By akademiotoelektronik, 09/05/2022
What errors of reasoning allowed the acceptance of the health pass?
Samuel Fitoussi is a student, founder and writer of the satirical blog La Gazette de l'Étudiant.
The belief that the past solves the health crisis when in reality it prolongs it
In 1999, NASA analyzed nineteen air disasters. Number one cause of accidents: the pilot's inability to deviate from the initial plan to adapt to new elements. This is the continuation bias of the plan: launched towards an objective, we become blind to our environment and reluctant to any change of trajectory. Today, after two years of pandemic, we seem unable to adapt to a new environment (vaccine, endemicity, lack of perspective) and to deviate from the plan established for two years (collective solutions).
At the start of the pandemic, collective solutions (masks, confinement, curfews, etc.) are legitimate since 1) the rates of contagiousness and lethality are high enough to confer on everyone the duty not to contaminate the other 2) the risk of hospital overflow is high; and 3) the situation is temporary.
Two years later, something completely changed the situation: the vaccine. Point 1) seems to be rendered inoperative by the possibility of reducing one's individual risk of death by 90%, point 2) is rendered inoperative by the high vaccination coverage of people at risk (the United Kingdom has been experiencing waves of varying Delta with sometimes nearly 50,000 daily cases without the slightest problem of hospital capacity) and point 3) is obsolete: with 87% of people over 12 vaccinated and a virus impossible to eliminate, the population will never be better protected than 'today.
There is no more "step after" (the third dose? But the situation will repeat itself in a few months with the fourth). A restriction that is deemed legitimate today will be no less legitimate eight years from now. And since we can say that wearing a mask in school will not be acceptable for eternity, the pandemic will not be over until we have decided that it is, when we have decreed that the Covid is now a virus in the name of which we can no longer sacrifice individual freedoms to promote the general interest. Boris Johnson last July, to justify the lifting of all legal restrictions, including the obligation of the mask in transport: “If not now, when?”.
Read alsoCovid-19: should the health pass be replaced by a vaccination pass?
From this point of view, the health pass, since it is based on the idea that society still has a duty to limit viral circulation, legitimizes the establishment of other restrictions: closing of classes in the slightest case, gauges, mask in transport and on chairlifts… Conversely, the countries which refuse the pass are those which agree to deviate from trajectory, which accept endemicity and reintroduce the concept of individual responsibility in the face of risk.
Theoretical reasoning confirmed by the facts since today, the presence of a health pass in a country is positively correlated with the severity of the restrictions. The freest countries in Europe are the UK, Norway and Sweden - countries with no passes and no masks at school. In France, while a dose of vaccine is accessible during the day to anyone who wants it, we continue to mask six-year-old children to protect adults who choose not to be vaccinated or want zero risk for them.
Insensitivity to duration and quantity, which leads us to believe that the social cost of the health pass is low since "showing one's health pass takes 10 seconds"
In 1993, Daniel Kahneman, an Israeli psychologist (and Nobel laureate in economics in 2002), asked volunteers to classify several videos from the most unpleasant to the most pleasant. The only factor that influences the ranking: the intensity of the images. The length of the video does not play a role. This is the duration insensitivity bias: we judge the value of an experience by the average pleasure it brings us, without regard to how long it lasts and therefore the sum total of well-being. or discomfort that it provides us.
The following year, William Desvousges, an American economist, showed that the amount we are willing to pay to save birds from drowning is not influenced by the number of birds to be saved. This is the order of magnitude insensitivity bias: the importance we give to a problem depends very little on the number of people it affects. Daniel Kahneman explains these two phenomena as follows: since it is impossible to represent a large number of elements, we reduce complex problems to a single mental image (a precise moment in the video, a bird struggling in water…), an image independent of the notions of duration and quantity.
This is how we proceed when we argue that the social cost of the health pass is low since “showing one's pass takes ten seconds”. We succumb both to the bias of insensitivity to quantity (the ten seconds are lost each time by 50 million French people) and to the bias of insensitivity to duration (the operation is repeated several times a day for several months ). Repetitions which increase the social nuisance of the measure but also the probability that a given person encounters a problem at least once (battery, network error, forgetting the paper format pass, unrecognized foreign pass, technical problem, arbitrariness of the person who scans…).
