Flavio Toxvaerd (FT Collections, FT.com, January 26) rightly points out the need for economists to involve themselves in modelling societal attitudes and responses to Covid risks.
One way to begin, at least in the US, is to recognise that the major differentiating factor between pro and anti-vaxxers is political affiliation. Identifying the cognitive paradigms guiding Republicans and Democrats is a first step in developing mitigation strategies.
Most humans have difficulty dealing with high and low-risk events. We tend to overestimate the risk of low-risk events and underestimate the risk of high-risk events. Political ideologies in the US, and perhaps in the UK, respond to these tendencies differently.
In the US, Democrats tend to see the dangers from Omicron as more probable than they in fact are, while Republicans downplay them.
Recognition that Democrats see the Covid world now as a set of high-risk problems, while Republicans see it as a low-risk interval between former Trumpian prosperity and his opportunity-laden return constitutes the beginning of any attempt to model societal attitudes and responses to Covid risks in a way that provides policy thinking and actions.
People need to better understand probabilities and risks and how we often fail to deal with them realistically. But parties must return to what they do best: serving the economic and social interests of their supporters.
Jeremiah J Sullivan
Seattle, WA, US
