Is it uncertainty of change, like COVID-19, that breeds ignorance?

This post is a little different for me. I usually blog about modern ways of running teams. Today I'm going back many years and writing something with my Applied Biology hat on my head. My motivation for this post is a recent discussion with a school friend on WhatsApp. He would describe himself as an open-minded sceptic. Having spent many days reading his "copy & paste" arguments, I began to think he's delusional and single-minded. Below I'm going to run some of the threads we went down, and the more I type, the more I think about Agile detractors, all of whom are convinced they are doing fine as they are.

First, where do I stand, and what's the theory?

My stance is aligned with popular thinking and has not changed since Christmas 2019 when I heard about a new virus transmitted between humans. I don't follow too much media, and practically everything I type below is my opinions formed from my undergraduate study of Applied Biology and my eight years working in science.

I am satisfied that COVID-19 is a virus that can infect humans and which the severity of the illness and the immune response differs between individuals. I'm only aware of a few factors influencing these things, and the most prominent factor still seems to be age. The older you are, the more probable that you contract and even die from a covid-19 infection.

My established understanding of viruses is that they are not living in the normal sense of our knowledge. Viruses are a strand of DNA (or RNA) sheathed in fat and protein. Although not alive, viruses are foreign to the human body and are identified by your immune system through their external proteins. Once identified, viruses are quickly destroyed and to do that, we feel sick, but that's jumping ahead a bit.

So small, so what makes viruses so successful?

Once inside your body, very often via a mucus membrane, it's a race. The race is between the virus and your immune system. The virus needs to inject its DNA into your cells because your cells are cell replication machines. Because your cells now have the virus DNA, they replicate using the virus blueprints, and so your cells start kicking out new copies of the virus. If this were by design, it would be a genius strategy, but then evolution mimics genius. 

While the replication is happening, your body is also in the race. Your immune system sets out to find as many viruses as possible and destroy them. The challenge for your cells is pace. If you are young and healthy, you can quickly find and kill these buggers, but if you are older, it's more challenging, and the problem is exponential. I mean, while you are delaying, then every virus still in you is being replicated. So if the body doesn't respond quickly, it's a real problem as there is a critical mass where it's nearly impossible to recover from the infection. Hence, once exposed, some win the race easily, other struggles, and a few lose.  

If that's the theory, and it has stood up to scrutiny for a long time now; what is the scepticism all about?

Here is some of the stuff I heard

"My immune system is great, I don't need a vaccine!"

Our immune system has always fascinated me, and to explain it to my 8-year-old is to need to simplify it. 

Imagine I have a broom handle with a sharp end, and I begin jabbing at you with it. Your response at first may differ, but the likelihood is that the first jab will sting. The next might surprise, but very soon, you would begin knocking it out of the way. You can do that because you are healthy. If you were not healthy, then eventually, the sharp stick would do damage and even potentially kill you. When this is a virus, the response is your immune response. The good news is that once you've learned the deflection skills, it takes a long time to lose them. This is immunity.

Great news! You can get the same training with a blunt stick, same outcome. This is how vaccines work.

The challenge we have as a community is that some people are too young, too old, or just too frail to even poke with a blunt stick, and so to defend these people, we all need to either experience the virus while we are young and healthy or be vaccinated and thus stop the replication and spread of the virus.

"It's just like the flu" 

Covid isn't the flu because it's new. Before 2019, no one has had covid, and hence there was no immunity in humans. Over the next 20-30 years, this might develop, and the 40-year-olds of today won't die from Covid when they are 70. But what about the next 30 years? These older people need this immunity and soon. 

"The numbers aren't to be trusted".

There really is no argument I could find against this as it's a deep mistrust in government that creates this kind of attitude. I guess my surprise is that it's a very strange thing to make up. What's more, all governments of various political persuasions. It does lead to who can you trust?

Doctors and other experts

I trust my doctor. I trust my family members, who are medical professionals. I trust the hundreds of scientists I worked with for nearly 10-years. Everyone else, I question. That said, I also trust the scientists who follow the well-established study and peer review methods. It's not easy to always get funding for these things, but given the NHS was providing financial support to homoeopathy, I believe that even nut-jobs get a fair go.

I am also a sceptic, and I don't trust doctors and experts who are either ex-specialist and/or don't follow the established methods, including peer review.  So, just because you are a professor, doctor of have a PhD from God herself, you can't convince me that your opinion is fact unless you have some empirical evidence that has been reviewed by peers.

"But, there are so many doctors against vaccines"

I did just 2 minutes of digging, and in the US alone, there are 1million certified doctors. I challenged my adversary to find me only ten doctors that are against vaccines. He couldn't. Ten would equal 0.00001%. Never mind that I was talking about the USA.

"Masks and lockdown don't work"

Really? Australia seems to have proved otherwise. Notwithstanding that, let me go back to my analogy of the pointed stick. In my description, the best way to avoid being pointed to death is to develop the immune response, but there is another way of avoiding it… you can move away. Get space between you and the virus. The only good news about COVID is that without a host it can't survive. So, if no one had covid for a few days, that would be the end of it.

"What about vaccine side effects, those which are denied."

This is the one argument that is so easy to debunk, yet too many people still believe that vaccines cause a whole host of problems.  

Let's start with the number of health issues anyone might develop in their life. My guess is we all have between two to three issues we discover between birth and 60. Now, consider the volume of people vaccinated—millions already in the UK.

Now, imagine that fate has dealt me the misfortune to be hit by a bout of depression in May this year. No-one knows the cause of the depression, and I don't know its coming. This is likely to be on the horizon for a lot of people, but let's keep it to 15 for the sake of argument.

In April, me and thousands of other men and women in Australia are vaccinated, and in May, the depression hits. What would your instincts tell you if you were one of these 15 people? You would be convinced of the cause and effect, right? But the truth is that statistically, there is no link, zero. Depression hits thousands of people a year, and millions of people are vaccinated each year. Of course, some people will suffer from depression straight after a vaccine, but that's because the vaccine doesn't stop time.

"The PCR test doesn't work."

Man, are you for real? So what! It doesn't take a genius to work out that if it is giving false positives, which by the way, there is no evidence for except for some general criticism of PCR from people many moons ago, that this argument is counter to the conspiracy.

If the numbers of people with Covid are less (if the PCR test is giving false positives), but the death rate is still the same (I think the test for death is still trusted), that means the death rate is higher than that reported. This result is the reverse of the narrative these deniers want to peddle. And this is why I think these groups are ignorant.  They all just repeat whatever nonsense they read in an attempt to get certainty.

My Conclusions 

What these people want is a certainty, and in the absence of this, they prefer denial. 

I might update this post as I argue more with my adversaries. If you want to chat with me on Twitter? I am @alexcrossley