domain] |
Once the pandemic is over, will you be able to ask which country's response was best?
"That is already happening, as part of our attempts to understand the latent causes of the data. We've been comparing the UK and Germany to try and explain the comparatively low fatality rates in Germany. The answers are sometimes counterintuitive. For example, it looks as if the low fatality rate is not due to their superior testing capacity, but rather to the fact that the average German is less likely to get infected and die than the average Brit. Why?
There are various possible explanations but one that looks increasingly likely is that Germany has more immunological "dark matter" - people who are impervious to infection, perhaps because they are geographically isolated or have some kind of natural resistance.
This is like dark matter in the universe: we can't see it, but we know it must be there to account for what we can see. Knowing it exists is useful for our preparations for any second wave, because it suggests that targeted testing of those at high risk of exposure to Covid-19 might be a better approach than non-selective testing of the whole population."
(Laura Spinney, The Observer, 2020)
So Germany, perhaps, has more people who are impervious to infection than in the UK. This begs another question. Why is this the case?
The Courage To Care: A Call for Compassion
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| Guanyin the Bodhisattva of Compassion unknown artist Photo Credit: National Museums Scotland [CC BY-NC-ND] |
... The title, repeated like a mantra throughout the book, gains in significance with each story. Social problems beget or exacerbate mental and physical ones, so that the people most in need of help often have such an overwhelming tangle of needs that nurses can ever only hope for a temporary solution; caring in these circumstances requires extraordinary resilience and takes a toll.
The book is a love letter to her profession; her admiration for her colleagues shines through every story, together with her frustration that the vast wealth of expertise among nurses is still so undervalued when it comes to making it policy or even designing hospitals. There are no nurses on the Covid Sage advisory panel, she observes, a situation that should be "unacceptable to all of us". But her choice of subtitle, A Call For Compassion, is also significant.
"Compassion is the thing that matters most to patients and their families," she concludes and the book urges us to rediscover in a wider social context this sense of common humanity that has been gradually eroded.
(Stephanie Merritt, The Observer, 2020)
Multi-tier Pricing
Sir, Your correspondence on multi-tier pricing reminded me of a cafè in Cordes-sur-Ciel in southwest France, that had the sign: Un cafe, €2.60; Un café s'il vous plait, €1.80; Bonjour. Un cafè s'il vous plait, €1.30." We were always scrupulously polite.
(Mary Battle, London SW18, The Times, 2020)
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La falaise à Fécamp, France, Claude Monet (1840-1926) Photo Credit: Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums [CC BY-NC] |
Sir, Your correspondence on multi-tier pricing reminded me of a cafè in Cordes-sur-Ciel in southwest France, that had the sign: Un cafe, €2.60; Un café s'il vous plait, €1.80; Bonjour. Un cafè s'il vous plait, €1.30." We were always scrupulously polite.
(Mary Battle, London SW18, The Times, 2020)
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