Mixing politics and science
Freddie Sayers, at UnHerd, has an excellent 30-minute podcast with Cyrille Cohen, head of immunology at Bar Ilan University and an advisor to the Israeli government on vaccines.
Cohen is so unlike Anthony Fauci. Fauci talks like a politician; Cohen talks like a truth-seeking scientist, maybe because he is.
At the link, Sayers gives a summary of the main points.
I was so pleased to see Cohen not only admit that closing schools was a mistake but also apologize for having recommended it.
My favorite line comes at about the 14:35 point in response to Sayers’s question about whether it was strange to see the tremendous attacks on people who talked positively about mainstream concepts like herd immunity.
Cohen replied, “If you mix politics and immunology or health sciences, at the end of the day you get politics.”
HT2 Todd Zywicki.
READER COMMENTS
Ray
Jan 18 2022 at 7:56pm
Yet Israel has had some of the most draconian COVID policies, including mandatory vaccinations despite their own data being some of the best in the world showing natural immunity as being more effective and the current vaccines (plus two boosters) being nearly useless against Omicron transmission. Are the politicians just ignoring “Israeli Fauci’s” advice?
Guess I should watch the video and see if it answers my questions. 🙂
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Jan 19 2022 at 6:11am
That both closing schools then and phasing out requiring vaccinations now are policies that plausibly fail/pass cost benefit analysis. It would be helpful if he could explain those analyses. Were the costs of school closing underestimated? Did the closings contribute less to reduction is the spread than expected? What combination of infectivity, level of existing vaccinations, or other factors makes vaccines requirements on the margin no longer cost effective?
Although its a policy not within his toolkit, it would be interesting to hear his cost-benefit analysis of not developing a vaccine variant for Delta and or Omicron.
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Jan 19 2022 at 6:25am
Sayers introduction of was a bit odd, referring to things no “going quite to plan” (becasue of rising case levels) when cumulative cases and deaths and even recent increases are considerably lower that US and UK or even Sweden.
I dare say that if the US had Israel’s numbers Fauci would be a national hero for everybody but Faux News.
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Jan 19 2022 at 7:46am
Having heard the interview, I can see why we the reasoning for when venue access restrictions (like school closings) and vaccine requirements for entry into some venues do and do not pass a cost benefit threshold were “unheard.” The interviewer seems interested only in hearing “contrarian” conclusions.
And Cohen does fault the lack of further vaccine development, particularly ones aiming at reducing upper respiratory infections which are the gateways to the more serious lower respiratory infections that ARE still mitigated by the first generation vaccine.
Alan Goldhammer
Jan 19 2022 at 8:01am
Quite right! they had military enforced lock downs in 2020. My sister has lived in Israel since 1973 and during the lock down could not visit her children who lived less than a mile away. There was also uneven enforcement with the ultra-Orthodox who were responsible for most of the major outbreaks.
Most of the criticism of ‘herd immunity’ came when the parent strain of Covid was dominant. That strain caused much more morbidty and mortality than Omicron. I felt it was foolish to discuss herd immunity at that time. There was far too much uncertainty about the trajectory of the virus in a naive population. The introduction of the mRNA vaccines along with the mutation of Covid will lead to herd immunity but the healthcare system will continue to be stressed with far too many hospitalizations (this is the real cost of the pandemic).
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Jan 20 2022 at 8:39am
I was not aware of the attacks. Discussing herd immunity ought to be part of the any discussion of an optimal response. How soon and with what measures can we achieve herd immunity at least cost? Of course the optimal rate of spread is unlikely to be the completely unmitigated rate.
Jon Murphy
Jan 19 2022 at 8:50am
I’ve been doing a lot of research on experts, expert communication, and trust. While a lot of the literature is mixed, one of the consistent factors is that experts who communicate uncertainty and apologize for making mistakes are viewed by nonexperts as being more trustworthy than experts who communicate undue precision and do not apologize. I suspect that the Israeli behavior will help their public health administration remain reliable; I fear to think what the behavior by Fauci et al is doing to American trust in health experts.
Alan Goldhammer
Jan 19 2022 at 10:11am
Go back and read the seminal work of Paul Slovic and his colleagues. He did the early work on risk perception and the difference between expert and public sectors. The best summary is HERE but is gated unless you have a subscription to Science. When I was still at PhRMA, this was one of the areas I worked in and gave a number of talks on the subject.
Jon Murphy
Jan 19 2022 at 11:02am
There’s an advantage to being affiliated with not one, but two R1 schools (GMU and Syracuse). Very little is beyond my reach 🙂
And yes, that is an excellent paper. It’s really a paper in expert failure and I cite it in my paper on cascading failure as a failure of the American public health administration.
From Slovic:
Throughout the pandemic, experts such as Fauci and Collins have repeatedly forbade any questioning of their opinions. Indeed, they routinely (and proudly) have dismissed pushback as illegitimate. Any sort of feedback from the public has been dismissed as “not following the science,” or “this is a public health issue primarily.” Consequently, the experts’ efforts were “destined to fail.”
IronSig
Jan 22 2022 at 1:51am
I’d be interested in the bleed-over of the Slovic insights to other decision processes. Where is the margins between the situations where nuance is treasured and the arenas where nuance is treated like hedging from spineless pretenders to leadership? Is there a difference in legislative and executive domains?
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