COVID update

This starts with chat about what experts recommend for the ongoing COVID pandemic. Then, it veers off into politics. Why? Because politics has inserted itself into science and poisoned it. Steve Novella at Neurologica blog writes:

A panel of 386 experts from various disciplines and 122 countries have put together a consensus statement on how the world can best deal with the continued challenge of COVID-19. The statement contains 57 specific recommendations that had >95% consensus from the panel, with most having >99% consensus.

The panel made three top recommendations:

i) adopt a whole-of-society strategy that involves multiple disciplines, sectors and actors to avoid fragmented efforts; 

ii) whole-of-government approaches (e.g. coordination between ministries) to identify, review, and address resilience in health systems and make them more responsive to people’s needs; and iii) maintain a vaccines-plus approach, which includes a combination of COVID-19 vaccination, other structural and behavioral prevention measures, treatment, and financial support measures.

Other recommendations included:

Other recommendations with at least 99% agreement were: communicating effectively with the public, rebuilding public trust, and engaging communities in managing the pandemic response.

While I completely agree with this – this may be the most challenging recommendation, and the one where big-picture goals are not enough. How, exactly, do we rebuild public trust given the current political environment? In order to achieve this goal I think nothing short of a radical overhaul of modern society is necessary. That society now includes weaponized misinformation, social media, political systems that exploit division and ignorance, conspiracy theories that have wormed their way deep into the political mainstream, and unacceptable levels of scientific illiteracy. We can make small changes to communicate more effectively, for example, but these efforts may be wasted given the current environment. At best we can hope to not make things worse.

The problems with the public and political response to COVID go way deeper than just our pandemic preparedness and response. There are core problems eating away at the center of our society, even to the point of threatening democracy. A poor pandemic response was just one symptom of these deep structural challenges. To really address these issues we need to improve our educational system to promote much higher levels of scientific literacy, critical thinking, and media savvy. We need to make fighting dangerous misinformation on social media a high priority, and figure out the most effective ways of preventing the worst abuses while not stifling legitimate freedom of speech. (emphasis added)

See, told 'ya. Toxic politics has poisoned science that is poisonable, i.e., politicizable.

Model of COVID

It is long to be with us for a very long time

By Germaine: The sort of science guy who fiddles with politics, cognitive biology, crass gossip and whatnot.