Covid-19 : When Expertise Refuses To Face Its Own Folly.

The TV series Valley Of Tears, now showing on Canadian TV, is set at the start of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The Israelis were caught unawares by a combined massive attack of Syrian and Egyptian forces. 

In the first episode a young comms specialist spying on the Syrians  hears of their plans in the Golan Heights. But his superiors, eager to enjoy the Yom Kippur holiday, discount the safeguards built into the system and are subsequently overwhelmed. It took many thousands of casualties and 19 days for the Israelis to finally repel the Syrians and Egyptians.

It’s not unlike how the U.S. Navy discounted their new radar technology and allowed the Japanese to launch an unopposed attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Virtually the entire battleship fleet was sunk in harbour with thousands of casualties, because people in the chain said “Can’t be happening”. It took four years to defeat the Japanese. The people in charge simply couldn’t believe the evidence they’d created. 

In short, any warning system is only as good as the people operating it. Years of study, preparation and research are useless if the people at the receiving end panic and ignore the data. What is most stunning in these cases is the inability of these experts to face evidence of their own folly. 

When the panic over Covid-19 finally recedes we will more clearly see the same catastrophic failures of data at many of the inflection points of the virus. The politicians and their experts were wedded to their own genius and thus rejected the the research (on masks, lockdowns etc.) in favour of their own cherished predictions. 

Such as the Imperial College of Medicine projection in March 2020. “We predict there would still be in the order of 250,000 deaths in GB, and 1.1–1.2 million in the US.” from Covid-19. This stark prediction threw the Western world into panic of over-reaction— the figures proved to grossly overstate the death toll.

A litany of  cure-alls— many still being employed-- became gospel while dissenting scientific voices were  shunned. As Nobel Prize psychologist Daniel Kahneman has noted, this is what happens when people become attached to theories. They fit the evidence to the theory rather than the theory to the evidence. 

At a time when the health experts were meant to be inspiring confidence they were instead obsessed with having their theories proved correct. And allowing the governing class to politicize the pandemic. The public soon became bewildered by shifting narratives and erratic predictions . Examples:

Six metres/ feet distancing was a mantra of the first year of the pandemic. Floors are festooned with arrows pointing out how close is too close. Signs reminded you where to stop. Recently, however,  the CDC quietly admitted that the safe distance was more like three metres/ feet. Still officials insist on their six- metre standard. 

Getting the virus from surfaces was another mania. The disinfectant industry went 24/7 to churn out enough hand sanitizer. Recently CDC has also squashed this guidance. The virus almost always enters the body as an aerosol through membranes in the mouth, eyes and nose. Again, the “experts” are still sticking with lathering everything in disinfectant.

The totality of mask advice from CDC/ WHO before Covid-19 said that anything but industrial masks would not protect people. A few months into the pandemic masks were inexplicably turned into the Holy Shroud of Turin. A health measure turned into a virtue signal to protect the reputation of the experts.The CDC has recently recanted, saying maskless transmission on a beach or in a park is nigh-on impossible.

International travel went from a sign of tolerance in March 2020 to Canadians being incarcerated in hotels upon re-arrival in 2021— to cover for international travellers who snuck by the health Stasi at the airports.

Likewise, children as super-spreaders. Ultra-sensitive PCR tests that turn up 60%  false positives. Intubators as the last line of defence (even after they were shown to be more harm than good.) Golf courses as places of infection. A petrified populace swallowed it all.

And the hubris inside the bubble grew. No one was fired or exposed for their folly in Covid-19. In fact, the public reverence for the elite health purveyors was multiplied, not diminished. The TV image of doctors as saints (House, Greys Anatomy, The Good Doctor) took wings in a gullible public. 

This imperviousness from the medical class is reminiscent of the work done by surgeon and writer Atul Gawande. As former BMO CEO Tony Comper writes in his memoir Personal Account Gawande’s focus was the huge rate of methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and other staph bacteria in hospitals… “The most common precaution was to spray all surfaces liberally with chemicals and disinfectants, but Gawande thinks there’s a specific reason for the spread of MRSA and similar bacteria. His analysis reveals that it’s not just the microbes in play; there’s a cultural phenomenon that proliferates their spread. 

“His point is that if you go into an operating room, who’s the boss? The surgeons. They’re gods. And they have a bunch of nurses who are the “plebs.” And so, God forbid, the nurses ever tell the surgeons what to do or not to do. “Excuse me. I’m the surgeon. I’m in charge here.” Gawande observed that a lot of the incidences of these deadly infectious diseases were coming from basic things like unclean hands, due in no small part to surgeons not following the correct protocol of hand washing and sanitization. 

“So, he explained, the only way he was going to change this at the hospital where he worked was to change the culture and to empower everyone to speak up. And he was going to train them to encourage this culture change. So the nurses can say to the surgeon, “You didn’t wash your hands just after doing that procedure, before taking up that instrument.” 

“And the surgeon would learn that it’s acceptable to follow her orders rather than making her feel like she’s going to be in trouble for daring to speak to a superior in such a way… Once Gawande got this change model working at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, the MRSA incidents at that hospital went to virtually zero. Zero.”

In Canada there has been this same problem in speaking up. A year ago senior BC nurses were appalled that practicums were stopped in hospitals. A year later there is a major shortage of health care professionals because the practicums were not finished. The excuse for elective surgeries now being delayed?  A shortage of nurses. 

This is part of worshipping single-payer healthcare. The country is its health system, and vice versa. (Tommy Douglas is so revered for starting public healthcare that CBC named him the most famous Canadian ever.) No error too grave has been attached during Covid-19 to our Holy of Holies, the white coats and the bureaucrats in their offices grinding numbers.

As Gawande shows, the public can choose to keep worshipping the health establishment or it can have an honest discussion of the limitations of science and why it’s never settled. But only one of these two options gets you out of the current disaster.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author of Cap In Hand is also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his new book Personal Account with Tony Comper is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx