
Tribalism comes for pandemic science - seinundzeit
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/tribalism-comes-for-pandemic-science
======
dekhn
There are times I'm glad I left health science/biology/medicine as a field and
it's interesting to watch people slowly realize just how badly structured the
entire human health field is organized (from academic research to research
hospitals to profit hospitals to world health organizations) and how all the
incentives are messed up.

The closer you get in biology to human health, the more ego, tribalism, and
assholery you have to deal with. Something about "saving lives" really brings
out the intelligent jerks and the sharks.

As a contrast, I enjoy working in computing so much more. The experiments
people run are replicable, the code compiles, and people (in general) are far
less egotistical and arrogant (still plenty of sharks, though).

I've watched enough major paradigm shifts in my own fields to know that
embracing humility, admitting your own ignorance, and being open to new ideas
is key to the furtherment of science.

~~~
Avicebron
I will second this as I am currently working in the biotech field. The amount
of short sighted thinking and opportunism from small start ups to the most
massive CMO's in the world is staggering.

My take is that the whole field is extremely underfunded and that breeds
levels of competition and short term profit seeking, but that's probably a
biased opinion.

I'm sure if the field had the level of VC support that traditional
software/computing gets we would be making huge strides with our humanity.

~~~
dekhn
I don't know if the field is underfunded. What I'd say is that the area is
very risky (few ideas really pan out), there are lots of powerful incumbents
who want to retain the many-billion-$ revenue streams, and it's very costly to
test. But I also see people wasting huge amount of money chasing ideas that
really would be better handled with shotgunning (the tech VCs I used work with
said "why would I want to invest $20M in a biotech that fails after 20 years,
when i can invest $1M in 20 tech startups and one of them will make $1B in 2-3
years?").

It's not clear to me that investing more money helps, either. For example, the
NIH doubled its budget during the Clinton era, leading to far higher numbers
of grad students being trained than there were positions (prof, etc) in their
fields. So there was a glut, super-high competition for a limited number of
spaces, and many people dropped out of the race to be a prof and instead went
to be ML/data science people at ads firms.

------
throwawaysea
Not to sound alarmist, but recent events have felt like the early warning of a
pending collapse of our country. When I saw healthcare workers and officials
abandon logic, reason, and evidence to put their weight behind justifying
recent mass protests, I really lost a lot of faith. These protests obviously
will result in thousands more deaths (much larger in number than unjust
police-involved deaths). This is no longer about losing faith in institutions
alone, but really about losing faith in fellow citizens who are willfully
burying their heads in the sand and willfully acting in bad faith nearly all
the time. Of course, there is plenty of blame to hand out for all sides, going
back well before recent events and well before COVID-19 itself.

My question for HN: what has happened to past societies when they reach this
point, where emotions and tribalism cause all sides to hate each other, to
talk past each other, to hold each other to unequal standards, to use every
last loophole/technicality to win through bad faith means, etc.? Have any such
societies de-escalated from there to a point of stability again?

~~~
sacred_numbers
I think that you are making the same mistake that you are accusing healthcare
workers and officials of making. You are assuming that these protests will
"obviously" result in thousands more deaths because it feels that way to you.
I believe that that's pretty unlikely, though, since there are probably fewer
than a million protestors across the country. Many of the protestors are
wearing masks and the protests being outside reduces the risk of spreading the
disease. There will certainly be some spread due to the protests, but probably
not nearly as much as at grocery stores or churches. You are also assuming
that this is just about unjust police-involved deaths; it is not. It is about
the many millions of negative interactions with the police and justice system
that perpetuate poverty (police lying under oath, egregious sentences for non-
violent crimes, etc.) I don't think it's a bad faith argument to say that
correcting these injustices is more important than maintaining a totally
strict quarantine.

The reason both sides talk past each other is because they have different
values and different assumptions. Based on your post your first priority is
preventing deaths and your assumption is that these protests will cause more
deaths than they prevent. My first priority is living in a fair world, with
preventing deaths being a close second. My assumption is that the protests
will not cause a large number of excess deaths, but that they do have a high
chance of moving our justice system closer towards real justice. I also am
making the assumption that living in a fair and just society will increase
overall health outcomes over the long term.

I believe that most (but definitely not all) people don't argue in bad faith,
they just have different values and make different assumptions. There's not
much that can be done about having different values, but better data can help
every side have more similar assumptions, which should help opinions to
converge somewhat.

~~~
throwawaysea
> You are assuming that these protests will "obviously" result in thousands
> more deaths because it feels that way to you. I believe that that's pretty
> unlikely, though, since there are probably fewer than a million protestors
> across the country. Many of the protestors are wearing masks and the
> protests being outside reduces the risk of spreading the disease.

I am not the one saying this. Trevor Bedford (Associate Professor in the
Department of Epidemiology at the University of Washington) noted that the
protests will add 200-1100 deaths per day of protests:
[https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1269533303536664576](https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1269533303536664576).
This is based on his mathematical modeling of the protests.

> I don't think it's a bad faith argument to say that correcting these
> injustices is more important than maintaining a totally strict quarantine.

My point is that if one [demographic or political] subset of people gets to
evaluate the tradeoffs and decide for themselves that yes, protesting is worth
it even with the risks of the coronavirus, then everyone should get to
exercise that choice. You and I should get to exercise that choice when we
visit a business or take on some outdoor activity or whatever. It seems to me
that personal discretion is allowed only for favored groups and causes, and
that seems in itself, unjust.

> The reason both sides talk past each other is because they have different
> values and different assumptions.

I think this is probably correct. So to rephrase my question, can a society
with two big groups holding such divergent values survive? Or is it inevitable
that is splits apart?

~~~
thu2111
_can a society with two big groups holding such divergent values survive? Or
is it inevitable that is splits apart?_

There are historical examples in both directions, so arguably we don't know.

A society that didn't survive: Russia during the Bolsheviks. One group was so
aggressive it took over completely.

A society that did come back from the brink: perhaps Britain during the 1970s?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_Discontent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_Discontent)

Left / right conflict resulted in widespread strikes, three day weeks, an IMF
bailout, power cuts, garbage piling up in streets, bodies going unburied,
hyperinflation and so on. It was resolved after voters replaced the left wing
government with a right wing one that radically reformed trade union laws and
refocused policy on inflation control, but at the cost of a huge recession.
The UK pivoted from quite far leftism to (for Britain) nearly libertarian
government within the span of one or two elections; eventually Thatcher's
libertarian policies led to riots and she was kicked out by her own party.
After that both parties moved more towards each other, paving the way for many
years of Blairite centrism.

------
reddog
Whenever science and politics intersect, science loses. If science is studying
something apolitical like the metabolism of water bear or a quasar burst from
a distant galaxy it’s fine. Throw politics in the mix and the waters become
muddied very quickly when funding and reputational concerns motivate and
corrupt a delicate process.

Politics is like Lennie who wants to pet the rabbits. Science is like the
rabbits.

~~~
mindfulhack
I am honestly and hearteningly surprised to even hear these sentiments from
someone else here, which I have now observed for years. It's one reason why I
love HN.

I'm not in the science field, but I absolutely am a student of human nature
(and mindfulness). It's unbelievable how much the mechanism of science is
dirtied, distorted, and abused by our emotional pride, greed, tribalism, fear,
and all other aspects of human nature, which show that - for all our
intelligence - we humans are wired for survival, and only wired for truth if
and when it helps that survival. If truth comes at odds with it, we will lie -
even if to ourselves, and at very deep subconscious levels - as much as we
need to.

Rationalisation:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization_(psychology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization_\(psychology\))

How this biological reality plays out is complex. It's not just in our lizard
brain, but the entire realm of our secondary limbic brain, with its 'tribal'
swirl of social emotions and resulting behaviours. 'Survival' means a great of
things, not just literal survival right in front of you right now. It's a
powerful and primary goal coursing through our blood and all behaviour at the
deepest and most subtle levels. We would do well to educate about this fact,
and practice mindfulness to be able to see it in ourselves.

------
pjc50
The people who said that lockdown needed to be limited in length because
people couldn't take it for long were right.

Unfortunately, due to not understanding exponentials, many advocated for
starting the lockdown _later_ : hence the UK's delayed lockdown and therefore
highest death toll in Europe.

The people advocating for "herd immunity" never addressed the death rate; a
death rate of even 0.5% in the UK would be _three hundred thousand people_ ,
plus more with lingering side effects. As it is, we've confirmed 287k infected
for 40k deaths, or 0.5% of the country infected. A very, very long way from
immunity.

~~~
robocat
> 0.5% of the country infected

Your own numbers show this is totally incorrect: death rate 0.5% times 40k
deaths, means infected is 8 million (or more precisely the count was that
number some weeks ago as deaths take time to happen).

this has been an obvious calculation from the start and I am not the only
person trying to correct the misuse of the confirmed infected count (287k) for
your conclusion.

Honest question: why do you not know this?

~~~
pjc50
> why do you not know this?

Leading with an insult?

I agree that the numbers don't match up and the country is almost certainly
more infected than we think, but we cannot _know_ how widely infected we are
until we've done the testing! Even the death rate has a factor of two variance
between "definitely COVID" and "excess deaths".

The failure to ramp up testing is yet another thing to blame the poor
government response for.

~~~
robocat
I apologise: my question was rude.

However, your comments feel to me like an engineers rationalisation -
technically correct but misdirected. The feeling is vague, and my words are
not describing it correctly. I suspect that I would need a high bandwidth
medium to discuss this.

------
danharaj
Just a quiet reminder that accounting for other peoples' actions with
"partisanship" and "tribalism" is just a very easy way to stop thinking about
their reasoning or motivation. If someone explained your behavior away as
unthinking loyalty or allegiance you would be offended-- and rightfully so.

P.S. This article is not an apolitical analysis of politics, this journal is
not an apolitical scientific journal.

~~~
manfredo
Evaluating whether an opinion is partisan is not ignoring their reasoning or
motivation. Quite the opposite, it is evaluating their reasoning and
motivation and determining the extent to which that reasoning and motivating
is influence and determined by partisanship or group affiliation.

Expert opinion is supposed to be formed by empirical evidence and science. Not
political affiliation or personal opinion. For instance, an expert opinion
would be, "protests of X size stand to increase rates of infection by Y%"
Whether or not a certain protest justified in accepting that increase of
infection is a question of personal values not medical science.

Is protesting against police brutality worth the increased rate of infection?
Is protesting against the lockdowns and subsequent mass unemployment worth the
increased rates of infection? It's fine to form your own answers to these
questions. But these are questions determined by values, not science. Expert
opinions have no business trying to answer these. But medical experts are
making the latter statement, and are doing so in a way that comes off as
extremely partisan:

> We can show that support by facilitating safest protesting practices without
> detracting from demonstrators’ ability to gather and demand change. This
> should not be confused with a permissive stance on all gatherings,
> particularly protests against stay-home orders. Those actions not only
> oppose public health interventions, _but are also rooted in white
> nationalism_ and run contrary to respect for Black lives.

