Critical thinking about COVID-19: downgraded death toll

Those of us who’ve been fighting climate denial for years see all-too-familiar patterns in attempts to downplay or cast doubt on the threat of COVID-19. There’s been denial that it’s a problem, conspiracy theories, and now, attacks on the models projecting the impact of COVID-19 as an excuse to end mitigation policies for the sake of the stock market.

The scientific models used to project possible future COVID-19 deaths are constantly being updated as new data is collected from around the world showing the exact effects that social distancing policies have had on curbing the toll. The models are fine-tuned based on observations that certain measures, such as school closing, have proven more effective than other measures. And the same practices may have different results in different places, so as more data comes in, the model results can be further fine-tuned. 

This week saw the welcome news that forecasts has been downgraded from over 100,000 deaths to around 60,000. However, this has been spun into the myth that models exaggerated the danger from COVID-19 and we can now relax social distancing measures. This argument fails to take into account that estimates are changing in large part because our actions are influencing future projections. The public’s commitment to social distancing practices has been successful in lowering future impacts. But that hardly means that the impacts wouldn’t have been bad had we gone about life as normal. 

This fallacy, to borrow a metaphor from Ruth Bader Ginsberg, is “like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.” It’s worth digging into RBG’s metaphor a little deeper. This argument takes the form:

This argument is logically invalid: the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premises. Just because you’re dry doesn’t necessarily mean that you don’t need an umbrella – quite the contrary if the umbrella is the reason that you’re dry. 

Following our critical thinking method of analysing misinformation, arguments that are logically invalid usually contain an unstated assumption or hidden premise. In this case, the unstated assumption is that because I’m dry, it mustn’t be raining.

Adding the third premise makes the argument logically valid – if (and it’s a big if) the premises were true, then the conclusion would be true also. But now we can identify more clearly where this argument goes wrong. The third premise commits the false cause fallacy, mistakenly attributing the dryness to a lack of rain when it’s the umbrella that protected from the rain. 

The umbrella protecting us from COVID-19 is social distancing. Early forecasts predicted 100,000+ deaths but thanks to social distancing measures, that forecast has been downgraded to around 60,000. The argument for relaxing social distancing takes the form:

The third premise commits false cause fallacy, incorrectly attributing the downgrading of death toll projections to model error and reduced threat of COVID-19. Rather, it was extra data showing the efficacy of social distancing measures that resulted in the downgrading. Social distancing works.

One final comment: continuing with the umbrella analogy, a prediction of 60,000 deaths is not “dry”. Attempts to downplay this level of tragedy is abhorrent. A failure to practice social distancing in the early stages of the pandemic is why U.S. deaths are increasing so dramatically.

The COVID-19 crisis underscores the damaging nature of misinformation and science denial. Failing to listen to experts and scientific evidence, whether it be about climate change, the ozone hole, acid rain, or coronavirus, can have disastrous consequences for society.

Note: Thanks to Phil Newell from Climate Nexus whom I collaborated with in debunking this myth.