Apollo's Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live

by Nicholas A. Christakis MD PhD

The virus spreads among people who are out and about at school and work; it is then brought home, where it kills the age extremes—infants and the elderly—who are at the end of the transmission chains. This is also the reason, incidentally, that immunizing the elderly, while it will reduce their deaths, does not have much effect on the actual course of the epidemic. Immunizing working-age people helps break chains of transmission through social networks and can be much more effective in preventing deaths on a population level

Public health decisions always involve difficult, utilitarian trade-offs between benefits and costs to different people.

As psychologist Matthew Lieberman put it, “Our brains are built to ensure that we will come to hold the beliefs and values of those around us.”

The epidemics of emotions and of misinformation intersect in worrisome ways with the underlying epidemic of the pathogen itself. And this in turn highlights once again the crucial role of public education during the time of a pandemic. Even though the science might be tenuous and findings can change given new observations, officials can and should be both sensitive and honest. It’s of course acceptable for officials to change their minds and update or even reverse prior advice. But we can reduce cynicism and strengthen collective will if the reasons for such changes are offered, and the strength of the evidence—and the degree of uncertainty—is communicated whenever information is shared.

It is one thing to determine what the epidemiology of the situation demands but conclude that the economics countermands it or that the public has had enough, but it is quite another thing to ignore the epidemiology and pretend that nothing bad is going to happen.