Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hello and welcome to Cautionary Tales. This week we're
Speaker 1: on our summer holidays, but we've got something from the
Speaker 1: archives I hope you'll like. This year, of course, marks
Speaker 1: the anniversary we would all rather forget five years since
Speaker 1: COVID and the COVID lockdowns. During the summer of twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: when I and everyone else were shut indoors, I wrote
Speaker 1: some mini episodes about what we were learning in real
Speaker 1: time over the pandemic. Five years on, Are those lessons
Speaker 1: any different? Here is one of those episodes. It's called
Speaker 1: Fire at the Beverly Hills Supper Club, and afterwards I
Speaker 1: will be back for a talk with my producer, Georgia
Speaker 1: Mills about whether we've really learned our lessons. Imagine the
Speaker 1: seed a large ballroom. Twelve hundred people are seated around
Speaker 1: the tables, enjoying the finest dining that nineteen seventy seven
Speaker 1: has to offer, which admittedly isn't saying much, but everyone's
Speaker 1: having a wonderful evening at the Beverly Hills Supper Club, which,
Speaker 1: naturally given the name, is just outside Cincinnati. There's a
Speaker 1: comedy duo on stage and the headline performer is expected
Speaker 1: very soon. The singer and TV personality John Davidson a
Speaker 1: big star at the time. But what the audience here
Speaker 1: doesn't know is that on the other side of this
Speaker 1: scrawling complex of function rooms, something's gone wrong. A fire
Speaker 1: has broken out and it's spreading fast. The fire department
Speaker 1: has already been called, and the fire is still some
Speaker 1: distance away from the crowded cabaret room. But the more
Speaker 1: it spreads, the more fuel it finds, the hotter it gets,
Speaker 1: and the faster it moves. Safety standards at the supper
Speaker 1: club aren't what they should be. There isn't a fire alarm,
Speaker 1: there isn't a sprinkler system, and there isn't a lot
Speaker 1: of time, and nobody in that room knows that the
Speaker 1: fire is on its way. One remarkable young man, Walter Bailey,
Speaker 1: did his best. Bailey was barely more than a boy.
Speaker 1: He was eighteen years old and he worked as an
Speaker 1: assistant waiter. Bailey had seen the fire and he realized
Speaker 1: that although it was a long way from the cabaret room,
Speaker 1: somebody needed to tell all those people to start evacuating.
Speaker 1: Walter Bailey found the supervisor in the cabaret room, explained
Speaker 1: about the fire, and asked him to clear the room.
Speaker 1: The supervisor looked confused. Bailey told him again. The supervisor
Speaker 1: turned and walked off to clear the room, thought Bailey,
Speaker 1: who found seventy people lining up to get into the
Speaker 1: cabaret room. Bailey led them instead to safety. When he returned,
Speaker 1: he found that nobody inside the cabaret room had moved.
Speaker 1: I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening to Cautionary Tales. This
Speaker 1: Cautionary Tale is going to be a little different. I
Speaker 1: hope that's okay. The world seems different these days, so
Speaker 1: I've been writing some new stories for you to suit
Speaker 1: the times we're in. They'll be a little shorter, a
Speaker 1: little simpler, and perhaps a little more focused on the
Speaker 1: challenges we face right now. And this episode is different
Speaker 1: in another way too, because in a small way, it's
Speaker 1: about me, about what I got wrong, and I hope
Speaker 1: about what you can learn from my mistakes. We'll come
Speaker 1: back to my mistakes and to the fire in the
Speaker 1: Beverly Hills supper Club. But first I wanted to ask
Speaker 1: you a question. Do you remember Captain Pastrengo Rugiati? You
Speaker 1: must Cautionary Tales, Season one, Episode one, there was about
Speaker 1: an oil tanker the size of the Chrysler building, a
Speaker 1: ship with a name Tory Canyon. That ship was headed
Speaker 1: for a sunken mass of rocks with a vicious reputation
Speaker 1: called the Seven Stones, and Captain Pastrengo Ruggiati, Poor Pastrengo Rugiati,
Speaker 1: steered his ship closer and closer and closer to disaster.
