Science – Expert advice

The contribution of expert scientific advice to governments around the world during the pandemic has been quite variable depending on how intelligently and intently these governments have listened their own experts. Failure to listen or accept expert advice at critical tipping points of the pandemic has contributed to disastrous rates of deaths in some western countries. The expert response to this pandemic (like most global challenges) demands interdisciplinary contributions from experts from many fields of science and medicine: virologists, public health specialists, intensive care specialists, epidemiologists, medical statisticians, modelling mathematicians and so forth.

New Zealand is internationally recognised to be among the more successful of countries in minimising the impact of the pandemic and our government has consistently consulted and listened to its experts. The scientific advice provided in Sweden assumed that the population would voluntarily embrace the normal pandemic precautions, but this did not happen in practice. If New Zealand had adopted the soft precautions of Sweden, rather than “go early, go hard” and had experienced a similar pro rata death rate per million to Sweden, New Zealand would most likely have had about 120 times as many deaths as we have experienced so far – about 3000 compared to 25. Like Sweden, most of these New Zealand deaths would have been in aged-care facilities and among our older communities. Other governments like the US and the UK, despite having some of the most respected experts as advisors, were slow to take the pandemic seriously at the early stages (“just like the flu”). Many US states reopened their economies prematurely, again contrary to expert advice, and so they have experienced sharp uncontrolled increases in case numbers and deaths.

Poor management of the crisis and the failure to follow expert advice (as reflected in the Oxford University Stringency Index) has contributed to the high death rate (200,000 and climbing) in the US. The US Government has substantial investments in various vaccine projects and appears to be hoping that this will, in due course, rescue the disastrous situation. Strangely, given the expert advice to the contrary, the wearing of masks has become a political issue in the US. This is despite the obvious fact that fibrous textile masks are an easily understood filtering mechanism. Most people understand that different forms of fibrous filters remove bacteria from tank water or dust particles from air.

This is similar to textile mask fibres blocking the transmission of the Covid-19 virus embedded in mucus droplets transmitted by sneezing or speaking etc.

Governments in some Asian countries such as Taiwan, Vietnam, China and Malaysia have, in many ways, shown leadership based on their expertise acquired while dealing with previous pandemics. They are among the leaders in practical measures to defeat the Covid-19 challenge (all have less than five deaths per million) and they are now likely to lead the economic recovery as well.

Emeritus Professor Ralph Cooney
r.cooney@auckland.ac.nz