July 3, 2020
The novel coronavirus was, of course, a newly emerged infectious disease, and no experiments or observations had yet been conducted on it.
Therefore, its characteristics could only be inferred from similar cases in the past.
The following is a continuation of the preceding chapter.
Distinguishing the “Known” from the “Unknown”
More serious is the fact that criticism of the government’s measures has come not only from the left but also from neoliberals and some conservatives.
What makes this even more malicious is that their criticism has been directed not at the Abe administration but at the researchers serving on the Novel Coronavirus Expert Meeting.
After the state of emergency was lifted, one argument became particularly conspicuous: that the declaration itself may never have been necessary.
According to this argument, the doctors on the expert panel irresponsibly stirred up fear by warning that as many as 420,000 people could die, imposed unnecessary restraints on the public, and damaged the economy.
Nobuo Ikeda, mentioned earlier, is one of the leading figures advancing this criticism.
Such arguments are themselves the thinking of amateurs who understand nothing about science.
What, in the first place, is science?
Daijirin defines a “theory” as “systematic knowledge that has the power to explain individual phenomena and facts in a unified manner and to make predictions in scientific research.”
The laws of science can therefore be understood as “systematic knowledge possessing predictive power.”
In scientific research, experiments and observations are conducted, and laws are established on the basis of their results.
Why can the scientific laws obtained in this way provide predictive power?
Science is based on two assumptions.
The first is that the same phenomenon will be universally reproduced under identical conditions.
The second is that similar conditions will produce similar results.
The first is such a strong assumption that it might be said never to have betrayed humanity, but the second is known not to hold in some nonlinear systems.
Weather forecasting is a representative example.
The novel coronavirus was, of course, a newly emerged infectious disease, and no experiments or observations had yet been conducted on it.
Therefore, its characteristics could only be inferred from similar cases in the past.
It was only natural that no one could know the completely correct answer from the outset.
Of course, as time passed, the results of many experiments and observations accumulated, making it possible to obtain more accurate knowledge.
Scientists always work while remaining conscious of the boundary between what is “known” and what is “unknown.”
Many humanities intellectuals are unable to make this distinction.
As a result, they frequently use knowledge obtained afterward to condemn decisions that were made before such knowledge had accumulated.
The condemnation of the Ministry of Health and Welfare over drug-induced AIDS and fibrinogen is a good example.
It is true that, viewed in retrospect, the decisions were mistaken.
However, similar harm occurred in other countries, showing that, given the level of knowledge available at the time, making the correct decision was extremely difficult.
For a detailed international comparison of harm caused by drug-induced AIDS, see the International Conference on Drug-Induced AIDS, supervised by the legal team representing the plaintiffs in the Osaka HIV lawsuit.
The present infectious-disease response involved the same difficulty.
At the early stage, when sufficient information was unavailable, it was only natural to allow a margin of safety and adopt the more cautious course.
To criticize those decisions using knowledge obtained afterward is an extraordinarily unscientific attitude.
Conversely, had the safety measures been inadequate and the damage spread, those same critics would undoubtedly have condemned the response with the benefit of hindsight.
They occupy a remarkably comfortable position.
My impression is that present-day Japan contains an extraordinarily large number of humanities intellectuals, on both the political left and right, who brandish such empty theories.
They mistakenly believe themselves to be highly intelligent and assume that whatever occurs to them will work exactly as imagined in the real world.
When they fail, they blame others or refuse to acknowledge the failure.
The fact that those who promoted “relaxed education” have accepted no responsibility for its failure is a good example.
Training in experimental science corrects this way of thinking.
When a new scientific experiment is attempted, nine out of ten attempts fail.
The scientist cannot blame those failures on someone else.
One is forced to realize that ideas conceived in one’s own mind contain some kind of defect.
Only after repeatedly correcting those defects can the desired objective finally be achieved.
Could the absence of such experience be the source of the problems found among the humanities intellectuals described above?
Of course, even without experience in experimental science, similar lessons can be learned by working in some kind of real-world setting.
Doctors, in fact, gain such experience repeatedly in hospitals, and that is one of their strengths.
Many outstanding political leaders of the past also came from military backgrounds, and they, too, had experience on the battlefield.
In Japan, many people mistakenly assume that politicians with military backgrounds are fond of war, but the reality is the opposite.
Precisely because they know the horrific reality of war, they are cautious about deploying armed forces except when it is truly necessary.
The reluctance of then-U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell to undertake military action in Iraq is a symbolic example.
At the same time, once such people make a firm decision, they possess the strength not to retreat.
In that sense, it was entirely natural that the politician who appeared most dependable during the novel coronavirus crisis was House of Councillors member Masahisa Sato.
Politicians from elite examination backgrounds have been trained only to solve problems that develop as expected.
The difference between them and Sato, who served in the Self-Defense Forces in Iraq and experienced a frontline environment in which no one could predict what would happen, was unmistakable.
In the first place, if the negative effects on the economy are the issue, criticism should be directed not at the doctors who implemented infectious-disease measures but, as stated at the outset, at the Chinese government that spread the virus throughout the world and at the globalist neoliberals who opposed the early closure of national borders on the grounds that it would damage the economy.
Had the borders been closed at an early stage, the effect on the domestic economy could have been reduced, as it was in Taiwan.
Having opposed early border controls, they then attempted to make doctors responsible for the economic damage caused by the restrictions introduced to suppress the spread of infection.
Is that not an extraordinarily irresponsible and inhumane attitude?
To be continued.