"Live Life Forward and Understand it Backwards" (As Per Kierkegaard - and Science Too, Apparently)

When the switch flipped in March, The Big Story podcast started to regularly feature stories specifically about COVID-19 and its impact on society, our fear responses, the sports world, health reporting, foreign travel, cruise ships - you name it, they covered it. 

I downloaded some, but not all, of these podcasts, in anticipation of devouring all of the information. Then, of course, "pandemic fatigue" kicked in. How many episodes did I actually listen to? Three.*

Two days ago I finished, "What COVID-19 can teach us about being wrong," which was published back in April (better late than never, right?). The guest was Dr. David Fisman, professor of epidemiology at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. Dr. Fisman is an infectious diseases expert that had been interviewed on the podcast in January - who was wrong in his prediction that COVID-19 was not that serious of a disease, and one that would blow over.  

What was interesting - and refreshing - to me, was host Jordan Heath-Rawlings' observations that this pandemic has forced scientists into a frequent media spotlight, a role many were not prepared for, and the media and public's discomfort with any level of uncertainty: 

We turned scientists into media experts. And those are two very different jobs. We asked them to guess, to predict, and they got some things wrong. Because their work is based on the data they have. When they get more data, their outlook changes. It would be kinder of me here to say that their models and projections get revised or evolve, but really they were wrong. 

But that’s how their job works. I suck at science and I still know that that’s the process: hypothesis, testing, revision, et cetera. But the way my business works, we’re not built for that. Especially not anymore, and definitely not in the middle of a rapidly unfolding global disaster. 

But if anything is to be celebrated during this pandemic, without a doubt it has to be the scientists. In particular, let us laud the medical health officers and public health officers digging in, advising those in power, answering questions in the media scrums, and making the tough decisions that have to be made with regards to public health measures and controls - even in the face of uncertainty, and evolving science and understanding of this disease. As Dr. Fisman put it:   

You have to make the calls in real time or people die.

Then you might be wrong. You might. But you have to make the best decision you can with the information that you have in your hand, at the time that you have to make the decision. 

Live life forward. A-fuckin'-men to that.

Celebrating Canada's medical leadership - a line-up of female powerhouses.
© Policy Options

*Of all the The Big Story podcasts I downloaded, the three I've listened to (so far) are,"What COVID-19 can teach us about being wrong," "What does the future of sports look like?", and "We have a rare opportunity to reimagine the way we travel. Will we take it?"