[THE COMPLEX ALTERNATIVE] Complexity Scientists on the COVID-19 Pandemic
The coronavirus pandemic has been with us for two years, which is long enough for reflection to be informative. That is what [THE COMPLEX ALTERNATIVE] Complexity Scientists on the COVID-19 Pandemic does. This book has many contributors and is edited by David Krakauer and Geoffrey West of the Santa Fe Institute (SFI).
I was somewhat familiar with SFI prior to the pandemic and I had developed trust in the organization. Consequently, this was an organization that I looked to when this new worldwide crisis burst upon the world. In April of 2020 I was looking at some of their Transmitting insights into the COVID-19 pandemic from the world of complexity science bulletins.
Introduction The Complex Alternative
This book presents our community’s research record as a real-time response to the last two years. The work disavows simple explanations and solutions in favor of a concerted effort to come to terms with the whole matrix of the pandemic and all its messy parts. It does not present a fully coherent position, and the community is far from reaching consensus about what might be done to prevent another like catastrophe in the future.
On March 30, 2020 SFI issued five bulletins.
BATCH 1
TRANSMISSION No. 000
Citizen-Based Medicine
Date: 30 March 2020
From: David Krakauer, Santa Fe Institute
Strategic Insight: By using transmission to our advantage, we can eliminate coronavirus through citizen-based medicine.
SFI saw the potential for collective action early in the pandemic.
REFLECTION
Preventative Citizen-Based Medicine
DATE: 5 October 2021
FROM: David Krakauer, Santa Fe Institute
Upon reflection, SFI was overly optimistic about the human capacity for collective action.
TRANSMISSION No. 001
Complex Crises & the Inevitability of Ethically Loaded Decisions
Date: 30 March 2020
Strategic Insight: In a complex crisis, scientists cannot avoid making value judgments.
REFLECTION Why We Can’t Depoliticize a Pandemic
DATE: 28 July 2021
I have been aware of the inability of science to determine morality for at least twenty-five years. I immediately saw the shortcomings of the constant drumbeat on CNN and elsewhere to “follow the science.” The polarization between following or ignoring the science is a false choice.
TRANSMISSION No. 002
Reducing Conflicting Advice on Allowable Group Size
Date: 30 March 2020
Strategic Insight: Group size matters when it comes to how many people should gather in one place. Let’s use mathematical models to pin down consistent guidelines for complicated situations.
Early in the pandemic, advice about safe group size was unnecessarily confusing.
REFLECTION Some COVID-19-Triggered Thoughts on Complexity
DATE: 22 May 2021
SFI understands the limitations of reducing complex systems, like a pandemic, to simplifying models and this remains true even for very good models.
TRANSMISSION No. 003
Modeling the Effect of Social-Distancing Measures in the COVID-19 Pandemic
Date: 30 March 2020
Strategic Insight: To forecast the spread of the novel coronavirus, we must attend to the quality and consistency of the data.
This bulletin describes modeling in a level of detail that is challenging for me, a lay person, to understand.
REFLECTION Why do we need complex-systems science to understand the COVID-19 pandemic?
DATE: 29 July 2021
Any model which includes a significant amount of human behavior inevitably yields results that are highly uncertain. I became aware of this dynamic in the aftermath of the Great Recession. At that time all major economic models failed because they could not adequately model human behavior.
TRANSMISSION No. 004
Thinking Out of Equilibrium
Date: 30 March 2020
Strategic Insight: Getting the quarantine end game right means thinking about how to change thinking itself.
Early in the pandemic, SFI was thinking about the end of the pandemic and life thereafter. Unfortunately, much of the government and the mainstream media were focused on the short term. And, very few players were thinking about thinking and why this is important.
REFLECTION From Virus to Symptom
DATE: 10 August 2021
SFI notes that complex systems such as pandemics rarely return to the equilibrium of their starting point. In the United States, after two years of pandemic, the country is now even more polarized with groups making sense of it all in very different ways.
On April 6, 2020 the authors of the above bulletins met for collective reflection. Their meeting was recorded and made available as a podcast. The book contains an abridged transcript of that meeting and below are my reflections.
Batch 1 Podcast
Complexity Podcast:
Rigorous Uncertainty: Science During COVID-19
Date: 6 April 2020
Like much of the general public, I have some awareness that there are both good and bad bacteria. But viruses are different. All viruses are parasites and there are no good viruses. They multiply by invading and destroying cells and this knowledge can be frightening.