Worse still: since the mental image that comes to us is that of a vaccinated person scanning his pass, we forget that the measure affects above all those who do not have a health pass. However, it is absurd to assess the cost of such a measure without taking into account the reduction in the well-being of the 6 million anti-vax French people excluded from the life of the country (which we may or may not find justified, but which 'have to consider).
SEE ALSO – Covid-19: the health pass will be deactivated for those over 65 six months and five weeks after their second dose in the event of no vaccination reminder
Social identity theory, or how psychology programs us to worship the past
In 1971, the Polish psychologist Henri Tajfel arbitrarily divided volunteers into two groups and asked them to share resources. Surprising conclusion: the participants do not seek to maximize the value of the resources held by their group, but rather the difference in results between the two groups. Tajfel's explanation: the higher this gap, the more positive the social prestige associated with being a member of the “winning” group.
In the years that followed, Henri Tajfel and his colleague John Turner theorized the concept of social identity. They demonstrate that belonging to a group - since it provides a definition of oneself, a "self-concept" - is a vital human need. Having identified with a group, we want to make this membership visible (in football, imagine for example the supporter wearing his team's jersey) and enhance the image of our group in relation to others. The objective: “to stand out positively”.
Read alsoPaolo Gentiloni: “Covid restrictions would no longer have the same impact on the economy”
If the health pass is so popular, it is therefore not only because its defenders carry out substantiated cost-benefit analyses, but also (above all?) because it meets deep psychological needs. Need to belong to a group since like a membership card, the QR Code places its owners in a category (that of responsible citizens) and need for positive distinction since the law increases the differential of rights (and therefore of social status) between the vaccinated group and the others.
Yet it is precisely to protect minorities from the excluding impulses of the greatest number that individual rights were imagined. Setting them aside to flatter the base instincts of the vaccinated is contrary to the very spirit of these rights and opens the door to the tyranny of the majority.
The action bias, because of which we forget about the simplest alternative to the health pass
During times of drought, some tribes sacrificed children to appease the gods. If the drought ended, it was thanks to the sacrifice; otherwise, other children had to be sacrificed. Even today, our brains still push us to consider that when faced with a problem, action is always preferable to inaction. This bias - theorized for the first time in 2000 by economists Patt and Zeckhauser - explains for example why homeopathy and chloroquine are so popular, or why goalkeepers almost always choose, to stop a penalty, to dive when statistically, they have an interest in staying in the middle. For a guard as for a politician, it is more costly to fail by remaining passive (why does he not even try?) than to fail by intervening (at least he tried).
Faced with the increase in the number of contaminations in mid-July, it becomes obvious for most French people that we “must” act, that we “must” encourage vaccination. Succumbing to action bias (“But what alternative was there to the health pass?”) we forget that there was a simple alternative to the health pass: no health pass. Remember that on July 12, 2021 - date of the announcement of the measure - 36.6 million French people had received at least one dose of vaccine (i.e. 70% of adults and the vast majority of elderly people): nothing allowed to affirm that the risk of saturation of hospitals had not already been ruled out. The action bias probably explains why the existence of a "sanitary pass or reconfinement" dilemma was so easily accepted: if we think that we "must" act, it is logical to believe that inaction would lead to a disaster.
Whether we are in favor or opposed to the pass, we cannot deny that the measure did not respond to an absolute urgency (condition fulfilled, for example, by the first confinement) but to the possibility of hospital saturation a few months later. . There is concern that 'action', especially when it is so far from innocuous, will become the default response to any potential future risk. If we do not raise the level of proof necessary to put our fundamental rights on hold (that of sitting on the terrace without justifying ourselves with a document, for example), freedom risks becoming the exception. and the parenthesis the norm.
Today, some are trying to adopt a position of pragmatic fatalism: the past has flaws but it is necessary to encourage the third dose and prevent the saturation of our hospitals this winter. Convinced that the absence of a pass would prevent us from encouraging vaccination, we do not take a look at the United Kingdom where nearly 13 million people at risk have received a third dose - three times more than in France.
