Message from the Chair, Professor Ian Davis Welcome to this latest edition of “A little below the belt.” 2021 is an Olympic year! Strangely, it’s a number not divisible by 4; the host country, Japan, is in the grip of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic; athletes will do the Games by a fly-in / fly-out model, assuming quarantine issues are solved; but hey, international sport is back! The Olympic Games always includes the old favourites: the athletics, the swimming, and more modern additions like sailing, but most Games also include something different as a demonstration sport. This year, being in Japan, it’s sumo wrestling as it was in 1964. I bet many people are like me: we will sit down to watch it, entirely ignorant of the sport, probably balancing a bowl of chips on a soonto-be-sumo waistline, and within 10 minutes we will be shouting at the television: “Hey, that was a kinjite! That wouldn’t know his azukari from his ebanzuke!” We’ll be armchair experts in no time. You know it’s true. It’s funny how quickly we become experts in areas we really know nothing about. Sometimes it goes even further where people feel the need to put in their opinions and try to override a true expert, and that can be hilarious. It’s been called “correctile dysfunction” and here’s a great example from Twitter: @gary4205: Maybe you should learn some actual SCIENCE then, and stop listening to the criminals pushing the #GlobalWarming SCAM! @AstroKatie: I dunno, man, I already went and got a PhD in astrophysics. Seems like more than that would be overkill at this point. It can also get dangerous, for example when Certain People promote unproven ideas like injecting highly poisonous bleach into your veins, and other people carry the story and give it weight equal to the recommendations made by people who really know what they’re doing. The media is often complicit in this and justifies it somehow by thinking that every side of a story must be given equal value, when this is clearly not true.
The most recent examples have been the firestorm of publicity around the extremely rare complications associated with the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. Everybody has an opinion on this, and everybody suddenly seems to know everything about virology, vaccinology, RNA biology, haematology, public health, cold chain logistics, statistics, and probability theory. Never mind that some of the responses equate to, “This bridge is a little bit rickety. Clearly it’s much better if I swim the crocodile infested waters instead.” The risk to your life of crossing the road to get to the vaccine clinic is hundreds of times higher than the risk of the vaccine itself. For the record: I’ve had the AZ vaccine (twice), gladly and with profound gratitude, and fully aware of the tiny risks. My advice to everyone is to get whatever version of the vaccine you are offered, as soon as you get the chance. It’s worth stopping to think, though. How many decisions do we make every day? How do we decide on the right course of action? Sometimes you can genuinely use your own experience: I know that road is always busy at this time of day and they’re doing roadworks this week; I’ll take the alternate route instead even though it’s longer and I’ll get there much sooner. The penalty for making the wrong decision because you are misinformed might be a bit of inconvenience. We don’t have that luxury in health care. Get it wrong, and people die. Some viruses are not just “a little flu” or “one day – it’s like a miracle – it will disappear.” Sometimes our decisions have huge ramifications, and might affect people beyond just ourselves including those we love. Will I ignore that growing lump? A bit of blood in the urine – nah, must have been the beetroot. Wow, my testicle is getting bigger, that’s going to impress them on the beach. No, I must have just pulled a muscle working in the garden, the pain will go away. I’ve been diagnosed with a serious disease and now I have to choose between two options that both sound horrible for me. What if I get it wrong? What if I regret my decisions later? What am I going to do?
A LITTLE LITTLE BELOW BELOW THE THE BELT 5 A
