Chair's corner

What an amazing last few months it's been for the world. The world, of course, is in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. How individual nations have responded to the pandemic has been quite diverse. We are extremely fortunate that the NZ response has been along the lines of listening to experts and locking down the country to halt the spread of the virus.

I am saddened by other countries who have responded in a much more haphazard fashion, and the unfortunate position people living in those countries find themselves in when governments don't listen to experts. Like most people, I have friends in multiple countries who I can stay in touch with via social media. Many are certainly envious of how we've reacted.

We're unfortunately starting to see a backlash though. Some are making claims that the lockdown was an overreaction. In a similar fashion to the criticism of the reaction to the Y2K bug, we're seeing the success of what we did. An interesting phenomenon from psychology is hindsight bias, with people confidently saying they knew how this was all going to turn out. In reality, nobody knew, and as was a commonly touted expression, we were having to build the plane while we flew it.

I believe the world has fundamentally changed. Life isn't going to go back to “normal” any time soon. Realistically, until we develop a vaccine against the virus (and I certainly hope that this is possible) there's always going to be the risk of outbreaks happening. And reopening the country to visitors, while great for our tourism industry, is going to put everybody else at risk.

People need to feel safe. I think that there will be some resistance to large gatherings happening anytime soon. As a consequence of this, we've made the decision to not hold an in-person conference this year. Last year's conference in Christchurch had very good attendance, and our international speakers were a big drawcard. But, being science-minded people, we can all appreciate the risk of gathering together and the possibility of transmitting the virus to others. We are in the early stages of organising some sort of “virtual” event. One big the advantage of this is that is will be relatively cheap to run, meaning that cost shouldn't be a barrier to attending.

At times of crisis we often see conspiracy theories springing up. The COVID-19 pandemic is no exception. The introduction of the 5G cellphone network was controversial already, with various bogus claims being made around health effects of the technology. All of these are baseless and betray a fundamental misunderstanding of electromagnetic radiation and the inverse square law. But the mistrust of 5G has now morphed into a theory that it's causing COVID-19 symptoms. There has been a spate of arson attacks on 5G towers around the world – likely the result of conspiracy theorists taking action.

We've also seen another theory that COVID-19 was engineered, rather than occurring naturally. How this fits in with the 5G theory is anybody's guess. The theory was espoused in an online “documentary” called Plandemic. This anti-science propaganda video was made by a discredited scientist with anti-vax views. The video has been widely debunked, but that won't stop people being influenced by it.

This leads me to wonder what the uptake of the vaccine, assuming it's successfully developed, will be. This will probably be the first time in history that getting the vaccine will be urgent. Achieving herd immunity will be vitally important if the world is to return to pre-pandemic normal. We have enough trouble convincing people to vaccinate their children for well-established diseases such as Measles. I can imagine that there will be some resistance and it will undoubtedly be inflamed by the anti-vaxxers. It's starting already, of course. There's yet another conspiracy theory that Bill Gates is developing a vaccine to depopulate the world!

The pandemic has seen our local pseudoscientific usual suspects using it for their benefit. Ken Ring has made wild claims about it, including claiming that there is no COVID-19, no pandemic, and that is was all political and control-based.

Then there's Jeanette Wilson, the “psychic surgeon” who we've done battle with before. Her usual business is to run seminars around the country. With the lockdown, that opportunity has been denied to her. I've had it reported that she keeps popping up on social media, spouting her usual rubbish about vaccines, 5G and all sorts of pseudoscience. Fortunately Facebook seems to be shutting her down, so she's having to continually more about and create new groups. Nevertheless, she still seems to be running her seminars – as I write, I could part with $40 and learn how to “channel my own higher wisdom and communicate with teacher guides”. I think I'll give that a miss.

My advice is to stay skeptical and listen to the experts.