COVID-19: Infection risk 'impossible to calculate' - expert comment
10 July 2020
Professor Michael King, Emeritus Professor at the School of Law at the University of Reading, said:
"The Government’s policy of now 'open for business' ignores what leading social scientists have revealed as serious problems in making decisions based on the idea of risk.
"Politicians have become particularly adept at claiming that things that go wrong are the consequence of unavoidable events (dangers over which they have no control), while falls in Coronavirus cases are the result of their policies.
"They have little choice but to give the impression that risks can be identified as facts and that their role is to call upon scientists to do the calculations and then to act as if their advice could be relied upon. The problem is that the information which guides these decisions is in a constant state of flux and is subject to different interpretations.
"There is no solid foundation on which to establish risks and so avoid them. The decision to avoid the risk to the economy creates dangers for people’s health. There is no way of knowing how attempts to balance them are going to play out.
"It is wishful thinking to believe the future is, at least to some degree, controllable in the present by drawing on existing knowledge to provide a reliable action plan to steer us into safe waters.
"Criticisms of risk calculations miss this point by giving the impression that, if only the ‘right’ numbers are crunched in the right way, the right conclusions will emerge. This gives added credibility to the idea that it is possible to calculate risk and that risks are controllable or at least reduceable to a formula of probabilities.
"The tenuous nature of risk as a concept means that calculations in terms of probability percentages are of little value for those trying to base their decisions on how safe it is to visit a restaurant, work out in a gym or fly to Spain. They cannot tell you whether or not you will come in contact with the virus."