Thinking in groups, thinking for ourselves (or: in praise of iconoclasm) | The Healthiest Goldfish

Americans trust scientists. This may seem, to some, like surprising news, given the extent to which attitudes towards science were politicized during the COVID-19 pandemic. But the data bear it out—the scientific community has long enjoyed public trust. Data show that 44 percent of U.S. adults say they have a great deal of confidence in the scientific community. This trust has remained fairly stable for decades.

Underlying this trust is likely the assumption that science will do what it has historically done ever since it developed its core methodologies—pursue truth through empirical means, guided by data rather than by other incentives, be they financial or partisan. It is then worth asking—do we, in the scientific community, do this? On one level, the answer is obviously yes, we do, though perhaps imperfectly. But what if we modify the question, to ask: do we do this all the time, or at least enough to fully justify the public’s trust in us? How often do we think for ourselves, guided principally by data, and how often are our thoughts shaped by other factors? I would argue that we are susceptible to other factors, though not necessarily in the sense of being unduly partisan or subject to financial incentives. Instead, science, it seems to me, has a weakness for groupthink, for being swayed by the consensus simply because it is the consensus. If this is so, then we have a responsibility not just to be on guard against this tendency, but also to maintain a healthy level of iconoclasm, an instinct for pushing against the consensus as a means of testing our assumptions and ensuring that we are indeed thinking for ourselves.

The integrity of the scientific discipline is a key inheritance of the Enlightenment, a period which did much to support an empirical approach to problems. Such integrity, then, is kin to the principles of small-l liberalism which also emerged from the period, and which are based, in part, on empirical observations about society and human nature. Keeping science “honest”—rooted in empiricism, and as free as possible from groupthink—is therefore core to supporting the liberalism that informs a healthier world.

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Balancing Individual Autonomy and Collective Responsibility | The Turning Point

A Ghanaian colleague reminded us recently of a Ghanaian proverb, “You cannot cry harder than the bereaved.” The proverb suggests that what any of us can do to help ease the suffering of others is limited, and a reminder that it behooves us to have the humility to recognize that. In this second Covid-19 year, we have found this proverb useful, as we attempted to navigate the complicated balance of individual autonomy—what we need to do for ourselves— and collective responsibility—what we can do for each other.

The tug of war around the use of face masks was the first and most visible example of this balance. Although the issue has been cynically exploited for political ends, at heart it is a classic push-pull between those who wish for maximum individual autonomy—I can choose to wear a mask or not depending on my risk tolerance—and those who advocate for collective responsibility—you wearing a mask decreases my risk of getting Covid-19. A classic public health approach in this case suggests that the latter readily outweighs the former.  Mask wearing is an inconvenience, but a relatively minor one, and the case that wearing a mask protects others is strong. We have as a society long decided that we are willing to limit some individual autonomy for a readily apparent public good. For example, worries about the risk of second-hand smoke were critical in the adoption of indoor smoking bans, as we collectively accepted that it was worth limiting the freedom of some to smoke anywhere, to preserve the freedom of many from unwanted cancer risk. In keeping with this logic, the majority of US states put in place mask mandates or other forms of masking requirements during the pandemic.

But as the pandemic evolved, the balance of individual freedoms and collective responsibilities became more complicated, particularly around the issue of vaccination.  Early in the vaccination effort it was clear that many did not have ready access to vaccines, and as such we had a collective responsibility to continue preserving limits on our individual freedoms—physical distancing, masking, restricted availability of entertainment venues—until everyone had the opportunity to be vaccinated, to ensure we could all be protected.

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The consent of the governed | The Healthiest Goldfish

Over the last year or so there has been much criticism of leadership in the U.S. for the state of affairs in this country. Government at the local and national level has been criticized for failures in mitigating COVID-19 and for challenges in addressing any number of the problems we collectively face. Such criticism is often warranted, helpful even. Power needs accountability, so that it can be used most effectively to support the common good (see prior thoughts on how accountability can help ensure effective functioning within bureaucracies). However, it strikes me that in much of this criticism there is an implicit belief that people in positions of leadership have more power than they actually do to sway events. We seem to believe that there is somewhere a magic wand which can be waved to solve our problems, and that it is only some kind of obstinacy which stops those in power from waving it.

This belief reflects a lack of understanding, on our part, of the extent to which the capacity of leadership to do, well, anything, depends on us—on the consent of the governed. In my writing, including in my upcoming book, The Contagion Next Time, I have found myself returning to a telling quote from Abraham Lincoln, “[P]ublic sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed.” The power of public opinion is such that even a relatively low level of public engagement can be enough to reshape society. Research has suggested that it takes about 3.5 percent of a population actively engaging in political protests to bring about real political change.