Speaker 1: You can go and listen again if you like, I'll wait.
Speaker 1: The mystery of Tory Canyon, you may remember, is that
Speaker 1: while Captain Rugiati was steering his ship towards the rocks,
Speaker 1: the weather was good, the visibility was good, Tory Kanyon
Speaker 1: had radar, and the seven Stones were clearly marked both
Speaker 1: on all the charts and by a lighthouse vessel warning
Speaker 1: ships to keep away. There was still time to change course,
Speaker 1: just as there was still time to evacuate the cabaret room.
Speaker 1: And yet Tory Kanyon did not turn, just as the
Speaker 1: people in the supper club cabaret room did not move.
Speaker 1: Captain Rujati was a man in a hurry. He'd made
Speaker 1: a plan to head straight for a harbor one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty miles beyond those rocks, But his original course
Speaker 1: was charted safely through deep open water. That at least
Speaker 1: was the plan. But now new information is coming in.
Speaker 1: The ship has drifted off the expected course overnight, closer
Speaker 1: to shore. He's now heading for a tight squeeze past
Speaker 1: seven stones. Fishing boats have appeared blocking his way. The
Speaker 1: current is pushing him towards the rocks. His plan is
Speaker 1: getting riskier and riskier, but at no point does he
Speaker 1: stop reflect and rethink everything. Instead, with each new piece
Speaker 1: of bad news, he furrows his brow and rededicates himself
Speaker 1: to his original plan. So here's my confession. In the
Speaker 1: face of the growing coronavirus epidemic, I behaved in exactly
Speaker 1: the same way. It took me far too long to
Speaker 1: really think about the information that was coming my way.
Speaker 1: It took me even longer to take action. I too,
Speaker 1: am Captain Ruggiati. In our very first quretionary tale, I
Speaker 1: discussed one reason why we don't change course. Psychologists call
Speaker 1: it plan continuation bias. We focus on a particular goal.
Speaker 1: When bad news comes in that should make us rethink,
Speaker 1: our tunnel vision only narrows. The bad news makes us
Speaker 1: redouble our focus on the initial plan. Now that we
Speaker 1: know it's going to be difficult. Rugiati was racing against
Speaker 1: the clock, and with each setback the tunnel vision must
Speaker 1: have closed. In Further, he also made his fateful decisions
Speaker 1: by himself. He was a captain who didn't inform his
Speaker 1: crew of the details of his plans and didn't seek
Speaker 1: their comments. As he acknowledged, I must answer for everything
Speaker 1: for everyone. I must carry the cross along. If only
Speaker 1: Ruggiati had been open to criticism and had sought the
Speaker 1: views of his officers, they might have helped him to
Speaker 1: regain his grasp of the risks and rethink his plans.
Speaker 1: But having other people to guide you doesn't always help.
Speaker 1: If they're in the same situation as you, with the
Speaker 1: same assumptions, they can lull you into thinking that none
Speaker 1: of you have a problem, when in fact, all of
Speaker 1: you have a problem. There's a famous psychological study conducted
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties by bib Latane and John Darley.
Speaker 1: The scientists ask their subjects to sit quietly and fill
Speaker 1: out a questionnaire. Sometimes the subject would be alone and
Speaker 1: sometimes in a group of three. Gradually, the researchers pumped
Speaker 1: smoke into the room. When the subject was sitting alone,
Speaker 1: he or she tended to note the smoke and calmly
Speaker 1: leave to report it. When the subjects were in a
Speaker 1: group of three who were much less likely to react,
Speaker 1: each person remained passive, reassured by the passivity of the others.
Speaker 1: Based on what we now know about the Beverly Hills
Speaker 1: supper Club in nineteen seventy seven, that experiment seems darkly prophetic.
