Watch out for excessive optimism – NRC

At the start of the pandemic, when corona seemed like a temporary disruption that was bound to end with a joyful announcement, American country star Luke Combs dove into his home studio. With a guitar in his hand, Combs sang how he missed his parents and touring with his band, the uncertain future. And how he, when corona was over, “first thing that I’m gonna do”, would take his family out to dinner, “buy my buddies all a round”, would go to the stadium.

Has that moment finally arrived in the Netherlands? ‘Corona’ is not over because the virus will no longer disappear. But for the first time in two years, theaters, cinemas and football stadiums can be completely filled again this weekend. The night is opening up again, with a catering opening until 1 a.m. and next week until later as usual. The country is opening, Minister Ernst Kuipers (Public Health, D66) said triumphantly this week, and he has no intention of closing it again.

The cautious Omikron optimism of a few weeks ago has given way to a sense of victory. Compare it with the dark blanket that hung over the Netherlands a year ago: a hopeless lockdown that was continuously extended, with a curfew that forced police cars onto the streets at nine o’clock sharp to check people. Vaccines don’t work, corona quacks still say, but with the large-scale injection, freedoms have been regained and lives saved – in the United States alone there would be according to recent research without vaccines, at least one million more people would have died. And yet.

WHO Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned this week for the “false narrative” that the pandemic is over. Like true Cassandra, virologists temper the abundance of optimism. Yes, they nuanced: things are getting better, but a new variant can just as easily rewrite the rules of the game as Delta and Omikron did.

Seasonal colds

Such a new variant can come from anywhere. Omikron had more than thirty mutations in the spike protein — of the four seasonal colds that circulate annually, wrote leading science journalist Sarah Zhang in The Atlantictwo have only 0.3 to 0.5 mutations per year and one has none at all.

“While the coronavirus continues to surprise us every time,” wrote The Atlantic recent“Uncertainty is the only certainty”. Delta dominated the world last fall, but Omikron was no ‘branch’ from it and so came from an unexpected quarter. A new variant can be even milder. Or sicker. The chance of a variant that completely avoids existing immunity seems small. The great extent to which Omikron has now strengthened immunity without a great deal of disease burden may prove to be an advantage in a next variant.

In that context, one of the conclusions of the Dutch Safety Board (OVV) was called upon this week. The cabinet and medical advisors had not thought sufficiently in scenarios in the first wave, the researchers concluded in their first of three corona reports. The positive scenario that corona would not disrupt the Netherlands was assumed too easily. More negative scenarios were brushed aside too complacently: after all, the Netherlands was well prepared.

Of all the lessons learned by the OVV, scenario thinking is perhaps the easiest to apply – at least easier than changes in culture in departments or in the power of institutions. “Now that the measures are being phased out quickly, it is interesting for the House of Representatives to ask whether less favorable scenarios have also been made,” said OVV chairman Jeroen Dijsselbloem in a statement. NRC† “Are they being worked out?” Think: test capacity that can be expanded, hospital beds that can be added, staff that can be recruited quickly. And a cabinet that communicates uncertainties honestly: things are going well now, but things could turn around again.

Such thinking in scenarios is not only politically sensible: it is also applicable to personal life in pandemic times. Corona may not be too bad and gradually the risks of the virus will fade into the background for many. It may disappoint, and corona and society will end up in a long cat-and-mouse game – which the Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR) previously distinguished as the most negative ‘scenario 5’.

Individual handling of the coronavirus is becoming increasingly important in any case. At the start of the pandemic, risks were mainly weighed collectively: the entire society was locked, so that everyone was protected. ‘Stay at home!’, it read on bus shelters. Gradually, people began to make their own assessment of risks more emphatically, often on the basis of age or perceived vulnerability – sometimes resulting in overestimation of death.

The reopening of society at the moment when tens of thousands become infected every day definitively shifts the assessment of risks from the collective to the individual. Existential assessments are certainly placed on the shoulders of the vulnerable. The number of hospital admissions, said RIVM director Jaap van Dissel this week in the House of Representatives, “depends on whether the vulnerable realize that there are still many infections going around and whether they give consequences. Keep your distance, use mouth-nose masks, ventilation and the like.”

Premature triumphalism

With the optimistic epidemiological situation of the moment, it seems logical that the government should strongly withdraw from the fight against corona. But the lesson of the OVV report is that the government should guard against exaggerated optimism. Earlier triumphalism turned out to be premature: the relaxations experienced as irreversible in the spring of 2020 and the summer of 2021 were quickly reversed because the cabinet and society had been too optimistic.

The contagiousness of corona ultimately makes individual risks a collective risk. That risk can be limited, due to the sum of built-up immunity and mild variant. But it makes the conclusion of the OVV more relevant: is the government, as the protector of the public good, preparing to disappoint, precisely when individuals let themselves go again?