Given this power, if the public withholds its consent from a given measure, governments face a steep uphill climb towards the measure’s successful implementation. It does not matter how much good the measure might do; without the consent of the governed, it cannot take effect to any significant degree. When this ineffectiveness occurs, it can look like it is solely the fault of incompetent leadership, when, in fact, leadership may be doing all it can within the confines of withheld public consent.

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How Our Expectations Shape Our Perception of Reality | The Turning Point

Japan hosted the 2020 summer Olympics, staged in the summer of 2021 due to a year-long Covid-19 delay. Japan, by any number of metrics did extraordinarily well at the games, coming in third in the gold medal haul, handily outperforming other traditional Olympic powers. And yet, despite this success, many Japanese athletes felt compelled to deliver tearful apologies at their ‘failures’ on winning silver medals.

The curious case of Japanese regret in a moment of triumph can only be explained when we remember that data (in this case, the medal type and count) are simply one input that drives our construction of meaning and truth.  The Olympics were held amidst substantial local controversy as Japan was facing a surge in its Covid-19 cases. This made for added pressure on the host country to do well, so much so that anything short of gold was seen as a failure. This was a dramatic reminder of the powerful role that our expectation of success plays in our perception of that very success.

Take the Covid-19 summer of 2021 in the United States. What started as a season of optimism, with President Biden declaring a summer of freedom with the Covid-19 vaccine, quickly turned sour when, less than a month later, a majority of Americans again thought that the worst of the pandemic was ahead of them, rather than behind them. The rise of the delta variant fueled the dramatic change in American public perception as the US started seeing an increase in Covid-19 cases which had been waning over the earlier months of summer. But the delta variant was not doing anything that was unanticipated. The delta variant was driving viral spread among those who were unvaccinated, with a clear inverse correlation between state-level vaccination rates and new Covid-19 infections. Critically, those who had received the vaccine had a very low risk of re-acquiring Covid-19, and were at even lower risk of being hospitalized or dying from Covid-19. In addition, we had a precedent for how we were going to do with the delta variant as the UK preceded the US by about a month in its epidemic curve and readily showed that we could expect a waxing—and then a waning—of new infections principally among the unvaccinated in the US.

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Resisting our suburban impulses | The Healthiest Goldfish

Suburbs can be terrific places. I live in a suburb, and I can think of few better places to live, to raise a happy, healthy family. Suburbs represent stability, and the ascent of the middle class, a trend which significantly broadens access to the material resources that support health. Indeed, when we speak about creating a world that generates health by expanding access to these resources, the ideal would be for everyone to be able to enjoy the level of wellbeing reflected by suburban life. 

However, this is not yet the case—far from it. This unfairness is enforced by policies that benefit those with more at the expense of those with less. It is also enforced by habits of thought that allow us, even if we consider ourselves progressive-minded, to oppose measures which would share some of our advantage with others. Sadly, perhaps inevitably, there is a racial element to this, just as there is to the broader gap between the rich and the poor, and addressing this challenge means speaking honestly about the full dynamics of the issue, including its intersection with race. I was struck by an article written last summer by former Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges, where she tackled this uncomfortable truth, saying, “White liberals, despite believing we are saying and doing the right things, have resisted the systemic changes our cities have needed for decades. We have mostly settled for illusions of change, like testing pilot programs and funding volunteer opportunities.”  

Such observations are, I think, bracing and necessary. It is easy to see how ideological opponents can block progressive change; it is perhaps more difficult to see how our own blind spots can help stymie progress. Today’s column, then, will address the suburban impulses that can sway those of us who are committed to the pursuit of justice off the path that leads to better health for all, and how we can resist these impulses, to create a healthier world. 

What do I mean by suburban impulses? Fundamentally, they are captured by an acronym: NIMBY or “not in my backyard.” NIMBYism is when people living in a community oppose measures which would support the public good in that community when these measures would in some real or imagined way encroach on their own personal convenience (I have written previously about NIMBYism here). A corollary is that this opposition can come from people who would otherwise support such measures, as long as they happen somewhere else.

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Telling Different Stories with the Same Data | The Turning Point

Which country did the best at the Tokyo 2020 summer Olympics?  The United States led the way with the most medals: 113.  China had nearly as many gold medals: 38 to the US’s 39.  But are either total number of medals or total number of gold medals the best way to assess Olympic success?  Both the US and China are, after all, large countries. As pointed out by The Guardian, San Marino, a country with a population of about 35,000, won three medals or, effectively, eight medals per million people, readily dwarfing the US and China which won 0.3 and 0.06 medals per million respectively. So, who did the best at the Olympics? 

