As we lift social restrictions it makes perfect sense to promote universal mask wearing to limit coronavirus transmission. Further, there’s so much scientific data to support the initiative.
However Australia looks increasingly isolated as a country yet to promote universal mask wearing:
So why isn’t mask wearing promoted by Australian government and adopted especially in places of community spread like Sydney?
80% of our decisions made emotionally
Instead of focusing on the abundant supportive data behind mask wearing perhaps we’d better understand through looking at how we act and interact as humans.
Psychologists have pointed out that emotions drive 80% of our decision making while practicality and objectivity only drive 20%.
Further we like to believe what we’re already doing is the right thing – unfortunately this way of thinking reinforces the status quo.
Change as a result can take a long time to come about – in some cases change may not eventuate at all.
Countries able to adapt quickly have suffered less from COVID19
With COVID19 the rate at which different countries introduced change (social restrictions required to flatten the curve) benefitted from lower the death rates.
Those countries able to rapidly adopt social restrictions – Taiwan, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Australia, Jordan – have had much lower initial death rates than countries which were too slow – US, UK, Spain, France – and countries yet to adopt restrictions at all like Sweden.
Why were some governments too slow to respond?
We look for reasons to support the way we’re doing things – ways to rationalise our largely emotional decisions.
Sometimes we do this out of respect for others particularly our superiors – those residing over things the way they are.
Challenging the status quo can seem to be disrespecting others – many of us naturally avoid it.
Unfortunately this can lead to tunnel vision and a collective stupidity. Matthew Syed describes this phenomenon well in his fantastic book ‘Rebel Ideas’:
Most departments are lead by highly intelligent individuals.
Unfortunately the people within those departments are often employed because they think and act in a similar way:
This might be good when a leaders thinking is sound – however it limits the flow of different ideas which could drive change. We’d be served better by a diversity of thinking:
However diverse thinking is rarely supported by our top down management particularly where suggestions to do things differently may be met with threats to one’s own livelihood.
This was plain to see when Donald Trump retweeted #FireFauci after his Director of Infectious Diseases implied that an earlier lockdown would have avoided deaths.
Fauci quickly stepped back into line and others got the message to resonate the leaders rhetoric:
While it would be great to believe that our own governments are immune to this behaviour please do think again.
Within Australia:
– schools were threatened with decreased funding if they were to close
– Premiers have been ostracised for not lifting restrictions.
– ‘Medical experts’ have been compromised into telling us school children don’t play a considerable role in the transmission of coronavirus.
It’s been particularly disheartening to see scientific data misrepresented to suit political agendas.
We’ve been told that transmission in school children is low (0.9% positive test rate) and that schools are safe.
However positive test rates in the general population are actually pretty much the same if not lower (0.6%) – yet this has been glossed over.
This gaslighting causes significant and unnecessary stress at the coal face.
Instead we’d be better served by the honesty and transparency which would allow us all to face coronavirus together in unison.
Perhaps:
’It’s important our children return to school for their education, mental well being and to help the economy.
However we must be mindful they are just as likely to be infected with and transmit coronavirus as the rest of the population.
While there are rare cases of harm in children it appears in those countries with low infection rates (like Australia) this is less likely to happen.
We can work together to keep it this way through encouraging social distancing and hand washing.
Also based on available evidence we welcome the wearing of face masks in geographical areas of community spread to further help reduce transmission.’
Coronavirus can easily be defeated
This is a virus which can easily be defeated – Taiwan and Hong Kong have shown us that much.
What we appear to be fighting is governmental inefficiency and a meagre understanding of humans and how we interact. Perhaps we’re fighting xenophobia – a fear of doing something differently.
As we’ve seen across the world the coronavirus has little sympathy for collective stupidity.
Death rates in those countries failing to introduce effective initiatives early enough being magnitudes greater than elsewhere.
COVID19 will not magically disappear
COVID19 looks set to stay with us until we develop a vaccine. Herd immunity requires at least 70 to 80% of a population to have antibodies – achieving this by means other than vaccination creates numerous deaths.
A major study published in early May from Spain (the European country with most reported cases of coronavirus and a death toll close to 30,000) demonstrated only 5% of the population had achieved antibody resistance.
Australia’s antibody resistant population will likely be much lower. Unfortunately it may be some time before we can gauge this as the 1.5million antibody test kits purchased by the Government have been shown to be inadequate for testing.
As we lift social restrictions to revitalise our economies coronavirus will spread again unless we adopt other effective measures.
However it will be at least 4 to 6 weeks before we see the impact of our ways given the incubation period and spread of coronavirus. Further the greater the spread which occurs the harder it is to undo and the more aggressive measures which will need to be put into place. It may require a repeat lockdown and the greater economic damage this then brings. Within the United States economists have estimated the financial benefits of each additional mask worn by the public at $3000 to $6000.
Jordan’s second wave
Recurring coronavirus spread has played out in Jordan which is experiencing it’s second wave:
Jordan stood as an outlier in the Middle East – successfully flattening the curve through extreme social restrictions. Social unrest helped drive an easing of these restrictions which unfortunately has in turn led to a resurgence of cases.
Taiwan’s success
Taiwan (with a population similar to Australia’s) has successfully lifted social restrictions without seeing a resurgence in cases. To date they’ve only suffered 441 cases and 7 deaths. After early social restrictions Taiwan was able to open it’s schools again almost 3 months ago – without seeing a spike in cases.
One thing which sets Jordan and the successful east Asian countries apart is a strong mask wearing culture.
These mask wearing cultures didn’t always exist – they’ve developed in Asia in response to other epidemics – SARS & MERS – yet it’s interesting to understand how cultures develop.
How do cultures develop?
Our strong propensity to follow those around us stretches all the way back to our ancestral beginnings.
Yuval Noah Harare starts his bestselling book, Sapiens, with the paragraph:
‘100,000 years ago there were at least 6 different human species on the planet. Now there is only one. Us.’
Despite some species like the Neanderthal having larger physiques and brains, potentially making them cleverer, we were able to overwhelm them.
It appears we did this through evolving a greater propensity for social mimicry:
A chemical release in our brains makes us feel better when we do the same as those around us. This leads to cultures and allows us to form into much larger groups with a common cause – however crazy (eg beep standing or ‘non-mask wearing’) that cause may be.
Gathering in larger groups through our propensity for social mimicry allowed us to overthrow the Neanderthal and the other human species.
Is what led us to succeed now holding us back?
Perhaps the thing which led us to succeed in dominating the planet is also the thing which holds us back.
Swimming against the tide is unsettling – it takes courage.
Perhaps this represents our biggest hurdle going forward. We need to look for ways to encourage and celebrate those prepared to think differently, act and speak up.
We need to create solid avenues whereby those who are prepared to stand up, to speak up for safety and challenge the status quo can do so – and they can do so with career and psychological safety.
We need to celebrate the change drivers.
We need to harness collaboration, openness, respect and empowerment. And we need to understand these things won’t come while we work in top down policy driven frameworks of management.
We need to work differently.
There’s a simple way to show your support for change and improvement.
If you live in an area with community spread of coronavirus then wear a mask.
Wear it for others, wear it for the public transport workers, the shopkeeper, the nurse, the teacher.
Wear a mask for everyone. #masks4all
Wear a mask for a better future.
(Written for the nurse in Queensland whose NUM continues to refuse to allow her to wear a surgical mask on her dialysis unit and has forced her instead to take sick leave.)
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