Speaker 1: That incident is vividly described by Amanda Ripley in her
Speaker 1: book The Unthinkable. Remember where We left off? Twelve hundred
Speaker 1: people were in the cabaret room listening to the warm
Speaker 1: up act crack jokes on stage. A fire was racing
Speaker 1: towards them. Young Walter Bailey's supervisor had shrugged and ignored
Speaker 1: the problem. Like Pastrengo Ugiati, the supervisor had a plan
Speaker 1: and didn't seem able to fully appreciate that the plan
Speaker 1: would have to change. So Walter Bailey did something big,
Speaker 1: something he assumed would cost him his job. But someone
Speaker 1: had to act. He decided that it was going to
Speaker 1: be him. Although he was just a teenager, and although
Speaker 1: he suffered from stage fright, Bailey strode down the middle
Speaker 1: of the room, climbed up on stage, grabbed a microphone.
Speaker 1: I want everyone to look to my right, there's an
Speaker 1: exit to the right corner of the room. And look
Speaker 1: to my left, there's an exit on the left. And
Speaker 1: now look to the back. There's an exit at the back.
Speaker 1: I want everyone to leave the room calmly. There is
Speaker 1: a fire at the front of the building. And then
Speaker 1: Walter Bailey left the stage. I wish I could tell
Speaker 1: you that one two hundred people rose to their feet
Speaker 1: and filed out of the room, But they didn't. Who
Speaker 1: was this kid? They thought, was he part of the act?
Speaker 1: Was the fire for real? Was it a problem? People
Speaker 1: thought of the expense of their ticket, of how much
Speaker 1: they were enjoying the food, they were looking forward to
Speaker 1: hearing John Davidson sing. They didn't want to rush out
Speaker 1: if they didn't have to. So did they have to?
Speaker 1: It wasn't clear. Think about the last time you were
Speaker 1: sitting around in a building and a fire alarm went off.
Speaker 1: Did you spring to your feet and seek the nearest
Speaker 1: fire exit? And oh I didn't. I looked around to
Speaker 1: see what others were doing. The same thing happened in
Speaker 1: the Beverly Hills supper Club. People did what people do.
Speaker 1: They look to the left and to the right, as
Speaker 1: Walter Bailey had told them to, but they weren't looking
Speaker 1: for the exits. They were looking at what the people
Speaker 1: next to them were doing. Was Susan to my left moving?
Speaker 1: What about Fred to my right? With everyone taking cues
Speaker 1: from everyone else, the group was slow to respond, and
Speaker 1: they really didn't have a minute to spare. Because I'm
Speaker 1: a journalist and frankly a nerd, I should have been
Speaker 1: way ahead of the curve on coronavirus. Think back to
Speaker 1: the thirteenth of February twenty twenty. I know it feels
Speaker 1: a long time ago. Only three people outside of China
Speaker 1: had died from the new virus, at least as far
Speaker 1: as anyone knew at the time. Nobody in the US
Speaker 1: thought to have died of it, nor had anyone in
Speaker 1: my own country, the UK. The virus felt a very
Speaker 1: distant threat, but it wasn't. More than a thousand people
Speaker 1: had died in China, and that number was rising rapidly.