How on Earth are we supposed to trust these experts' advice on when to lift
lockdowns when they openly state that resistance to lockdowns is rooted in
white nationalism? Let alone the double standard in supporting some protests
while opposing others. As much as I am inclined to defer to experts, messages
like these makes it extremely hard for me to do so here. When medical experts
are making statements like these, it is highly indicative of reasoning
informed by partisanship rather than science.

~~~
danharaj
Here's some possibilities:

There's a lot of experts out there, and depending on how the people who fill
your feed pick and choose them, they can make them say anything they want.
Some experts might change their minds when confronted with a new extraordinary
situation. Others are, well, not experts, they just have the credentials of
experts.

"Experts" have been decried as hypocrites and frauds since the time of Lao Zi,
for what its worth. All your interactions with expertise are mediated and
indirect, except the expertise you yourself have.

------
PeterStuer
"don't wrestle with a pig. You'll both get dirty but the pig will love it"

Somehow the lowest kind of politics, on all sides, manage to drag us all down
to their level. A culture war is just like any other war in the sense that on
the battlefields nobody wins, and both sides lose.

As a child growing up late last century, I always wondered how prosperous
progressing culture's could have collectively devolved into the dark ages. I
saw the seeds of the unraveling start in the 80's, but like any exponential
process, it took some time to become a clear vector.

I am not sure this is a preventable or correctable evolution at this point, as
the devolution forces are enshrined within the system itself, leaving only
room for a collapse at the meta level.

I may be wrong. I truly hope I am.

------
drewcoo
"You’re probably doing it right now — skimming quickly to the end of this
piece to see if I’m criticizing you or only those other people who behave so
irresponsibly."

An article decrying prejudice gives us its own demonstration of it. Does that
somehow make the case better?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
An article decrying prejudice lets the _reader_ give their own demonstration
of it.

------
JPKab
Question:

Has anyone here changed their mind about COVID19 in a major way as the data
has become more complete?

Just wondering. I have sensed in myself tribalistic tendencies of not changing
my mind when the data changes. I'm trying hard to look at myself and recognize
it and experiment with different thoughts.

I find myself bouncing between thinking we have overreacted to then thinking
that my perception of an overreaction is paradoxical because we did lock down
and have contained the virus' damage to some extent. I'm trying hard to be
super open-minded about the data, and recognizing that I'm just a simple
primate whose brain doesn't want to expend energy and resorts to bias to
conserve it.

~~~
rayiner
I was pro lockdown at the beginning. Now, I’m convinced that we could have
gotten most of the benefits with a substantially less invasive approach,
especially outside the mega cities.

~~~
DanBC
Or a shorter harder lockdown earlier on, combined with rigorous test and trace
programme.

~~~
ska
I think it's pretty clear the best use of a lock down is to allow time to
develop and improve the infrastructure and protocols to do this properly.

But if you lack the competence or political/social will to do this properly,
all you really have in the face of rising (or rising again) case numbers
rolling lock downs and wait in hope of a vaccine. Or failing to manage it
spectacularly, that also seems to be an option.

------
salmon30salmon
This is so very disheartening. I will speak only for the United States, as I
am not familiar enough with other countries to comment. Not only is this
impacting nearly every single person in the country, it is ruining the
financial situation of over 40m people, primarily concentrated within the most
financially vulnerable. This is because leaders on the left and right have
refused to respond to new data, and are working with the same plans set in
March. We _now_ know that children are at a very low risk, people under 40 are
very low risk. Most risk is within shared living situations (migrant workers,
retirement homes, prisons). We can respond to the _real_ risks and use a
nuanced approach that actually saves lives. But instead, the left says
"lockdown lockdown lockdown" and the right says "open 100%"... Both are full
of shit to the point of it being disgusting.

This isn't a game. This has life and death consequences so far beyond
COVID-19, and the lack of foresight that the partisans are demonstrating will
have reverberations for generations. We are playing the life of real people,
we are risking the financial security of real people, who have families and
debts and dreams.

Finally, the fact that the public health sector has devolved into partisanship
really has me worried for when we _actually_ have a repeat of Spanish Flu, or
a more virulent Ebola etc. Then we are screwed.

Edit: fixed a typo

~~~
throwaway894345
In fairness, the right has been pretty consistent about tailoring the response
according to risk—i.e., those who are at risk should isolate and everyone else
should resume work. They happened to be right in this regard. The left has
also made exceptions in their “lockdown everything” policy, specifically with
regard to their own protests (and the response of pandemic experts is a
particularly interesting case study of the polarization of science production
as opposed to the polarization of science consumption).