SFI has been researching viruses for twenty-five years and has expertise. They are advisors to the CDC and the White House. But, unfortunately, I see little evidence that they had much impact. Intuitively, I sense that they are much wiser than both of those institutions. And, again unfortunately, I am unaware of SFI having any impact on the mainstream media.
Slowly over many years I have gained an understanding of the importance of being comfortable with uncertainty. But early in the pandemic, the public yearned for certainty and politicians and media delivered far too much unjustified certainty. The need for certainty continues to be a significant problem of the human condition.
SFI understood that there is an unscientific aspect to the work of scientists, the need for value judgments. Again, this did not seem to be understood by the CDC, the White House, the media or the general public. And too few scientists are willing to discuss the limitations of science and too many scientists are True Believers in SCIENCE.
Likewise, SFI has a deep understanding of the limitations of modeling.
From the early days of the pandemic, SFI understood that there would be a new normal and was aware that neither SFI nor anyone knew what that new normal would be like.
Early in the pandemic, some thinkers saw the potential for the pandemic to be a great unifier, an opportunity for citizen based collective action. Others were skeptical. SFI participants in their COVID-19 project reflected both viewpoints.
On April 6, 2020 SFI issued five more bulletins.
BATCH 2
TRANSMISSION No. 005
The Need for Disease Models which Capture Key Complexities of Transmission
Date: 6 April 2020
Strategic Insight: The disease models used to guide policy for the COVID-19 pandemic must capture key complexities of transmission.
SFI understood the complexities of transmission and the importance of social distancing. And they already understood something the rest of us were quickly learning about. Exponential growth is very different from linear growth.
REFLECTION
Understanding the Complexities of Transmission Is Key to Controlling Viral Pandemics
DATE: 4 August 2021
SFI notes that “over fifty thousand COVID-19 papers have appeared since a December 30, 2019 report on ProMED described a cluster of patients around the Wuhan market in China with an unusual respiratory disease.”
SFI recognized the need to model economic impacts in order to achieve an optimum strategy.
TRANSMISSION No. 006
Using Social Media Data to Detect Signatures of Global Crises
Strategic Insight: We can use social media data to detect signatures of global crises, including early warning signs.
SFI understood “how fear and social unrest interact across social media, and how to find the signal in all the noise.”
REFLECTION
COVID-19, a Particle Accelerator
DATE: 25 August 2021
SFI noted the importance of understanding societal polarization and how this is accelerating a wider crisis.
TRANSMISSION No. 007
How to Reduce COVID-19 Mortality while Easing Economic Decline
Date: 6 April 2020
Strategic Insight: A “mobilize and transition” strategy could reduce COVID-19 mortality while cushioning.
At this early date, SFI recognized the need to manage the pandemic response in a way that minimized economic damage.
REFLECTION
Prediction and Policy in a Complex System
DATE: 30 July 2021
A number of events occurred in 2020 that were interconnected in complex and subtle ways that no single academic discipline is well-equipped to understand.
TRANSMISSION No. 008
The Importance of Timing in Restrictive Confinement
Date: 6 April 2020
Strategic Insight: Physical distancing is necessary for reducing infections, but the timing of restrictive confinement makes all the difference.
Estimates of R0 for COVID-19 are consistently about 2.5, and, given infectious periods and times from infection to symptoms, this results in the number of cases currently doubling about every three days. The power of exponential growth is clear:
REFLECTION
Two Easy Pieces
DATE: 26 August 2021
…information also flowed in huge quantities, which, along with inaccurate or poor communication between the scientific community and the public at large—generated confusion and mistrust.
TRANSMISSION No. 009
How the Analogies We Live by Shape Our Thoughts
Date: 6 April 2020
Strategic Insight: The analogies we live by are shaping our thoughts about our current situation.
This bulletin identified three misleading analogies - that the COVID-19 pandemic is like the flu, like a tsunami, or like a war.
I personally bought into the war analogy.
REFLECTION
The Double-Edged Sword of Imperfect Metaphors
DATE: 25 August 2021
…a lack of convincing analogies promoting collective action may be at the root of many of society’s intractable problems.
Batch 2 Podcast
Complexity Podcast:
Rigorous Uncertainty: Science During COVID-19
Date: 13 April 2020
The book includes a transcript of the podcast discussing the reflections in Batch 2.
The discussion included some fascinating information about the differences between bats and humans and why that is significant.
Also discussed was the importance of exponential thinking in contrast to the tendency of human beings to be linear thinkers.