Speaker 1: Twenty five countries had confirmed cases. Well respected epidemiologists had
Speaker 1: already concluded that there was little chance of stamping out
Speaker 1: these other cases quickly. The novel coronavirus was too contagious,
Speaker 1: like the fire in the supper club. It was spreading
Speaker 1: everywhere and rapidly gathering speed. And I know this because
Speaker 1: I interviewed one of those well respected epidemiologists. On February thirteenth,
Speaker 1: Dr Natalie MacDermott of King's College, London walked into a
Speaker 1: studio at the BBC and told me the latest thinking
Speaker 1: on the new coronavirus. The early data had suggested that
Speaker 1: the virus killed more than one in ten of the
Speaker 1: people it infected. Doctor MacDermott reassured me that no, it
Speaker 1: probably wasn't quite that dangerous. The best guess at the
Speaker 1: fatality rate was more like one in a hundred, may
Speaker 1: be as low as one in two hundred. Nobody knew
Speaker 1: for sure. Should I just assume that every one on
Speaker 1: the planet would get it? I asked now. She said
Speaker 1: that was too fatalistic, but if we couldn't contain it,
Speaker 1: it was certainly infectious enough to infect a majority of
Speaker 1: the planet's population. I nodded. I believed her. I even
Speaker 1: did the mental arithmetic. There might be five billion cases,
Speaker 1: and with a one in a hundred death rate, that
Speaker 1: would be fifty million people around the world dying over
Speaker 1: the course of a few months in the United States,
Speaker 1: it would be two million deaths. What did I do
Speaker 1: with the doctor's information.
Speaker 2: I did what.
Speaker 1: Pastrengo ROGALTI did. As his ship plowed on towards the rocks,
Speaker 1: I anxiously furrowed my brow and I kept on going,
Speaker 1: hoping the worst wouldn't happen. Now, I don't want to
Speaker 1: exaggerate my failings. I didn't crash any oil tankers. Nobody
Speaker 1: died because of my mistakes. But I could have done
Speaker 1: better easily. I could have held off on booking my
Speaker 1: summer vacation. I could have made sure I caught up
Speaker 1: with my elderly father and stepmother, who were in high
Speaker 1: risk groups. I could have sold all my shares, or
Speaker 1: at least most of them, and waited for a couple
Speaker 1: of months to see whether doctor Macdermott's grim scenario was
Speaker 1: starting to become a reality. Instead, I took some money
Speaker 1: out of savings to pay down some of my mortgage
Speaker 1: because I had gigs firmly in the diary that would
Speaker 1: top the savings back up again. Those gigs were canceled,
Speaker 1: of course, which means I drained my savings at the
Speaker 1: worst possible moment. If for goodness sake, I could at
Speaker 1: least have bought some extra toilet paper. But none of
Speaker 1: this went through my mind. It wasn't that I wasn't anxious.
Speaker 1: I was anxious, just like Pastrengo VIGIATI was anxious. I
Speaker 1: was aware there was a problem, and yet I didn't
Speaker 1: step back, think things through, and turn my anxiety into action.
Speaker 1: And perhaps you may recognize yourself in that description too.
Speaker 1: Remember the experiment by psychologists bib Latane and John Darley.
Speaker 1: They slowly pumped smoke into rooms containing people filling in questionnaires.
Speaker 1: Solitary subjects didn't hesitate to leave and report the smoke,
Speaker 1: but groups of people stayed and stayed as the smoke thickened,
Speaker 1: reassured by each other's passivity. Those experimental subjects had done nothing.
Speaker 1: Now a decade later, the customers of the Beverly Hill
Speaker 1: supper Club were re enacting that experiment in the most
Speaker 1: terrible way. Some people moved in reaction to young Walter
Speaker 1: Bailey's warning he saved them, but many people were too
Speaker 1: slow to react, lulled into complacency by the fact that
Speaker 1: others were also too slow. Four minutes later, the power
Speaker 1: failed and the lights went out in the ballroom, Toxic
Speaker 1: smoke rolled in, and anyone still in that room faced
Speaker 1: a dreadful challenge in getting out alive. Walter Bailey repeatedly
Speaker 1: held his breath and headed back in to drag out
Speaker 1: as many people as he could. One hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: seven people died that night. If it hadn't been for
Speaker 1: Walter Bailey, the death toll might have been many hundreds more.
