Cases of covid linked to the newly discovered Omicron variant of the virus have started to emerge in India and other parts of the world. Time will tell how transmissible, immune-system evasive and vaccine-resistant this strain is. Yet, at some point, as was the case with earlier waves and forms, news reports of people who were fully vaccinated and still became infected with Omicron would appear. It is very important that the media report such matters with caution, simply because such reports should not in any way encourage vaccine hesitation, as has been the case in the past.
Steven Pinker makes this point in Rationale: What it is, why it seems rare, why it matters: “Kovid vaccines are known to have a 95 percent efficacy rate during the rollout, [journalists] Wrote stories on people who got vaccinated to scare thousands off this life-saving treatment. Those who were vaccinated and those who were cured should have been reported with the same enthusiasm and were probably missing.
It’s a lot like reporting on plane crashes. Every plane crash is reported anywhere in the world, but none of the many safe landings that occur during any given year are recorded, as a plane crashes while a safe landing does not.
This leads to the rise of ‘availability bias’ when people try to gauge the risk of anything. They remember examples that come to mind easily and immediately, and reduce the risk of those things happening. Take the case of car accidents, which are far more frequent than airplane crashes but almost never make noteworthy news. As Pinker writes: “Plane crashes … get lavish coverage, but they kill only 250 people worldwide, making planes about a thousand times safer per passenger mile than cars.”
It has real world implications. After 9/11, many more people in America started driving because they were afraid to fly. Spyros Makaridakis, Robin Hograth and Anil Gaba write in Dance With Chance: “It has been estimated that – in the year after 9/11 – some 1,600 deaths could have been avoided if people had not driven, but rather would have lived forever.” Take a plane like that.” Availability bias inevitably led people to underestimate the risks of flying and the risks of driving. There are more examples of this.
In April 2016, The Atlantic wrote of then-US President Barack Obama that he often “reminds his employees that terrorism takes far fewer lives in America than car accidents … and falls in the bathtub.” ” While it was insensitive for Obama to say what he did, the data backed him.
As Hector Macdonald writes in Truth: How the Many Sides of Every Story Shape Our Reality: “According to the National Security Council, 464 people drowned in American baths in 2013; 1,810 drowned in natural waters, 903 died of accidental death.” suffocated or strangled in bed, and more than 30,000 people fell and died.” That year, only three people in America were killed by terrorists.
Of course, as is the case with airline accidents, every terrorist attack is reported at the top, while drowning and fall deaths get no mention, as there are far more of them than terrorist attacks. . , This leads to an overestimation of the risk of dying in a terrorist attack, and little attention is paid to the risk of loss of life in a strange accident.
So how does all this matter in the current COVID scheme of things? If the Omicron version spreads and people who have taken the vaccine also get COVID, it is important for the media to fully cover such stories, not just report success cases and then forget about it. go. If the person recovers, he also needs to report. This will ensure that there is no spread of vaccine hesitancy.
Proper handling and reporting of data at an aggregate level is also important. A proper analysis of how many vaccinated people got covid and what proportion got cured due to the new version needs to be available. This data should be available at the district, state and national level. It needs to be widely reported, so that the bigger picture can be clear. If existing vaccines are not very effective against the new version, people have to be extra cautious. Every effort needs to be made to avoid feeding availability bias.
To conclude, there is an inherent bias in the way news is reported. Only substantial news that happens is reported and consumers of news should take this into account when trying to understand the reality as it exists.
The media also needs to do something. As Pinker argues: “A … the plane crash should occur with an annual rate that takes into account not only the numerator, but the denominator of the probability.”
Similarly, when reporting on the prevalence of Covid caused by the Omicron variant, it is important to report the recovery rate among people who have received the vaccination. This would be the right way to put your risk in perspective.
Vivek Kaul is the author of ‘Bad Money’.
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