Ted Black: A scientific assessment of the (mis)management of the Covid-19 pandemic

The global and South African responses to COVID-19 highlighted issues of mismanagement rather than the virus itself being the primary problem. UK's costly pandemic inquiry is seen as futile. Effective management and realistic models are crucial. Authoritarian tendencies often lead to failures, as seen historically in wars. For better outcomes, focus on improving systems, empowering people, and addressing poverty through productive management. The ANC's initial success waned due to lacking key leadership powers, while the DA showed promise. Reform is urgent to avoid revolution and make the poor productive, not just wealthy..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here..Join us for BizNews' first investment-focused conference on Thursday, 12 September, in Hermanus, featuring top experts like Frans Cronje, Piet Viljoen, and more. Get insights on electricity and exploiting SA's gas bounty from new and familiar faces. Register here..By Ted Black.Using UK numbers, what might we learn from the world's, and South Africa's, reaction to Covid 19? Probably not much because we seem to live, not learn, and make the same mistakes again, and again … just in a different guise. .___STEADY_PAYWALL___.This "world war" against a so-called "novel" lung virus caused massive, costly, collateral damage but the virus wasn't to blame. It was bad management. To make things worse, the UK's pandemic enquiry hires more than a hundred lawyers. Why, if their prime task in life is to defend clients and sway juries? Running at £300 000 a day, it's impossible for any value added to exceed the total costs of a long, futile process..As Peter Drucker pointed out, the first lesson is governments don't make resources productive. Only effective management does..The second: Don't ignore models but don't believe them. If you do, it leads to assumptions that aren't based on realism. Act on them, as did happen, and you end up to your eyeballs in faeces..Covid-AuthoritariansDownload.The Magic of Right Measurement.The third: Most managers manage by the numbers, but effective ones know they're random – random within the system. They don't measure against arbitrary goals like "Flatten the Curve", or an even worse one, "Net Zero". They pay attention to the system and plot trends of the physical numbers it generates. In this case, total monthly deaths..When Covid first struck in early March 2020, if Boris Johnson's advisors had used a Shewhart 3-Sigma control chart for feedback, within a few weeks, they would have cut through the confusing, buzzing static and "noise" of the virus war. It would have sent clear signals to tell everyone what was happening, what was most likely to happen, and confirmed where to focus effort. .This one, based on data from 2015 to end May 2024 shows why: .3-Sigma, three "Standard Deviations", a statistical value and measuring tool, shows how data spread around their average. The control limits are based on 44 400 deaths a month from 2015 to 2019. The red data points outside the upper limit are the result of "Special Causes". Another one is the circle around data points from October 2021. It signals a marked change..The three in the time of Covid amount to 29 000 deaths above the upper control limit. It took eight weeks for deaths to plunge to normal levels in 2020 and a month in 2021. Vaccinations started in December 2020. Deaths peaked a month later and fell to normal levels well before they could have had any effect. .After more than 75 million jabs, from Autumn 2021, for eighteen months the average death rate of 50 000 was higher than the two pandemic years. For the past 32 months the average is 49 000. That's a 10,4% increase. Some of it would be due to a growing and ageing population but not Covid 19. A sane, "scientific" enquiry, not a political or legal one, would search for other causes – ones that seem to be staring us in the face,.A Theory of Knowledge.Behind 3-Sigma is a theory of knowledge of how we cope with life. Perhaps the most important management discovery of the 20th Century, it's a simple but brilliant concept that gives you a method for asking more, better questions as to what's going on. Plotting data to gain knowledge and paying patient, detailed attention to the world around us helps us act more effectively. .Our brains tell us there are always causes for every problem we have. We seek, find, or imagine them for everything that concerns us. To bend the world to the way we want it we push buttons or pull levers – our theories and biased views on how the world works. We use them a lot. But don't they often send us down the wrong path?.Dr. Walter Shewhart showed that a system, or work process, involves many actions between people. These can't be reduced to one or two "obvious" causes