Speaker 1: Bailey also survived. He's a true hero. I'd like to
Speaker 1: think that if disaster struck, I'd have the courage and
Speaker 1: the presence of mind of Walter Bailey. But I'm more
Speaker 1: like those poor, unsuspecting supper club patrons, enjoying their food
Speaker 1: and looking forward to the music, then wondering what to
Speaker 1: do and taking cues from everyone else. We're social animals,
Speaker 1: we humans. We know instinctively that it's normally safer to
Speaker 1: stay with the group than to do what the group does,
Speaker 1: but not always. I hesitated too, And then when I
Speaker 1: started reacting in earnest to the pandemic, I found that
Speaker 1: the stock market was already plunging. The pasta and toilet
Speaker 1: paper was already sold out, and there was no hope
Speaker 1: of getting masks. Our governments found themselves in the same
Speaker 1: situation for much the same reason. This series. I'll have
Speaker 1: more to say about what our leaders have done and
Speaker 1: failed to do, but for now, let's simply note that
Speaker 1: many Western democracies found themselves in the same crazy scramble
Speaker 1: for ventilators, for swab testing kits, for masks, and for gowns.
Speaker 1: If everyone had started to taking action in January, while
Speaker 1: the risk of a pandemic was still just a risk,
Speaker 1: we'd all be in better shape now. But just as
Speaker 1: in the supper club, before they acted, everyone wanted to
Speaker 1: be a little more certain that there really was a problem.
Speaker 1: Amy Edmondson, a professor at Harvard Business School, calls this
Speaker 1: sort of problem an ambiguous threat. The warning signs aren't
Speaker 1: completely straightforward, and the potential for harm is unclear as well.
Speaker 1: Ambiguous threats might be serious or they might not. As
Speaker 1: Professor Edmondson points out, that ambiguity is exactly what makes
Speaker 1: these types of threats so dangerous. Because we're not sure
Speaker 1: that they're serious, we easily find excuses not to take
Speaker 1: them serious. Lee While leading epidemiologists were warning that the
Speaker 1: virus might well become a pandemic. It wasn't obvious that
Speaker 1: they were right. It wasn't obvious that it would spread
Speaker 1: so quickly. It wasn't obvious that it would lead to
Speaker 1: the complete shutdown of major economies around the world. But then,
Speaker 1: for Captain Pastrengo Rugiati, it wasn't obvious that fishing boats
Speaker 1: would appear to block his way. It wasn't obvious that
Speaker 1: one of his officers would make a navigational error. It
Speaker 1: wasn't obvious that his ship's maneuvering would be delayed by
Speaker 1: confusion about whether the ship was on autopilot or not.
Speaker 1: I didn't expect Rugiati to predict all these things, just
Speaker 1: as I don't blame myself for failing to forecast every
Speaker 1: detail of the pandemic. But what he should have done
Speaker 1: was realize the risks and take action to reduce those risks.
Speaker 1: And so should I. I should have thought through the implications.
Speaker 1: What might it mean if a pandemic threatened to kill
Speaker 1: two million Europeans and another two million Americans? How might
Speaker 1: we all respond? And while I might not have realized
Speaker 1: on February the thirteenth that almost half the world was
Speaker 1: heading into Lockdown. It was surely a possibility that I
Speaker 1: should have considered much sooner than I did. But no,
Speaker 1: faced with the unthinkable, it's hard to think it. That
Speaker 1: was never in my mind, never said Pastrengo Ruggiati. There
Speaker 1: were a lot of things that were never in my
Speaker 1: mind either. Perhaps they should have been. I hope that
Speaker 1: I remember my own limitations in future. Anciosno il capitano Ruggiati.
Speaker 1: I too, am Captain Ruggiati. Hello. Everyone, It is twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five. Tim Harford back with you, and I am
Speaker 1: joined in the studio by series producer Georgia Mills. Hello Georgia,
Speaker 1: Hi Tim.
