#Covid19 is part a scientific and part a political problem…

As Brian notes ‘there is so much data floating around it would make your head spin’. This is because we still don’t know what we are up against. This piece in Slate draws lessons from the US and warns against the false certainties this ‘infodemic’ can bring:

…those communicating scientific information are at risk not only of oversimplifying the misinformation problem itself but also of failing to recognize and address other factors that complicate efforts to communicate effectively about COVID-19.

In particular, the seductively simple directive to be “accurate,” which lies at the heart of science communication, obscures the reality that accuracy is a tenuous notion during a crisis such as this, in which uncertainty reigns.

Science that was considered correct at the outset will likely turn out to be incorrect or incomplete, making it difficult to draw a bright line between misinformation and science that is legitimately contested.

Further, just as the public health questions that arise during a pandemic go far beyond numbers such as death rates to include matters of social inequity and ailing health care infrastructure, the communication issues that complicate an infodemic are much broader than the mere existence of falsehood. [Emphasis added]

They lay out four concerns under the following headings:

1. Scientific facts and uncertainties are moving targets. “COVID-19 studies are being pre-published and published—and then sometimes retracted or disproven—at such an accelerated pace that even experts struggle to separate signal from noise.”

2. The COVID-19 information environment is partisan. “…there is ample scientific evidence that maintaining a heavy focus on accuracy in politically charged contexts is at best only partially effective and at worst counterproductive.”

3. Science must get political without getting partisan. “Broad trust in science does not mean that people across the political divide trust the same science or scientists. Fauci, known for frequently contradicting the president, was recently forced to enhance his security detail after receiving death threats from conspiracy theorists holding that he is a “Deep State” operative seeking to overthrow Trump”.

4. The accelerated wickedness of COVID-19. “Safe vaccines are unlikely to be widely available until well into 2021, and therapeutic and social interventions are being developed by trial and error as the virus spreads. Meanwhile, societies are faced with difficult decisions that science alone cannot answer.”

This last is problematic. Within the island, two health jurisdictions which despite the signing of a memorandum (which Ian suggests is more about communication than sharing data and political thinking) we still aren’t working together.

Taking people with you means it is not just about pointing out differentials in data but sharing data and views and trying (whatever the failures and past mistakes) to find ways to align things like the release of the lockdown mechanism.

After a sticky start First and Deputy First Ministers have got a comms strategy together (though it would help if Gerry gave his Junior minister the same memo Michelle got). But overall we must shoot the rapids as the south. We do need clarity, but less rigidity.

What we don’t need is Trumpian politics of beggar thy neighbour. We are indeed all in this arc together for at least another year and maybe more. And, as Danny Finklestein notes, it may not even end there:

A commonplace when discussing military intervention is for people to say that we mustn’t go in until we know how to get out. Yet the truth is that you almost never know what your exit is going to be when you enter.

You do what you have to do at the beginning, and then cope with the consequences. America didn’t appreciate, when it was pulled in to the European conflict after Pearl Harbor, that it would still have troops in a superpower stand-off in Berlin 50 years later.

Indeed. And if you are still obsessing over the early (relatively small divergences between the two parts of the island, we can also learn from the very different approach taken by Sweden:

“Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2” by NIAID is licensed under CC BY

Mick Fealty

Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty