Trust, Misinformation and COVID-19

Out there, I see a lot of information, but very little wisdom, about the novel coronavirus, and COVID-19, the illness that it causes. Every facet of The New Disinformation - rapid network effects spreading lies and untruths before humans and machines can contain it, information weaponized by individuals to libel enemies, coordinated and hidden action by state actors to sew chaos or arrest meth addicts, has been served up to even the most discriminating audiences. We are understandably impatient, and our collective hunger for something to make us less anxious is probably feeding an incentive system that aims to reduce cortisol levels, rather than to produce mindful wisdom about what’s happening.

Here’s a list of things we really do not know. It’s based on what experts in the field say they really do not know.

Does social distancing really work? Most of the data that seems to have led officials to make that recommendation comes from China. We still know very little about the spread of the disease in China. We do not know if the disease can spread at distances greater than six feet. We don’t know how long it lives when not tethered like a parasite to a human body. We just don’t know, yet.

What is the mortality rate? It could be a lot lower than 2.4-2.7%, especially if lots of people have no symptoms. It could be (and will be) higher in certain populations.

What tests are reliable enough? We don’t know, yet. (Were early tests as reliable as recent ones? Probably not.)

Is 14 days really enough time to determine whether someone who has mild symptoms or no symptoms Is ready to re-enter life, quarantine free? If genomic traces exist in patients with no symptoms after 14 days, does this mean the infection is still viable?

A few other observations:

A cognitive bias in favor of hero stories might offer a novel way of approaching counter-disinformation efforts. Consider: in China, Li Wenliang, the doctor who tried to flag state health officials early and who was then arrested, and who later died, influenced other Chinese citizens to defy official censorship. In China, where the government has some of the most sophisticated tools on earth to censor speech. Information found a way to out itself; the vector was a whistleblower-turned-hero-turned martyr. Since human mammals organize their lives through stories, countering misinformation and disinformation requires compelling stories.

Governments are not capable of admitting mistakes in real time, and this serves to further undercut trust in them. Whatever the ultimate success of China’s aggressive quarantines, or of the United States’s early travel bans, serious errors of commission hurt public health efforts in their prodromal and active phases. China has only admitted its mistakes by changing policy; Iran, already suffering from a severe economic squeeze and whose top officials have set the standard for repeated, galling, glaring and anger-fueling cover-ups, does not trust its citizens with the truth of what probably is a much wider epidemic in Tehran and Qom. If the default sensibility is to not trust the public, the public will return the favor.

Trust is best cultivated at a local level. Do you trust the federal government more than you trust your county health official? Probably not. Are there mechanisms for state and local officials to communicate effectively about disease prevention, quarantines and rates of spread? Here is an awful consequence of the death of local news. . The truth might be out there but it does not tell itself.

The platforms are the main source of real “news.” The news business is not in the business of provisioning basic facts anymore. Twitter, Google/YouTube and Facebook, and others like Reddit to a lesser extent, are where people will go to find out what’s going on. Fortunately, the Big Three platforms understand that they are, in this case, part of the critical health infrastructure, and they are working hard to point people towards the accounts of official health sources. It’s too early to determine whether taking this responsibility will encourage them to be proactive about future first-order crises.

Finally — I spent an hour trying to be mindful of how many times I touched my face. N=1, but yikes. We have a long way to go.

Thanks for reading. As always, please send this to anyone who might find it useful, and send me your feedback.