Speaker 2: Listening to this episode and looking back at the Lockdown,
Speaker 2: what was that time like for you, both as a
Speaker 2: journalist and also just as a regular human.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't think my experience is a regular human
Speaker 1: were any different from anyone else's. I was thinking, Oh,
Speaker 1: this must be particularly tough for people with young children
Speaker 1: who could be going to nurse. Why. I was, Oh, no, actually,
Speaker 1: maybe it's particularly tough for people with teenagers who were
Speaker 1: studying for exams. I don't know. It must be really
Speaker 1: tough for people who don't have any family and who
Speaker 1: were all by themselves. Actually, no, maybe it's really tough
Speaker 1: for older people who were most at risk. And then
Speaker 1: I realized it's kind of tough for a lot of people.
Speaker 1: I had the privilege of feeling useful while also staying safe,
Speaker 1: so unlike the medics or essential workers, I didn't have
Speaker 1: to go out and expose myself to the virus. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, I was covering the story for
Speaker 1: the Financial Times and particularly for the BBC. We had
Speaker 1: an epic series of our numbers related radio series, more
Speaker 1: or less trying to make sense of what was going on,
Speaker 1: and I did all of that from home, so really
Speaker 1: feeling that I was kind of I was doing something
Speaker 1: useful and I had something to do, but at the
Speaker 1: same time and absolutely no risks. So frankly a lot
Speaker 1: easier for me than for many.
Speaker 2: And listening back to the pandemic series you made, what
Speaker 2: thoughts do you have hearing that now?
Speaker 1: Oh, it is fascinating the number of different issues that
Speaker 1: have come up. So we were talking about unintended consequences,
Speaker 1: we were talking about the failure to react, we were
Speaker 1: talking about the importance of data. So I think a
Speaker 1: lot of it still stands up. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: there was certain things. Listening to the series, you just think, oh,
Speaker 1: we had no idea what was coming. So it's an
Speaker 1: interesting time capsule. One other thing I've found is that
Speaker 1: some people listen to the podcast and go, oh, wow,
Speaker 1: that was so prescient, and other people listen to the
Speaker 1: podcast and go, wow, that's so embarrassing. You got everything wrong,
Speaker 1: which is just a reminder that people are going to
Speaker 1: adopt particular views of the world, and you're going to
Speaker 1: seem very smart or very stupid, depending on whether what
Speaker 1: you said happens to align with those views.
Speaker 2: I mean, they were made in June twenty twenty, so
Speaker 2: it already felt like probably a million years of COVID
Speaker 2: by them, but there was so much of a wild
Speaker 2: rollercoaster to come. So what other cautionary tales related to
Speaker 2: COVID do you think have emerged since?
Speaker 1: Well, there's obviously a whole slew of lessons to learn
Speaker 1: about vaccines and vaccine communication and vaccine skepticism. The vaccine
Speaker 1: obviously was a huge story in twenty twenty one, as
Speaker 1: vaccines started to be rolled out and protect people from
Speaker 1: the virus. I think another lesson is that how countries
Speaker 1: did in the first wave does not necessarily predict much
Speaker 1: about how well they did overall. So I remember very
Speaker 1: clearly that summer of twenty twenty doing it and a
Speaker 1: series for the BBC or an episode for the BBC
Speaker 1: asking why had things gone so much worse in the
Speaker 1: UK than in Germany? The number of people who died
Speaker 1: in Germany was so much less about a quarter a
Speaker 1: number of people who died in the UK. And then
Speaker 1: actually roll forward a year and the Germans had caught up.
Speaker 1: In the long run, it didn't really make any difference.
Speaker 1: The virus was going to do what it was going
Speaker 1: to do, so that I think, what was a surprise
Speaker 1: We'd told ourselves the Germans had done so much better.
Speaker 1: But maybe in the end, all the preparation you can
Speaker 1: do doesn't make as much difference as you might think.
Speaker 2: What about looking back at lockdowns? They were they worth it?
Speaker 2: Were they important? Do we even have answers today?
