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Rushed science and bad politics turned COVID-weather correlations into policy disasters.
My latest, in Nature Comms w @anacrgomez @bansallab & @SadieRyan: the basic science, how ecologists derailed Indonesia's lockdown, and how we pull up. (1/20) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18150-z
My latest, in Nature Comms w @anacrgomez @bansallab & @SadieRyan: the basic science, how ecologists derailed Indonesia's lockdown, and how we pull up. (1/20) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18150-z
By now it should be obvious that what was "expected" - less transmission in the summer - didn't happen. If you need an example close to home: think Arizona, which - as its summer wave declines - is inching towards 200,000 cases and 5,000 deaths. (2/20) https://twitter.com/wormmaps/status/1281225057721880578
Also increasingly obvious: *places* that were supposed to have climatic protection don't. That particularly matters in Africa, where some countries are still operating on a model of climatic protection that's unlikely to keep working. (3/20) https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.15.20149195v4
There are so many studies by now that have shown climate wasn't at the steering wheel. And so, so many more - many left as either orphaned preprints, or published in predatory journals - using correlations to say otherwise. (4/20)
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(20)30106-6/fulltext
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(20)30106-6/fulltext
Correlational studies on climate and weather - flawed as they are - haven't been defeated in some great marketplace of ideas. They've changed national trajectories on lockdowns and reopenings, here and abroad.
In our piece, we explain why. (5/20) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18150-z
In our piece, we explain why. (5/20) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18150-z
The short answer is, science doesn't work the same way during a pandemic it does normally. No "marketplace of ideas" to defeat bad science. And, like I've said before, spending scientific attention on weak "debates" makes those narratives stronger. (6/20) https://twitter.com/wormmaps/status/1288596311416152069
Since the start of this pandemic, I've urged ecologists and environmental scientists to put this topic down, and stop Streisand effect-ing it. As you can see in the replies below, people really don't like that. (7/20) https://twitter.com/wormmaps/status/1276947604778164225
Other scientists haven't liked it either. At least 3 studies are up where I was privately asked to review a draft, gave feedback identifying basic errors (e.g., not knowing SARS-CoV-2 vs. COVID-19), urged authors to reconsider, & I'm not acknowledged. (8/20)
But what I've been warning would happen since April - the politicization of the science to a degree that would make it impossible to ever set narratives straight about small effect sizes, and prevent weaponization - happened. (9/20) https://twitter.com/wormmaps/status/1253760402137190400
Now we have Trump surrogates, on television, using the COVID-climate link to try to bolster the (unfounded conspiracy) theory that COVID-19 is a weaponized virus. And scientists didn't do that, but they should've expected it. (10/20) https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/watch-trump-advisors-bonkers-rant-pushing-covid-19-conspiracies-1024196/
Around the world, we think this has happened: leaders looking for a way to avoid lockdown have used projections about weather, or baseline vulnerability due to climate, to get out of doing what they have to. Scientific consensus-finding didn't help course correct that. (11/20)
In this piece, we circle back to Araujo & Naimi, an ecological preprint that originally projected COVID-19 “will likely marginally affect the tropics.” That claim shaped UN WFP policy and, to various degrees, seems to have derailed lockdowns from Indonesia to Africa. (12/20)
I've already written about why that study was wrong, and in all likelihood, it will never end up in a journal. But the harm already happened. The scientific "debate" isn't where the story is. (13/20) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-020-1212-8
The interesting story here is: after being warned they made a mistake, two scientists might've singlehandedly undermined global governance with bad science in broad daylight. (Unlike the Ioannidis story arc, no investigative journalists have dug into this one yet.) (14/20)
So here we are, you and me, at the bottom of a hole. What do we do now? (15/20)
First step: get the science right. In this piece, we walk through why COVID-19 isn't seasonal yet, why it might be someday, the challenges of scaling lab to nature, different kinds of sunlight, behavioral confounders - everything you need to know. (16/20) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18150-z
Second step: we realize science works differently in a pandemic. If you produce a study about COVID-climate relationships - even if you say sunlight only has a 1% effect - know that the work you're doing is more likely than not to be used to undermine public health. (17/20)
And if you know that - speaking as someone who's spent his life studying the relationship between climate and infectious diseases, and loves to squeeze a good paper out of a crisis as much as the next guy - I'm still not sure why you would produce the work. (18/20)
Finally, science communicators: I'm asking for your help. We have to get this 
information out there, not just to hold governments accountable, but to help people understand their personal risk as people resume outdoor contact, and the S. Hemisphere looks toward summer. (19/20)
information out there, not just to hold governments accountable, but to help people understand their personal risk as people resume outdoor contact, and the S. Hemisphere looks toward summer. (19/20)
This is the most important thing we can do to get back on track: when people say "it's a small effect, but policymakers should probably still consider it," your answer should be "no." (20/20) https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1262017293359501318
