Yaneer Bar-Yam and the Zero-COVID Zealots
A brief look at the assumptions and fallacies of the Zero-COVID movement
In January 26, 2021, Yaneer Bar-Yam of The New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI) convened the Covid Community Action Summit. Carried out over Zoom, the conference call featured talks from over 50 scientists, public health experts, and community organizers who were devoted to eradicating COVID-19. While we have all heard the common refrain, “2 weeks to slow the spread,” the virtual attendees of this conference promoted a much more ambitious goal. Instead of just using restrictions on social interactions and movement to ease the burden on hospitals, the Zero-COVID proponents urged governments to utilize strict measures to not just slow the spread, but eliminate it.
There are many Zero-COVID Zealots, but perhaps none quite as credentialed as Bar-Yam. After receiving a PhD in physics from MIT in 1984, Bar-Yam eventually transitioned into the field of complex systems science. He had a few different stints in academia before founding the NECSI, a non-profit that applies “systems modeling and research to solve real-world problems.” This research covers a variety of issues, from pandemics to political instability. Purportedly, his modeling techniques have accurately predicted various events, such as political instability in the Middle East directly resulting from food shortages around the time of the Arab Spring.
Bar-Yam is a renowned scientist and basically wrote the book on the science of complex systems. His work is highly sought after and international organizations come to him for advice. From what I can can tell, he also seems to genuinely care about relieving suffering in the world. This son of a Holocaust survivor is motivated by a desire to help solve the world’s biggest problems.
But just because he has good intentions and is a brilliant scientist, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t question some of his underlying assumptions, particularly with regard to Zero-COVID. The assumptions I am talking about are not the ones he puts in his complex mathematical models. They are the ones implied most often in his recommendations for action. Let’s take a look at some of these assumptions, and then I’ll address a couple of the Zero-COVID fallacies.
Good Governance Assumption
Scientists who promote state intervention, particularly economists, tend to assume that “good” governments are effective in solving issues. If only we were led by philosopher kings (or economist kings, or complexity scientist kings, etc.), our problems would go away. For instance, many economists are keen to point out “market failures.” Upon discovering a supposed failure of the market, they write a prescription for a government-implemented solution, then book a flight to Stockholm to pick up their Riksbank prize. However, not many are keen to point out that the state similarly suffers from “government failures”. These shortcomings are often worse than the alleged failures of the market.
While Bar-Yam is likely aware of the limitations of the state, it is clear from his conclusions that he makes the good governance assumption. Otherwise, why would he recommend drastic state intervention as a means to eliminate disease if he did not think governments would be able to do so efficiently? Governments suffer from all sorts of maladies, such as the knowledge problem or rational ignorance. Model-based solutions that rely heavily on efficient governance are therefore unrealistic.
The Illusion of Control
Related to the good governance assumption is the assumption that desirable outcomes in highly complex systems can be realized by adjusting a control variable, all while ignoring affects on stability in other parts of the system. Tweaking that control variable typically involves trying to control the fickle nature of human beings. I addressed this issue in more detail here:
Unrealistic Time Expectations
One of the most common qualifying statements from Bar-Yam and the other Zero-COVID Zealots is that in order for lockdowns to work, governments must act quickly. When a lockdown doesn’t quell the spread of a disease, the Zealots respond that the country did not lock down soon enough. We have heard this over and over again during the past two years, with only a handful of countries like New Zealand and Australia qualifying as places that “did it right.” Every other country was chided for not acting quickly enough.
Time expectations need to be realistic in order for a model-based proposal to be legitimate. Modern liberal democracies move slowly in the decision-making process because politicians must balance the various needs of their constituents. This ensures that citizens’ constitutionally guaranteed rights are not trampled by government diktats. When considering appropriate courses of action during a crisis, pandemic modelers ought to incorporate this important factor into their models, rather than just assume that any government is able to act quickly.
This reminds me of the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) assessment of Captain Chelsey Sullenberger, the airline pilot who in 2009 made an emergency landing in the Hudson River. Flight simulations showed that if Captain Sullenberger had acted immediately after hitting a flock of geese shortly after takeoff, he could have made it back to La Guardia Airport and avoided a water landing. However, this assessment was downplayed because it ignored the human factor: the time delay that results from a person under stress to analyze a situation and make a decision.
By ignoring the human factor, the COVID-Zealots always have an excuse when a lockdown fails to achieve the desired objective. “It would have worked if we locked down earlier!” But ignoring the human factor is unrealistic. Governments run by people need time to analyze a stressful situation before making a critical decision.
The Fallacy of Lockdowns
In an earlier post, I wrote about how lockdown strategies are based on a fallacy. Lockdown proponents maintain that restricting movement saves lives, completely ignoring all other factors, both seen and unseen.
The lockdowners originally sold us on “2 weeks to slow the spread”. This idea relies on the assumption that lockdowns cannot eliminate the spread, but they can slow the spread so as not to overburden healthcare systems. Bar-Yam rejects the first part of that assumption. For him and the other Zealots, lockdowns can eliminate COVID-19. But if you point out that the cost of lockdowns is not worth the benefit of eliminating a disease with a survival rate greater than 99%, your argument will fall on deaf ears. That’s because to get rid of COVID-19 is to save humanity from extinction. Bar-Yam said as much with his co-author Nassim Taleb in January 2020:
Clearly, we are dealing with an extreme fat-tailed process owing to an increased connectivity, which increases the spreading in a nonlinear way. Fat tailed processes have special attributes, making conventional risk-management approaches inadequate.
The general (non-naive) precautionary principle delineates conditions where actions must be taken to reduce risk of ruin, and traditional cost-benefit analyses must not be used.
These are ruin problems where, over time, exposure to tail events leads to a certain eventual extinction.
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It will cost something to reduce mobility in the short term, but to fail do so will eventually cost everything—if not from this event, then one in the future.
Calamity is certain if we do not take drastic action immediately!
Well, actually, if we don’t do it now, maybe we will survive…
But we won’t be so lucky the next time!
This is where the Zealots really get off their rockers. Look, most of us were concerned when we heard about an unknown, dangerous disease. But extinction? Really?
And Bar-Yam has not shown any signs of lifting his finger off the panic button. Even though COVID-19 has followed the typical evolutionary path of becoming more contagious but less virulent, Bar-Yam’s Twitter posts are filled with scaremongering about Omicron. According to him and his fellow Zealots, the existential threat is still present and we need to lock down, mask up, close borders, etc.
Zealots and the No True Scotsman Fallacy
When countries locked down and COVID-19 still spread everywhere, Zealots loved to point out that those countries did not implement real lockdowns. Everyone should have been an island and locked down 18 times like New Zealand. Because we all know that worked wonders.
This is a classic case of the “No True Scotsman” fallacy. Michael P. Senger compiled an epic list of Zero-COVID Zealots making these kinds of illogical arguments.
Yaneer Bar-Yam has made several notable contributions to the field of complexity science. He is a brilliant researcher who wants to make the world a better place. But his devotion to the Zero-COVID movement is rooted in false assumptions and supported by fallacious arguments. He is part of the gang of the physicists-turned-epidemiologists that use mathematical modeling to overturn the wisdom of the past 100 years. These scientists would do well to re-evaluate their assumptions and maybe not rely so much on their models. We would do well to ignore such scientists’ scaremongering and make sure that they never again are allowed to have so much influence on our lives.
This is the second of a four part series.
Part 1: Check Your Assumptions