for a result. Systems are complex. Everything in them causes variation in the numbers..His control charts display what a system does over time and is likely to keep doing unless a "Special Cause" comes into play. 3-Sigma signals that point. When that happens, you search for the cause, act to remove it, and restore the system to its former, predictable state – a good thing. Better still, you redesign and change it in ways that make it more predictable and productive. .The UK government, like South Africa's and many others, did the opposite. It ignored decades of experience and a 2011 UK Policy guideline on responding to a flu pandemic. This said it wouldn't be possible to halt its spread, but people should keep calm and continue with their normal lives – just as they did in 1957 and 1968 when millions died around the world. .The guideline also said any response should be ethical and based on evidence. This one was neither. Instead, the prospect of death in vast numbers was used to strike widespread fear – one model forecast up to 8000 a day. .Data provided by the quarantined cruising ship Diamond Princess in Japan, and early death numbers in the UK, were ignored or downplayed. A dozen or so of the 2500 elderly passengers died but none of the younger crew. Those ratios were confirmed in less than a month when the virus first struck in the UK..From the start, 98% of Covid deaths were among people over 50. The over 65s accounted for 90% of them. Less than 2% were among the below 50s. With a survival rate of more than 99,9% for 80% of the population the rules enforced worldwide, let alone the UK, were clearly dumb. But does that mean world leaders were stupid? Maybe, but there's another lesson and reason for useless management in both private and public sectors – the dead hands of incompetent, authoritarian bureaucrats..Authoritarians.Continuing with the war analogy, a brilliant book on the topic was Professor Norman Dixon's. He studied the highlights of a century of mainly British military mishaps and costly, tragic blunders, arguing that the root cause wasn't stupidity but authoritarian leaders and followers. .He said war is about two sorts of activity – delivering massive amounts of free energy to the other side – "muscular, thermal, kinetic, or chemical" – and communicating information. Most fighters engage in the first, and a few, including generals, with the second..Early in his book, he wrote about the Crimean and South African campaigns. These are some of the traits he identified and expanded on later in the book. Many apply to the Covid response, governments, and management of business corporations:.Fail to follow the first principle of war – to focus and concentrate force on a narrow front – in other words, use the universal 80/20 Law to focus the brains and energy.Moral cowardice and sensitivity to criticism leading to Indecisiveness, secretiveness, procrastination. Cling to outworn tradition; a love of "Bullshit"; unable to learn from experience or take input from junior officers; a refusal to admit mistakes; rather look for scapegoats or blame "bad luck"; fail to use available technology or misuse it.Poor reconnaissance – underrate the enemy, overrate own strengths; attack the enemy's strongest point and cause massive waste of men and equipment.Closed minds – stubbornly stick to own views in the face of strong counter evidence.Suppress or distort news from the front, thinking it necessary for morale or security. Having little time for their men or concern for their welfare – more deaths, civilian and military, from disease and malnutrition than resulting from real warfare..Because of these traits – not least underrating the enemy – in 1879 it took a full six months for a British army of 20 000 men armed with breech-loading rifles, cannon, and rocket batteries to conquer Zululand. It won the war but suffered heavy casualties and a defeat at Isandlwana against an army of well trained, skilled, and brave assegai wielding warriors..As for the Boer War, the cost of Britain's expeditionary force of 180 000 men was more than £20 billion in today's money. As its leaders hadn't kept up with the times in their thinking and couldn't shake off habits acquired over hundreds of years, they failed badly on the battlefield. In the end, they resorted to a scorched earth policy – a war crime – to defeat an army of "farmers". So much for British "Fair Play"..Dixon wrote, "Compared to past conflicts, the Boers were a different enemy in terms of motivation, fighting style and expertise. Their army consisted of 35 000 generals, each combatant his own master defending his homeland. They were superb marksmen, agile horsemen, and determined members of a flexible, knowledgeable, guerilla force." .Using the military analogy, what does it mean for us today in South Africa with our newly formed