~~~
salmon30salmon
I didn't want to get into a game of who has been most wrong, because that will
automatically trigger people to go back to their camps and hunker down. I
agree that the "isolate the vulnerable, continue with life otherwise" is most
likely the best outcome. The fact that this idea is attributed to the right is
going to mean it is DOA, for the most part.

~~~
albybisy
i would like to know how to "isolate the vulnerable"...?! We send to an
island? we weld inside home? We should talk only if we have a realizable plan
and not a "dream/idealistinc" plan.

~~~
salmon30salmon
Well we were able to somewhat effectively isolate the entire country, so I
would say have modified stay-home orders that target those who are most
vulnerable. That, in addition to common sense acts like hand washing,
isolating the sick etc. would go a long way to flatten the curve enough to not
overwhelm the hospitals, which after-all was the original goal.

~~~
PeterisP
The problem is that you can't isolate the most vulnerable fully. The current
lockdown works because it reduces the spread through the wider society,
including all the people who are in contact with the most vulnerable. If you
don't do that, then we have the Sweden scenario where _inevitably_ there's
someone young and fit and infected who brings the disease into the
institutions that should be protected, because these young and fit and
infected people work there or go there to deliver things.

Alternatively, you need a total quarantine isolation - e.g. anyone working in
a care home should live there and can't touch their kids if they go to a
school where will be spread because everyone else's parents are not on
lockdown. Or the most vulnerable will die.

~~~
NotSammyHagar
And has been widely discussed, Sweden has had a lot of excess deaths. Look at
death rates compared to Finland, Norway, Denmark.

------
xiphias2
,,people should not be walking around with masks''

What Fauci was telling to people is not science. I was wearing my N100 masks
when I had the chance, because I hadn't seen any evidence of masks making the
coronavirus more infectious, but much evidence to the contrary. The whole
anti-mask propaganda made it hard to me to trust scientific leaders, and even
some papers at this point.

~~~
lotu
The anti-mask “propaganda” was obviously an only partially successful effort
to preserve the supply of masks for first responders. If the CDC/WHO and came
out and said everyone wear masks in the beginning of march the supply would
have spiked harder and faster than it already did, likely resulting in more
health care worker fatalities.

~~~
StanislavPetrov
Successful or not they lied to the public openly about the benefits of wearing
masks. Not only does this destroy whatever credibility they had with the
public, but it also shields government and health officials who failed to
stockpile enough masks for inevitable outbreaks and offshored our medical
productive capacity to China from accountability (making it more likely we
will face the same shortages during the next, inevitable crisis).

------
pfkurtz
There's almost certainly a lot of safe opening up we could do. What would make
it dramatically safer would be pro-social behavior from people on the right.
The protesters are all wearing masks and doing their best to maintain social
distance outside of the actions. They calculate that it is worth the risk.
Time will tell, but the calculus isn't merely do the protests increase the
spread? but also will they achieve political goals that have a large bearing
on public health, specifically the health of people whom the US Coronavirus
response is already systematically failing (black people, whose lives matter).

~~~
jtbayly
> The protesters are all wearing masks

Really? I keep seeing people saying this. It’s laughably false. Here is the
governor of MI at a protest that breaks her own rules about social distancing
and protests, directly between two men without masks. (Just one high profile
example.)

[https://mobile.twitter.com/TPCarney/status/12689028204108431...](https://mobile.twitter.com/TPCarney/status/1268902820410843136)