Speaker 1: Well, we have some answers, but a lot of the
Speaker 1: kind of data that we would want to have stopped
Speaker 1: being collected during the lockdowns because of the lockdowns. So,
Speaker 1: for example, children's exam performance, did children's academic performance suffer
Speaker 1: did they regress. Actually quite hard to answer that question
Speaker 1: because the very exams that you might use to answer
Speaker 1: that question were discontinued or were changed. It's hard to
Speaker 1: generalize because different parts of the world had very different
Speaker 1: lockdown policies. But let me offer a couple of reflections.
Speaker 1: One is that looking at the UK, which I have
Speaker 1: done in some detail, we have quite good evidence that
Speaker 1: a lot of kids bounced back academically. The academic impact
Speaker 1: was really bad, but it was quite short lived and
Speaker 1: a lot of kids had caught up surprisingly quickly. So
Speaker 1: in the end you go, okay, fine, no harm done.
Speaker 1: It turns out people can bounce back. The impact on
Speaker 1: mental health I think less of a cheerful story. Mental
Speaker 1: health definitely deteriorated a lot. There was a long term
Speaker 1: decline of teenage mental health, possibly something to do with smartphones,
Speaker 1: possibly something to do with something else. And then we
Speaker 1: had COVID and we had the lockdowns, and that seemed
Speaker 1: to make it all worse. Unclear whether it really made
Speaker 1: a long term difference, And also unclear was the problem
Speaker 1: of the lockdown, so was the problem of the virus,
Speaker 1: because they're happening at the same time, so you know,
Speaker 1: Are you suffering because you can't get out and see
Speaker 1: your friends, or are you suffering because you're terrified that
Speaker 1: you're going to lose your parents to this deadly virus?
Speaker 1: Or is it both so hard to know. One final
Speaker 1: point I think is worth making is when you look
Speaker 1: at countries such as Sweden who had much more liberal
Speaker 1: lockdown policies, actually, and you get a similar story in
Speaker 1: certain US states. People still sort of lock themselves down.
Speaker 1: So you had many of the same benefits of the
Speaker 1: lockdowns in terms of controlling the virus, and you had
Speaker 1: many of the same costs in terms of you know,
Speaker 1: if you're running a restaurant or a bar. In Sweden,
Speaker 1: it's legal for people to come and sit in your restaurant,
Speaker 1: but they're not going to do it. So I understand
Speaker 1: why when a government mandates something that's to be taken seriously,
Speaker 1: and that is that is to be It's not a
Speaker 1: trivial matter. But it's worth bearing in mind that if
Speaker 1: governments had done nothing, I think a lot of the
Speaker 1: impact on the virus, on the economy and on people's
Speaker 1: mental health might not have been as different as all
Speaker 1: the people shouting at each other about it. Would like
Speaker 1: to think right.
Speaker 2: And you mentioned there that there's not enough data to
Speaker 2: really establish quite a lot of things we'd like to establish.
Speaker 2: So is there a cautionary tailer hear about the gathering
Speaker 2: of data.
Speaker 1: I think there is. It's easy to underestimate quite how
Speaker 1: important data was, and ultimately, if you had enough data,
Speaker 1: there's no pandemic. I mean that it may sound a
Speaker 1: strange thing to claim, but imagine in the ideal case. Okay,
Speaker 1: here's the data we've got. We've got data. The moment
Speaker 1: somebody is infected, we immediately know they're infected, and we
Speaker 1: know how infectious they are, how likely they are to
Speaker 1: spread the disease to other people. And let's say that
Speaker 1: everybody is wearing a smart watch, and that smart watch
Speaker 1: just glows bright red as you're walking down the street.
Speaker 1: If you're infectious and you just look around and you
Speaker 1: can see anybody who's wearing a bright red smart watch,
Speaker 1: you keep away from them. And in fact, those people
Speaker 1: have to stay at home, and if they don't stay
Speaker 1: at home, the police will come and have a word.
Speaker 1: If you had that, if the data were that good,
Speaker 1: the pandemic's over in a week, right, It's literally over.
