Another day, another epidemiologist on the TV news. This one was (as usual) giving a slightly different take on the pandemic and who is or isn’t most vulnerable. Today’s view from today’s expert is that their study has shown that children are almost completely incapable of transmitting Covid-19.
Which is weird because last night my future daughter-in-law, a teacher in a South London school was telling us how after just 11 days back at school 22 members of staff were off work with symptoms of Coronavirus and many of the pupils were absent too.
Here’s the thing. That scientist isn’t wrong…in their eyes. The study they performed had clearly given the result they explained, but it was one small study at a time when infection rates were relatively low and, can I be honest here? It might just be that you aren’t the best epidemiologist around.
I know this. I used to be a scientist and maybe, on a good day I was the 38th best research biochemist in Leeds. Broaden that out to include the rest of West Yorkshire, maybe the county, the north of England and the UK and I’m guessing in a playground game of scientists I wouldn’t be getting picked by either team for a few long days.
It’s the same in every area. I love being a dad, but I wouldn’t claim to be anywhere near the best. Lover? Sadly, now you’re not talking either. And it’s the same for all of us. The football manager winning the EFL Championship is merely the 23rd best manager in England, maybe the 150th best in Europe. Boris Johnson might be the most powerful politician in the UK, but on the world stage, he’s a laughing-stock, ranking somewhere above Trump and Bolsonaro, but nowhere near as stately as New Zealand’s Jacinda Arden.
Back to the science. It is absolutely right of course that we should listen to the scientists, think carefully about the results of the many, different studies coming out about Covid-19 and try to form the right conclusions. Science has always been debatable and, at any given time we can only know what we actually know. When people believed the earth was flat that was simply because all the evidence they had gathered suggested that it was the case. When people believed that the sun went around the earth it was the same. Even today there are many millions of people who believe, not only that everything we encounter was actually created by a bearded man in the sky who looks over us, but also that he works on such a detailed level as to make VAR-style judgement calls when you might have got the moral thing either wrong or right. Oh, and he definitely doesn’t like (insert personal bigotry here) because a line in a book that someone wrote about this imaginary man could possibly be interpreted to mean that if you were looking to prove a point.
People believe this stuff, not because they are stupid, but because they want to. It’s the same response that drives the unshakeable beliefs in things like Brexit and it explains why those complaining about data mining, Cambridge Analytica and dirty tricks on social media are missing the point.
Those who lost assume that the data mining is a terrible thing because the detailed profiling that resulted from Cambridge Analytica knowing your deepest, darkest online habits meant they could manipulate the messages you saw in an election.
In reality the recipients of those messages loved it because suddenly they felt like they belonged to an enormous online community that shared their views. The trick that the remain campaign (in Brexit) made and still make is that they failed to understand that and work out what the remain-version of that targeting would have looked like.
Because most of these swing voters (and the trick here was that you only needed a relatively small number to swing it) didn’t start out with a particularly strong opinion. There were co-opted into the group and then encouraged to think a certain way to find favour and feel wanted.
Between elections they mostly disappear because they are of no use, but come polling time they’ll be back in the game.
Welcome to the world of the round earth – there’s no going back. What changes significantly here though is that for this to work the choice of leader is vital. Independent intellectuals are not suited to this strategy because they might ruin things with a clear agenda or manifesto. Winning is what counts – what comes afterwards can be decided by the policy committees and think tanks. The leader just needs to show up, shout some slogans and say mostly nothing. Trump, Farage and Johnson are the current champions, but there are plenty more watching and learning.
In order to fight back the centre parties (because left wing politics has been dead in the west since the early 1980s) have to stop settling for the 34th best candidate and go all-out to find or grow a proper Premier League leader who genuinely understands the mindsets of all the factions of society they have to persuade and have the balls to go and win them back.
Sadly, that’s not Joe Biden or Keir Starmer, but it might well be Andy Burnham or some smart, bright-eyed, believable Democrat in the States.
Next to that challenge, finding a cure for Covid is chickenfeed.
