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. First cause of accidents: the pilot's inability to deviate from the initial plan to adapt to new elements. It is the plan's continuation bias: launched towards an objective, we become blind to our environment and reluctant to any change of course. Today, after two years of a pandemic, we seem incapable of adapting to a new environment (vaccine, endemicity, lack of perspective) and of deviating 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 each one the duty not to contaminate the other 2) the risk of hospital overflow is high;
and 3) the situation is temporary.
There is no more “next step” (the third dose? But the situation will repeat itself identically in a few months with the fourth).
A restriction that is considered legitimate today will have no less legitimacy in eight years.
Samuel Fitoussi
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 Delta variant with sometimes nearly 50,000 daily cases without the slightest problem of hospital capacity) and point 3) is obsolete: with 87% of over 12s vaccinated and a virus impossible to eliminate, the population will never be better protected than 'today.
There is no more “next
step
” (the third dose? But the situation will repeat itself identically in a few months with the fourth). A restriction that is considered legitimate today will have no less legitimacy in eight years. And since it can be said that wearing a mask at 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 to wear a 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 the 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 the 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 United Kingdom, Norway and Sweden - countries with no pass and no mask at school.
In France, while a dose of vaccine is available 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 your health pass takes 10 seconds
"
In 1993, Daniel Kahneman, Israeli psychologist (and Nobel Prize winner 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 is irrelevant.
This is the insensitivity to duration bias: we judge the value of an experience according to the average pleasure it brings us, without regard for the time it lasts and therefore for the total sum of well-being. or of the ill-being that it provides us with.
If the health pass is so popular, it is not only because its defenders conduct well-founded cost-benefit analyzes, but also (above all?) Because it responds to deep psychological needs.
Samuel Fitoussi
The following year, William Desvousges, an American economist, shows 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 gives these two phenomena the following explanation: since it is impossible to imagine 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 your pass takes ten seconds
”. We succumb both to insensitivity to quantity (ten seconds are lost each time by 50 million French people) and to insensitivity to duration (the operation is repeated several times a day for several months). ). Repetitions that increase the social nuisance of the measurement but also the probability that a given person will encounter a problem at least once (battery, network error, forgetting of the paper format pass, unrecognized foreign pass, technical problem, arbitrariness of the person which scans…).
Worse still: since the mental image that comes to us is that of a vaccinated person scanning his past, 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 welfare of the 6 million French anti-vax excluded from the life of the country (which may or may not be found justified, but which 'have to consider).
The theory of social identity, 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. Astonishing conclusion: the participants do not seek to maximize the value of the resources held by their group, but rather the result gap 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 “concept of self” - is a vital human need.
Having identified with a group, we want to make this membership visible (to football, imagine for example the supporter wearing the jersey of his team) and enhance the image of our group in relation to others.
The objective: "to
stand out positively
".
Read also Paolo Gentiloni: "Covid restrictions would no longer have the same impact on the economy"
If the health pass is so popular, it is not only because its defenders conduct well-founded cost-benefit analyzes, 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 needs a positive distinction since the law increases the differential of rights (and therefore of social status) between the vaccinated group and the others.
However, it is precisely to protect minorities from impulses that exclude the greatest number that individual rights have been devised.
Putting them aside to flatter the low 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 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 sacrifice; otherwise, other children had to be sacrificed. Even today, our brains still lead us to consider that when faced with a problem, action is always preferable to inaction. This bias - first theorized 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 while statistically, they had better stay in the middle. For a guard as well as for a politician, it is more expensive to fail by remaining passive (why doesn't he even try?) Than to fail.fail by intervening (at least he tried).
If we do not raise the burden of proof necessary to put our fundamental rights in parentheses, freedom does not have a bright future ahead of it.
Samuel Fitoussi
Faced with the increase in the number of contaminations in mid-July, it is becoming obvious to most French people that they "must" act, "must" encourage vaccination.