Speaker 1: When you realize that, you realize, oh, so much of
Speaker 1: this is not actually about treatments or about vaccines. It's
Speaker 1: about that we don't know who's infectious and who isn't,
Speaker 1: and if we had better data, we make a real
Speaker 1: contribution to preventing future pandemics. Now, of course, we're not
Speaker 1: going to have that ultimate glowing smart watch in future,
Speaker 1: well probably not, probably not, maybe not, who knows what
Speaker 1: we'll have in the future. But what we might have
Speaker 1: is much better testing, availability of really rapid tests, and
Speaker 1: maybe some smarter algorithms to process the information. So you
Speaker 1: you do a test you can't positive, and the computer
Speaker 1: is better able to say, oh, well, you know, here
Speaker 1: are the people you met after you got infected. Here
Speaker 1: are the people you met before you got infected. They
Speaker 1: might be infected, and just do a better job of
Speaker 1: controlling the disease without these really widespread draconian lockdowns. So
Speaker 1: there's a huge amount to be gained by having better data,
Speaker 1: and I think it's very very easy to overlook. We
Speaker 1: always overlook the power of data in my experience.
Speaker 2: So are you optimistic for whenever the next pandemic hits,
Speaker 2: that we'll get the data right or at least better.
Speaker 1: I think we've learned an awful lot. I think the
Speaker 1: technology is going to get a lot better. I think
Speaker 1: we're going to have a much faster development of vaccines,
Speaker 1: you know, all things being equal, So you know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot to be optimistic about. Clearly, what we've also
Speaker 1: learned is there's an awful lot of politics, and the
Speaker 1: politics is not necessarily helpful. But overall, I think COVID
Speaker 1: could have been a much more serious illness. Just imagine
Speaker 1: if it had been ten times more deadly than it was.
Speaker 1: Just imagine if it had affected children instead of eighty
Speaker 1: year olds. I mean, obviously it did affect some children,
Speaker 1: but imagine if it had been more deadly for children
Speaker 1: than for the very elderly. It could have been so
Speaker 1: much worse. It could have been so much deadlier, it
Speaker 1: could have been absolutely terrifying. So in a way, maybe
Speaker 1: we should think of COVID not as this disaster, but
Speaker 1: as a near miss that should give us lessons that
Speaker 1: would help us avoid a much worse disaster in future.
Speaker 1: And well, the lesson of cautionary tales is always you
Speaker 1: should try to learn from past mistakes. But also we
Speaker 1: don't always do so.
Speaker 2: Nice we'll have to wait and see, so thank you, Tim.
Speaker 2: I think we'll leave it there, but if you haven't
Speaker 2: heard the rest of the Pandemic specials, I really recommend
Speaker 2: going back. I listened to them for the first time
Speaker 2: this year and they are both a really interesting time
Speaker 2: capsule but also really relevant still, so lots of other
Speaker 2: episodes to check out, and.
Speaker 1: We'll be back next week with another classic from the archive,
Speaker 1: a tale about Peps's disastrous bottlecap promotion and a man
Speaker 1: who bought more than a thousand chocolate puddings. See you them.
Speaker 1: Three books that helped us research this episode are The
Speaker 1: Unthinkable by Amanda Ripley, The Ostrich Paradox by Howard Conruther
Speaker 1: and Robert Mayer, and Meltdown by Chris Clearfield and Andrew Tiltik.
Speaker 1: As always, a full list of our sources is in
Speaker 1: the show notes on Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales is
Speaker 1: written and presented by me Tim Harford, with help from
Speaker 1: Andrew Wright. The show was produced by Ryan Dilly with
Speaker 1: support from Pete Norton. The music mixing and mastering are
Speaker 1: the work of Pascal Wise. The scripts were edited by
Speaker 1: Julia Barton. Special thanks to Neil LaBelle, Carli Milli, Ry,
Speaker 1: Heather Fame, Maya Kainigg, Jacob Weisberg, and Malcolm Gladwell. Cautionary
Speaker 1: Tales is a Pushkin industry's production