The 99% Survivorship Bias
Maybe you’ve heard this story before, but during the Second World War, warplanes returning from battle were examined for the damage they sustained, and it was assumed that bullet holes indicated places needing armor reinforcement — you know, to keep the planes flying. But then a statistician named Abraham Wald pointed out that only the planes that returned were being examined, while the ones that crashed instead likely sustained even worse damage. Those planes were riddled with bullet holes differently, and there is where reinforcement was most needed.
This counterintuitive thinking revealed what is now known as “survivorship bias” — a logical error humans make when they favor the consideration of what succeeds over what fails. For instance, this can cause a startup business to emulate all the trappings of viral success stories while ignoring the mistakes of business failures, despite the fact that failing is far more likely a fate for a startup business than succeeding.
Now consider COVID and the infamous myth of the “99% survival rate.” The assumption being made here is that survivors matter the most, and if we cater mostly to them, then what could go wrong? But then, what would go right? The survivors have survived. They are fine. So, why should they deserve our attention? Would that make the deaths stop? Would the disease be slowed? Would anything change?
No.
By focusing on the survivors and maintaining their “freedom” at all costs, we are actually ignoring the problem at hand and allowing it to fester. The “bullet holes” to our economy are in the people who have died, not the inconveniences suffered by the living. 620,000 deaths is a lot — more than all our wars — yet we seem more concerned about wearing masks and a tiny drop of medicine that could make this all go away. Meanwhile, the virus mutates, the waves continue one after another after another. Nothing changes.
COVID is a crisis that must be addressed. This is doable, the disease is preventable. Solving this problem is a temporary challenge, but one we can move beyond. But ignoring it, and caring more about the living than the dead gets us nowhere. In fact, it makes matters worse. We are on an unsustainable path that could cause us to lose this war.