It is even possible that the pass will be counterproductive for our hospitals. Allocating extraordinary resources to its implementation and application is to reduce those allocated to the vaccination campaign for people at risk. In France, 81% of over 80s and 91% of 70-79 year olds are vaccinated against respectively 94 and 95% in the United Kingdom, 93 and 98% in Finland and 93 and 95% in Sweden. In the UK, vaccination appointments are assigned by the government to older people and communicated to them directly by text message. The 89-year-old Frenchman is required to know how to use Doctolib. A difference that isn't discussed in public debate – perhaps because we're too busy banning unvaccinated 13-year-olds from going to the movies.
SEE ALSO – For Arnaud Montebourg “the extension of the health pass is excessive”
The belief that one person's freedom ends where another's begins
Contrary to what many defenders of the health pass seem to believe, this formula is not absolute. It is therefore insufficient to justify that the freedom of a non-vaccinated person to sit on the terrace must stop where that of a vaccinated person not to be contaminated begins.
First, the formula is disqualified by the fact that it leads to insoluble practical contradictions since it can be reversed in any situation: "The freedom of a vaccinated person not to be contaminated stops there or begins the freedom of a non-vaccinated person to have a coffee on the terrace”. Then, we see each year that the freedom of some to take the metro without a mask (for example) does not stop where the freedom of others not to catch the flu begins. There is therefore a level of risk that we are entitled to run on others. Since the formula is not absolute, it is advisable to reason on a case-by-case basis and to evaluate any measure by the yardstick of its balance freedom suppressed for some, freedom obtained (health) for others.
Read alsoCovid-19: “I am very embarrassed that a booster vaccine is becoming an obligation, both in form and in substance”
One could thus argue that it is because the vaccine is effective against the serious forms that the medical pass is not justified. To believe in the effectiveness of the vaccine is also to believe that "the freedom not to be contaminated" now has a relatively low value (severe forms now being reduced by 90%) and that it is therefore this freedom which must stop where that of an anti-vax to sit on the terrace begins. Promoting the health pass in the name of gaining freedom for the vaccinated is to minimize the effectiveness of the vaccine.
(One can imagine that the followers of this formula confuse sufficient condition and necessary condition. The gain of freedom for some is a necessary condition - but not sufficient - for the restriction of a freedom for others. A restriction of freedom for some must necessarily be justified by a gain in freedom for others, but a gain in freedom for some does not necessarily justify a restriction of freedom for others.)
In the future, we should be careful not to turn this childish saying into a political program: rigorously applied, it would lead to the establishment of a health pass for vaccination against influenza, the banning of manual cars (accidents are more frequent there than in an automatic car), the obligation to wear a mask for eternity, the ban on the sale of alcohol….
Induction bias, where we pay too little attention to setting a precedent
The problem of induction refers to the fact of using the past to predict the future and therefore overestimating the probability that the future resembles the past. An idea stated in the 18th century by the philosopher David Hume: "It is not reason but habit that allows us to suppose that the future will conform to the past". And taken up a century later by Bertrand Russel, who jokes about the bad surprise that awaits the chicken reasoning by induction: “The man who fed it every day ends up wringing its neck”.
Programmed to reason by induction, we project the long-term consequences of the restrictions in a France similar to that of today. A defender of the past, for example, will always imagine himself in agreement with the policies of restriction of public freedoms, just as a vaccinated person will tend to underestimate the probability that he will one day be able to refuse a social or medical practice encouraged by the government. . Overestimating the permanence of our relationship to authority, we therefore pay too little attention to the normalization of the process of excluding part of the population.
(To correctly estimate the cost of building the previous one, we must keep in mind the law of the instrument, attributed to the American psychologist Abraham Maslow. It designates the human tendency to seek a problem on which to apply a solution rather than solutions Abraham Kaplan, philosopher, puts it like this: "Give a young boy a hammer and he will find that everything needs to be hammered. The solution of social control via QR code has now entered the box tools. At the risk that we will have to look for problems (global warming, overpopulation, flu…) on which to apply these tools. Conclusion: you have to choose your tools carefully because it can be wise to sacrifice efficiency in the short term for long-term gain.)
SEE ALSO – “No health pass” in ski resorts except in the event of an epidemic outbreak, announces Jean Castex
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