GNU and a country and population with huge, untapped resources and potential? .System Redesign .On his 90th birthday Nelson Mandela said, "There are many people who are rich and can share their riches with those who have not been able to conquer poverty." With our vast and growing number of "have nots", you can understand why he said that. .However, as aid programmes have shown, it isn't the way to solve the problem of poverty. It's true that free market capitalism leads to class war, but socialism doesn't get rid of the classes. As Orwell wrote in Animal Farm, "All Animals are equal, but some Animals are more equal than others". That's a reality of life..Another reality is that entrepreneurial, free markets "Make", but socialists "Take". The former are productive, convert "Problems" into "Opportunities", and the result is a reduction in poverty. The "Takers" don't do any of those things. Why do most migrants head north and west, not south and east?.The great Dr. W. Edwards Deming said, "Bad systems beat good people". The poor do not create poverty, nor does unemployment sustain it. The political, economic and management systems they live and work in do. .A system is a network of functions and people who do the work together to accomplish an aim. There must be an aim for our government coalition that helps bridge the divide between the main players..South African voters have told us they're in a bad system but if they still vote for the likes of MK and EFF, they don't understand why it isn't working for them or what the aim should be. .At the start, the ANC government did well. It gained legal and political monopoly power and had "Right" on its side as a "Liberation" movement. Much goodwill, well-run institutions and favourable economic factors backed it. However, it soon displayed its lack of the three most important powers for successful leadership:.Performance Power based on results achieved.Moral Power from doing the "Right" things right.Preparation Power from good personal development and experience on the "front line" of management. .So far, the only party to show it has any of these powers, is the much-maligned DA. Results of systematic, purposeful, hard work in the Western Cape over twenty years attest to that. Given the difficulties it faces working with the ANC, it might be best for them to pull out of the coalition and focus and concentrate there. South Africa in its existing state looks too big for any party to manage!.The great danger facing us is that history tells us reform leads to revolution when expectations are dashed. Thankfully, we have some more time to redesign and change the system for the better – to focus on what we can do today with what we have now..If the GNU were to apply the first principle of war to conquer poverty – the focus and concentration of force on one critical imperative – then what should that be? Again, Peter Drucker defined it clearly. .He said, "It's to make the poor productive, not wealthy." .How do you do that? .Design a system of management that "liberates" its people, not controls them. "Liberation Management" is to be "in charge", not "in control". 60% of jobs in the UK and South Africa are created by SMMEs – not corporations or government. The Covid response destroyed many of them. .The aim should drive every action taken. Start by clarifying and agreeing on the existing situation. It will be tough for them to do, but if they are serious about genuine cooperation and collaboration then start the process of bridging the gap between them by asking, ."To make the poor productive ….What are we doing that we should keep doing and do even better?What are we doing, or plan to do, that we should stop doing?What are we not doing we should start doing?".The gap between where we want to be and where we are will help define the changes needed and clarify the short-term action projects that will get results at grass roots level within months, not years..We must move from "Parent vs. Child" and "Defend/Attack" "Child vs. Child" relationships, to "Adult to Adult" ones. The right focus with short-term action programmes will trigger that desperately needed "Building" process..Read also:.🔒 How US military ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during Covid-19 pandemicCovid-19 still deadlier than Flu, shows 35% higher mortality risk – US study saysAstraZeneca withdraws Covid-19 vaccine due to low demand and safety concerns

Ted Black: A scientific assessment of the (mis)management of the Covid-19 pandemic

Related Stories

"BEE pits black against white": The trailblazer who says empowerment got it wrong — Sam Montši

How Leon Kluge, SA’s unofficial ambassador for Cape flora, struck gold at Chelsea for the third time

Trump's US health aid overhaul meets reality in Mozambique

Viv Vermaak: Phala Phala, games of steal and plunder