The human tendency to fear the unknown was noted.
SFI saw the importance of testing for the purposes of quickly returning many people to the economy.
SFI saw the importance of good analogies for understanding complex, new situations.
On April 13, 2020 SFI issued five more bulletins.
BATCH 3
TRANSMISSION No. 010
Investment Strategies in Times of Crisis
Date: 13 April 2020
Strategic Insight: Typical recession and recovery economic behavior offers great stock market buying opportunities.
There have been four great stock market buying opportunities in my lifetime. This is the fifth.
We got that exogenous event in the form of a global pandemic that took stocks from all-time highs to a bear market decline of almost 30% in the shortest time in history.
REFLECTION
Betting on the Future
DATE: 25 August 2021
When this pandemic was compared to its closest analogue, the disastrous 1918 flu, the results of that exercise were not helpful… When this pandemic was compared to its closest analogue, the disastrous 1918 flu, the results of that exercise were not helpful.
TRANSMISSION No. 011
A Complex-Systems Perspective of Viruses
Date: 13 April 2020
Strategic Insight: A complex-systems perspective of viruses offers insight for controlling SARS-CoV-2 and future emerging viruses.
Numerous questions emerge when considering the nature and relevance of viruses:...
Viruses have influenced evolution at all levels of biological organization, from cells and organisms to populations, ecosystems, and even the entire biosphere.
…we have acquired many small pieces of information that, together, delineate a picture of how viruses evolve. This picture offers insight for our current pandemic.
The emergence and pandemic spread of SARS-CoV-2 has raised many questions, hitherto of interest to fundamental, theoretical science, to the level of immediate practice.
My colleagues and I are sure that many other biomedical applications will emerge from this multidisciplinary perspective. Basic science is not just future applied science; it is our applied reserve, available to be repurposed when society calls.
REFLECTION
A Year of Progress and of New Complex Challenges
DATE: 3 June 2021
…many years of experience in basic and theoretical virology research placed us in the situation to quickly move into applied SARS-CoV-2 research.
From a purely scientific perspective, this last year has been an exciting time of discoveries for virologists and evolutionary biologists.
Unfortunately, vaccination campaigns are not progressing at a similar pace in all countries, with 75% of all vaccines dispensed in only ten countries. This heterogeneity creates new challenges. First, and most important, it creates large reservoirs of susceptible hosts in which the virus continues evolving and adapting and, eventually, generating standing genetic variation that might contain future VOCs.
TRANSMISSION No. 012
How Every Crisis Is an Opportunity
Date: 6 April 2020
Insight: Every crisis is also an opportunity.
Can the COVID-19 pandemic trigger pathways toward sustainable global futures?
…there are two types of constraints: internal ones resulting from the architecture of complex systems and their networks of interdependent parts, and external ones that are a consequence of rules governing the dynamics of complex systems…
Early indications signal that COVID-19 may be such a disruptive event. At a time when it seemed almost impossible to accomplish major systems transformations needed to combat climate change and related challenges—not because of a lack of knowledge, but because of multiple constraints connected with globally interconnected systems—the current shock might open up a window of opportunity.
This time of disruption is also one of opportunity.
The optimism of the pandemic as an opportunity for all the inhabitants of Earth was expressed by other voices, not just SFI. The pandemic would be the great unifier. That optimism faded very quickly.
REFLECTION
Science as Crisis Response: A New Frontier for Complexity Science
DATE: 26 August 2021
Due to the increased interconnectedness of global systems, we now confront a whole new category of risk, often identified as global systemic risks, for which well-established practices of risk management and scientific analysis no longer suffice. Managing global systemic risks requires scientific insights and guidance, but as the COVID-19 pandemic is revealing, traditional scientific practices are ill-equipped to provide those in a timely manner.
…science during a crisis is accelerated, based on limited information and in many instances published ahead of the rigor and scrutiny of the peer-review process.
Complexity science is uniquely equipped to become the foundation of science as crisis response.
What we are confronting here is actually a threefold (minimally) problem of complexity:
1. The complexity of the underlying problems.
2. The complexity of the crisis response.
3. The complexities of the new science as crisis response.
As much as I respect the SFI and as much as I think complexity science is very important, I am skeptical of the idea that it can be, or should be, the foundation of crisis response. SFI seems to be, understandably, elevating the importance of its own work. Crisis response would, in my opinion, be better served by focusing on the value of the life of every human being as a foundation. That could generate meaning and purpose in a way that complexity science cannot.