Reflection and Butterflies
So often the invisible future is reflected in our past.
About a year ago, just before the world became officially pandemic, a memory lodged in my mind. By chance I heard a radio programme that predicted the effects of novel coronavirus by looking back to previous pandemics. Usually, I fail to retain much from my commuting listening but what stuck this time was a simple fact: historically our leaders have been slow to react to pandemics. The learned folk who reasoned this, based their various theories on evidence mainly from the 1918-19 (H1N1) Spanish Flu pandemic - and others too such as the 1957-58 (H2N2) Asian Flu and the 1968 (H3N2) Hong Kong Flu outbreaks. It's estimated these three pandemics alone caused the deaths of between 20-60 million people. So sadly, there's plenty of data to work from.
From what I remember of that radio programme, humans are better suited to considering change as linear and are we are not so good at understanding exponential progression. We also have a natural reluctance to commit to unfamiliar and challenging strategies, and instead seek the security of familiar solutions. So, it seems, human behaviour which works well to protect us in more normal times can prove problematic when reacting to the unusual, such as a pandemic, by encouraging inappropriate and tardy reaction, rather than targeted and timely action.
Remember, all this was known and said before Covid-19 had tightened its grip on the world and it was based on studying the reaction of numerous nations to previous pandemics. It was an expression of collective human knowledge regarding historic responses and therefore not a comment on the impending 2020 pandemic, other than perhaps a gentle prognostication.
That radio programme also reminded me that it was the second wave of Spanish Flu that was the deadliest, and this was often the case with global viral diseases. Not opinion but fact, supported by historical data. Human learning that, a year ago, had led to the prediction that the novel Coronavirus would be likely to follow this pattern too.
As I drove on, pondering, it did seem we are more comfortable with linear matters. We can add and subtract before we learn to multiply and divide, and the concept of differentiation and integration is a mathematical step too far for many of us. Then, as I pulled away from a crossroads it occurred to me, we choose to express a car's acceleration as a simple time in seconds from 0-60mph, rather than its rate of change of speed in metres per second squared [m/s2]. We do this because we find it easier to comprehend and therefore more often useful.
I was reminded of that journey to work later in the year, when the debate had begun as to whether or not the second wave of SARS-CoV-2 was on its way. On TV this time, I heard another academic say, current data suggested a day's delay to lockdown would roughly speaking extend the necessary lockdown period by five days. Even if this was only a simple rule of thumb, it helped my linear thinking head better understand the dynamics of an exponential, viral situation. I was also reminded that second viral waves are often the deadliest.
Recently, another new concept lodged in my mind, the notion of generational learning. An aside from an expert presenter, given during a pause in rehearsals, explained that butterflies cannot learn from their parents. Their remarkable journey from egg, to caterpillar, to chrysalis before their metamorphosis to butterfly, leaves each adult learning how to be a butterfly by itself, and prevents any parental guidance. Thus, butterfly evolution across generations is naturally more limited than human.
Yet despite having parents to help us stand, walk and talk, humankind too can forget, generationally speaking. We naturally prioritise our individual experience, often relegating generational knowledge to our second thoughts or ignoring it altogether. As a society, we have worked hard to reduce this occurring and we actively organise and encourage ways to preserve our collective learnings.
Institutions and academics are good at storing and recalling our shared knowledge but where do we store our widely shared feelings and emotions? Maybe that's why we have memorials. When what are essentially personal, individual human reactions, feelings and emotions are powerful enough to be felt by many, we sometimes memorialise them.
Each November we gather at the Cenotaph and at war memorials across the world to remember those who lost their lives in conflict. Each November we respond emotionally to those commemorations. Jonathan Freedland pointed out in his recent Guardian column, "History suggests we may forget the pandemic sooner than we think" (29th January 2021)that although Spanish Flu killed more than were lost in the First World War, there are numerous memorials to our war dead and very few built for other reasons.
Perhaps we should broaden our commemorative horizons and begin by finding appropriate ways to memorialise the tragedy of this pandemic? Not only to remember the human cost in lives affected and loved ones lost, but also to help future generations remember the collective lessons we have recently re-learned, that otherwise may be forgotten, only to relearn once again. Perhaps we should strive to remember better intergenerationally, in order to learn from our mistakes, and perhaps creating fitting memorials will help us to do so? Perhaps, we should aim to be a little more human and a little less butterfly?