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MELBOURNE: In mid-November, South Dakota emergency room nurse Jodi Doering tweeted her experience caring for dying patients.
Many, he said, were denying the existence of COVID-19 until their last breath. She said:
His last words when he died are “this can’t be happening, it’s not real.” And when they should be… FaceTiming with their families, they are filled with anger and hatred
Five months earlier, a 30-year-old man died of COVID-19 at Methodist Hospital in San Antonio, Texas. His last words to his nurse:
I think I made a mistake. I thought this was a hoax, but it is not.
The medical director of the hospital reported that the patient became infected at a party with other skeptics, all thinking that the virus was “fake news.”
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CONFIDENCE VARIES BY LOCATION
That Texas party was undoubtedly hosted by cell phone, and friends drove their cars there. Both pieces of technology have far more computer processing and storage capacity than the Apollo 11 lunar landing in 1969 had.
Ironically, recent advances in science and technology helped people come together to express their doubts about scientific advice.
But it’s not just people who have downplayed the scientific advice and warnings about the virus.
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Scientists around the world often feel that governments do not pay enough attention to scientific advice. That was the opinion of about half of the 25,307 researchers surveyed by Frontiers, a Swiss publisher of scientific journals, in May and June.
The survey asked international scientists whether lawmakers in their country had used scientific advice to inform their COVID strategy.
In general, scientists divided 50:50 into how much, or how little, their government had considered scientific advice.
Opinions varied widely between countries. In New Zealand, almost 80 percent were satisfied with the attention their government paid to scientific advice. In the United States, less than 20 percent of scientists thought the same about their government.
An obvious factor in the attitudes of scientists is the inclination that some politicians in various parts of the world have to denigrate experts.
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Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, prepares to receive his first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine at the National Institutes of Health, Tuesday, Dec. 22, 2020, in Bethesda, Maryland (AP Photo / Patrick Semansky, Pool)
The outgoing president of the United States, Donald Trump, frequently dismisses anything he disagrees with as “fake news.”
In Britain, in the 2016 Brexit referendum, a number of economists argued that Brexit would damage the UK economy. Noted Brexit supporter and conservative politician Michael Gove ignored them, saying, “People in this country are fed up with experts.”
And recently in Australia, the Grattan Institute, an independent think tank, issued a Flame Out report, arguing that there is a limited future need for natural gas.
A spokesman for Energy Minister Angus Taylor dismissed the report, saying its findings on the manufacturing sector did not reflect the views of the industry itself. Who needs experts when they can trust the industry?
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LESS EQUAL SOCIETIES TRUST LESS
But there are other, less obvious factors that underlie the attention that countries and governments have paid to expert advice.
A significant one is the level of inequality in the country. A Frontiers survey graphed against levels of income inequality measured by the standard Gini coefficient, which ranges from 0.0 (everyone has the same income) to 1.0 (one person has all the income in a country) is revealing.
The line through the diamonds is a trend line. It shows that, on average, trust in science decreases as inequality increases.
On average, a one percentage point increase in inequality is associated with a 1.5 percentage point decrease in listening to scientists.
Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett hint at why this might be the case in their 2009 book The Spirit Level, noting that
Inequality affects the way you view those around you … people from less equitable societies are less likely to trust each other.
In such countries, the belief that it is a world of “dogs eat dogs”, or that “everyone cares for themselves” seems to be more prevalent.
New York Times columnist David Brooks believes that collapsing levels of trust are devastating America. In your opinion:
An anti-institutional bias has manifested itself as hatred for the government; unwillingness to give in to experience, authority, and basic science; and the reluctance to fund the civic infrastructure of society, such as a decent public health system.
Global efforts to combat the coronavirus have been hampered by communities questioning the severity, or even the existence, of the virus.
Australia is still quite confident. Announcing the restrictions earlier this year, Victorian Prime Minister Dan Andrews said that “everyone will pay a price” if Victorians do not play their role and act on the advice of experts.
But trust is fragile. Inequality is a corrosive solvent.
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Tony Ward is a fellow for historical studies at the University of Melbourne. This comment first appeared on The Conversation.
