Promised Breakthrough Vaccine Will Not Cure the Coronavirus

Read the headline twice, that’s how confirmation bias works

If you think a vaccine will cure the coronavirus, think again. It is your confirmation bias that tells you that. When the truth is, a vaccine is not a cure but a means to prevent you from getting sick.

Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one’s prior beliefs or values.

Six months in, the global pandemic remains to be a puzzle for most of us, the government-imposed lockdowns, the ever-changing CDC guidelines which as of this writing, confirm that the coronavirus can spread through the air and here we are still grappling between fact and fiction. One thing is for sure coronavirus is not leaving anytime soon.

Fact vs Fiction

Is the coronavirus nothing more but a case of bad flu?

No, coronavirus isn’t just the flu, while the symptoms on the onset are similar to the flu, some are now suggesting that it may even be a blood vessel disease.

By injecting, swallowing, bathing in, or rubbing onto your body bleach, disinfectants, or rubbing alcohol, you can save yourself from the coronavirus.

The answer is no. I hope the reason is plain and simple, you may end up in the emergency room and if you have done this, call 911. — Johns Hopkins Medicine

Are masks necessary to protect me from the coronavirus?

Yes, it can help stop the spread of the coronavirus. Also, wearing face masks may be more effective at protecting against COVID-19 than a vaccine.

But some will disagree, and here lies the problem, how your confirmation bias works can make you not believe in facts but in myths.

By now everyone should be familiar with the basic rules, but even the rules are not cut in stone, some would wash their hands but find wearing a face mask regardless of what doctors say, an affront to their civil rights.

If, we ordinary citizens are confused and our decisions are based on what our mind believes and of our own confirmation biases. Can our leaders make the same mistakes?

Lockdown

Strict lockdown implemented by many countries around the world was a hard pill to swallow. As a result, the world’s top developed economies are all officially in a recession.

While there is a growing number of people who think government-imposed lockdown caused more damage, there could have been more deaths in countries worst hit like Italy and the UK. But as we begin to understand more of the coronavirus, and how other countries like Sweden managed in the last six months to continue to coexist with the virus without imposing a lockdown. It is time for us to set aside our confirmation biases and look at the data.

Hydroxychloroquine Controversy

Hydroxychloroquine use has become too politicized. US President Donald Trump and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro become the faces of hydroxychloroquine use and it polarizes the scientific community, as these leaders are known to subscribe in their pseudo-science which doesn’t help when the world should rely more on science than medical quackery.

The controversy began when according to the Lancet medical journal, hydroxychloroquine increased the risk of death in COVID-19 patients, which they later retracted.

In a highly polarized world, anything associated with Donald Trump is seen by many as something evil, as a result, a lot of people based on their confirmation biases believe that hydroxychloroquine is ineffective against covid-19, the truth is, we may never know its efficacy.

Sunk Cost Fallacy

The second wave and it will happen. Every time there is an uptick in the number of people testing positive, the quick response is a lockdown, while in the beginning it was warranted, but today we need to take into account the pros and cons of that decision. The US government has already spent $6 trillion in its economic stimulus program but critics of the program are saying, $6 trillion should bail out people not companies, big companies are being bailed out and yet the same companies continue to retrench employees and unemployment is on the rise not only in the US but across the globe.

In real life, the sunk cost fallacy can be summed in two words, poor decision.

If governments around the world continue with the same plan of draconian measures like a lockdown, it is a form of cognitive bias coming from leaders who believe that sticking to the plan will give the same results the second time around.

Coexistence with the Coronavirus

The promised breakthrough vaccine will not cure the coronavirus, it will protect you from getting sick. The timeline for a peer-reviewed coronavirus vaccine is that it can happen as early as in the first quarter of 2021, between now and then, we should continue to do what we have been doing for more than six months, and that is to wash your hands as often as you can, keep your distance and wear a mask.

The information about covid-19 is ubiquitous, and it is up to us to think slow as we absorb information, to check if we are consuming information because we want the truth or we want our confirmation bias validated.