Succumbing to the action bias (“
But what alternative was there to the health pass?”)
we forget that there was a simple alternative to the sanitary pass: no sanitary pass. Recall 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 the elderly): there was no 'affirm that the risk of saturation of hospitals was not already ruled out. Action bias probably explains why the existence of a “sanitary pass or re-containment” 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 against the pass, we cannot deny that the measure did not respond to an absolute emergency (condition that the first confinement fulfilled, for example) but to the possibility of hospital saturation a few months later. . One can worry that "action", especially when it is so far from harmless, becomes the default response to any potential future risk. If we do not raise the level of proof necessary to put aside our fundamental rights (that of sitting on the terrace without being justified by a document, for example), freedom risks becoming the exception. and the parenthesis is 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 is 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 directly to them by text message. The 89-year-old Frenchman is required to know how to use Doctolib. A difference not discussed in the public debate - perhaps because we're too busy banning unvaccinated 13-year-olds from going to the movies.
The belief that the freedom of some ends where the freedom of others begins
Contrary to what many supporters of the health pass seem to believe, this formula is not absolute.
It is therefore insufficient to justify that the freedom of an unvaccinated person to sit on the terrace must end where that of a vaccinee not to be infected begins.
First, the formula is disqualified by the fact that it leads to insoluble practical contradictions since it can, in any situation, be reversed: "
The freedom of a vaccinee not to be infected stops there or begins the freedom of an unvaccinated person to have a coffee on the terrace
”. Then, we see every 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 impose on others. As the formula is not absolute, it is advisable to reason on a case-by-case basis and to evaluate any measure in the light of its balance, freedom suppressed for some, freedom obtained (health) for others.
Read alsoCovid-19: "I am very embarrassed that a vaccine booster is required as an obligation, both in form and in substance"
We could thus argue that it is
because
the vaccine is effective against severe forms that the health pass is not justified.
Believing in the efficacy of the vaccine is also believing that "
the freedom not to be infected
" now has a relatively low value (severe forms are now reduced by 90%) and that it is therefore this freedom. which must stop where that of an anti-vax begins to sit on the terrace.
Promoting the health pass in the name of gaining freedom for the vaccinated means reducing 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 - but not sufficient - condition 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 erect this childish saying into a political program: rigorously applied, it would lead to the establishment of a health pass for vaccination against influenza, the ban on manual cars (accidents are more frequent there than in an automatic car), to the obligation to wear a mask for eternity, to the prohibition of the sale of alcohol….
Induction bias, which causes too little regard for setting a precedent
The induction problem refers to using the past to predict the future and therefore overestimating the likelihood that the future will resemble the past. An idea expressed in the 18th century by the philosopher David Hume: "
It is not reason but habit which allows us to suppose that the future will conform to the past
". And taken again a century later by Bertrand Russel, who ironically on the bad surprise which awaits the chicken reasoning by induction: "
The man who fed it every day ends up twisting its neck
".
For example, a defender of the pass will imagine himself always in agreement with the policies of restrictions on public freedoms, just as a vaccinee will tend to underestimate the probability that he will one day refuse a social or medical practice encouraged by the government. .
Samuel Fitoussi
Programmed to reason by induction, we project the long-term consequences of the restrictions in a France similar to that of today. For example, a defender of the pass will imagine himself always in agreement with the policies of restrictions on public freedoms, just as a vaccinee will tend to underestimate the probability that he will one day refuse a social or medical practice encouraged by the government. . Overestimating the permanence of our relationship to authority, we therefore pay too little regard to the standardization of the process of excluding part of the population.
(To correctly estimate the cost of building the precedent, we must keep in mind
the law of the instrument
, attributed to the American psychologist Abraham Maslow. It refers to the human tendency to look for a problem on which to apply a solution rather than solutions. to a problem. Abraham Kaplan, philosopher, puts it this way: "
Give a hammer to a young boy and he will find that everything needs to be hammered
".
The social control solution via QR code has now entered the toolbox.
At the risk that we will have to look for problems (global warming, overpopulation, flu…) on which to apply these tools.
Bottom line: choose your tools carefully because it may be wise to sacrifice short-term efficiency for long-term gain.)
