The nine worst Covid-19 biases

We all suffer from cognitive biases that cloud our judgment and lead us to the wrong conclusions. But now that we are in the middle of a pandemic, and restrictions are being put in place that have a profound impact on people’s lives, it is more important than ever that we look to the evidence and challenge these biases before they lead to serious mistakes in our response to the disease.

Unfortunately, this has not been happening. Here are nine big mistakes that have shaped our response to Covid-19:

1. Herd thinking

From the offset, the government’s thinking about the pandemic was based on influenza modelling. The clue is in the title of the most influential modelling group which reports directly to the government’s scientists: the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SPI-M). The focus on influenza was cemented in 2016, when the Department of Health ran a cross-government exercise to test the UK’s response to an influenza pandemic, called ‘Exercise Cygnus’.