~~~
pfkurtz
Been to a major one, and a very, very high percentage of the people there wore
masks, enough that it was consistently odd to see people without them. Also
people trying as much as possible to keep a little space between each other.
Who wasn't wearing masks, consistently? White male police (the National Guard
was all masked). Doubt me if you want. Obviously a rhetorical "all" and very
easy to find photographic counterexamples. But certainly most.

~~~
pfkurtz
Also there were many people distributing masks to the maskless, and people
whose sole mission was to pump hand sanitizer onto people's hands. The people
in the crowd care about the virus and for the most part when right back to
social distancing after leaving the protest.

------
bagacrap
Great article, especially the bit about the healthcare professionals'
statement on BLM protests. However this article (and the public at large) fail
to distinguish between what doctors practice, and science. Medical doctors are
about as far from scientists as you can get: they're highly trained robots.
They don't perform science; at best they write up a case study. Jumping to
conclusions from insufficient data is what they consider "expertise".

------
dropit_sphere
"Tribalism" didn't come for pandemic science. _Tribalists_ did.

Every individual has the power to behave forthrightly, with epistemic hygiene.
You can't shove the responsibility to do that onto a nebulous interstitial
emergent effect.

------
guscost
Science as you know it is dead: [https://guscost.com/2020/05/12/pandemic-
woo/](https://guscost.com/2020/05/12/pandemic-woo/)

~~~
vorpalhex
That was a really poor read. Anxiety from lockdown is going to kill more
people than coronavirus?

Like, I'm not exactly an ardent supporter of lockdown but it's clear we've
saved many lives by keeping hospitalizations minimal. Even if that estimate is
below what initial models suggested, it's inept to suggest it was useless.

Likewise you fail to actually link to any stats to support claims about
increased suicide rates or deaths from heart attacks, while linking to a 404
as a source for New York state supposedly hiding pushing covid cases into
nursing homes.

Science has issues but this is trending towards baseless tabloid journalism
instead of a serious introspection of methodological flaws.

~~~
guscost
You skipped over a lot, and we will see about the rest. I can’t prove most of
it right now, but it is what I think. In fairness it is perhaps way too
cynical for your taste, so if you prefer a serious introspection, try this:
[https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2020/05/science-
without-v...](https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2020/05/science-without-
validation-in-a-world-without-meaning/)

------
josephby
“Yuval Levin is director of social, cultural, and constitutional studies at
the American Enterprise Institute, editor of National Affairs, and a senior
editor of The New Atlantis.” Useful context before the click.

------
luord
I try in general to steer clear and not to comment on anything regarding both
the pandemic and the protests, but I gotta say that that open letter is the
most bizarre take I've read on both issues. Or it at least gives even Trump's
most outrageous tweets a run for their money.

------
Animats
_" In this century, we have become accustomed to heated political debates that
somehow avoid contact with reality."_

Which is a big problem. It keeps the US from actually _doing_ anything.

(Then again, that may be a good thing. The current administration does not do
much follow-through, so most of the weirder ideas stay rhetoric and don't get
implemented. Compare the rise of the Nazi party. Much of the stuff they
planned to build in the early years was actually built, from the "People's
Radio" to the autobahns. With the organization in place to build, arming up
for WWII could be done effectively. If the Nazis were all hype, they would not
have been able to do much beyond their borders.)

~~~
m0zg
Fascism is private enterprise under total government control. Of course it'll
be very effective at getting things done, both the autobahns and the gas
chambers. Communism is pretty effective too. It's government-owned enterprise
under total government control. The only thing that really changes is who owns
the means of production. And, well, under Communism you're de-facto a slave to
the state as well. Not having a job was illegal in e.g. the Soviet Union.

The fact that US political establishment is unable to enact quick change is
kind of by design, IMO. While they are at each other's throats, they don't
have the time to attack We The People. That, in my book, is a good thing.

~~~
TomMarius
Communism is known for economically collapsing on itself, that's not very
efficient or productive.

~~~
m0zg
Yes. But it takes decades for it to do so, and in the initial stages it can
appear to be quite effective. And as any communist will tell you, "it's not
really communism" if it collapses on itself, killing tens of millions of
people in the process.

~~~
growlist
We need a Russian to comment with some examples of the exceedingly black
humour that developed under communism.

~~~
m0zg
Soviet-born Russian-American here. How may I be of service? Some of that
humor, BTW, could land you in a labor camp if a secret KGB agent (секретный
сотрудник) heard it. So it was only shared with very trusted audiences.

~~~
growlist
Tell me a joke!