All of this is to say that the stories we tell ourselves about our success and failure can be quite different, even in the face of seemingly objective data—in the case of the Olympics, number of medals. This is always also the case in health, as much as in sports. And the same data can lend itself to quite different stories about our health achievement. The US spends far more on healthcare than any of its peer high-income countries.  And yet, we have lower life expectancy at birth than our peers. One story of our health that these data tell is that we spend far too much and have less health dividend than we should. But, we also perform better than almost all of these countries for persons over age 75—when healthcare becomes most important.  A story can then be told that we value our health throughout the life course, and that we spend accordingly, prolonging life, aligned with our national values.

That data are only part of any story we tell ourselves about our health has perhaps never been more evident than during the Covid-19 pandemic.  We struggled initially with what our goalposts should be, whether we considered success primarily a matter of having lower cases or fewer deaths.  Our data also told conflicting stories depending on the premium we placed on health equity.  Early rapid success in vaccination—the single most effective means to mitigate viral spread—was also accompanied by racial/ethnic gaps in vaccination. In most states, white people received a higher share of vaccinations compared to their share of cases, leading to widening racial gaps in risk of Covid-19. Was that early vaccination achievement then a success, or was it a failure? And the vaccines themselves remained extraordinarily effective even as the more transmissible delta variant swept the country. Among fully vaccinated people, re-infection rate was less than 1%, fewer than 0.004% needed hospitalization, and fewer than 0.001% died from the disease. And yet, concern about the delta variant dramatically changed the public perception of our success in mitigating Covid-19 in the summer of 2021.

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Resisting the allure of moral grandstanding | The Healthiest Goldfish

We are living in an age of the visible moral gesture. It seems that all events of some note in our cultural or political life are accompanied by statements of support or opprobrium from anyone with a Twitter account. Social media has democratized the opportunity to weigh in. It allows us to instantly speak in support of, or against, causes we feel are worthy of attention, with hashtags amplifying our words.

These gestures are often made with the best of intentions, and the sentiment they reflect—the wish to engage in the act of building a better world through praising the praiseworthy, or the converse—is admirable. There seems to me no question that some of this social media statement-ing has brought attention to important issues, elevating necessary conversations. But it also seems worth wondering if our focus on these gestures is really helping advance the cause of creating a better world. Could our outpouring of moral gestures on the occasion of, well, everything, be less effective than we think it to be? Could it even be a distraction from what we should be doing to shape a better future?

These questions raise the uncomfortable issue of moral grandstanding. By moral grandstanding, a term originating in psychology, I mean acting and speaking in ways which project the appearance of morality not for the sake of issues themselves, but as a means of reaping the social benefits of being seen to be a good person. It is similar to a term many of us have heard, “virtue signaling.” Such behavior has long been with us. History and literature are full of examples of people who have achieved status by broadcasting a virtue which they may or may not actually possess. Moral grandstanding, and the tendency towards hypocrisy, is also warned against in some of the major religions, as in this passage from the Gospel of Matthew, a tenet of Christianity.

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The Limits of Our Tolerance | The Turning Point

On May 28, 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued new Interim Public Health Recommendations for Vaccinated People,essentially giving a green light to fully vaccinated people to resume activities without wearing a mask or physically distancing. This guidance surprised nearly everyone, coming just a few weeks after the CDC director had noted that she had a sense of “impending doom” as she was watching the pandemic unfold. It reflected a dramatic pivot point in the US handling of the pandemic, an implicit shift away from community responsibility for Covid-19 transmission, towards individual responsibility. It suggested, essentially, that the onus was on those who remained unvaccinated to take precautions because the vaccinated could drop their effort to protect others.

Leaving aside arguments over whether this was the correct move based on the science, we saw this as an expression of the CDC’s appraisal of what regulation the country could—and could not—bear, and an acknowledgement that after a year of Covid-19 restrictions, the country was at the end of its pandemic tolerance.

The last 18 months of Covid-19 has tested us all. The hardships experienced were, of course, quite variable in scale; nothing compares to the pain and grief of losing loved ones.   And yet, it was the sum total of all the pandemic-era experiences and losses that shaped the landscape of population behavior during Covid-19, and directly or indirectly, set the stage for what we collectively were willing to do to mitigate the spread of the virus.

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