It Is What It Is: COVID-19 Facts, Factoids and Conspiracies

By Mak (Chanchal) Khan

This book is a commentary on the author's experience surrounding the COVID-19 crisis. It is neither a scientific nor an academic book. It explores human and social behavior around conspiracies and myths that rapidly emerged throughout the crisis. Through an examination of facts and factoids, information and misinformation, and truths and falsehoods emerging from a variety of actors, readers are taken on an exploratory cognitive journey in an attempt to explain why we behave the way we do. The author, Mak (Chanchal) Khan, relies on a combination of his personal experience and views, as well as opinions expressed by a number of experts in psychology, sociology, economics, politics, and more. From mums and dads to students and educators to restless travelers on long airport layovers, this book may pique the interest of anyone interested in expanding their understanding of how and why competing narratives on the pandemic begin and gain traction. Given the quickly and ever-changing nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, this book attempts to shed light on a difficult and dynamic subject matter. Although it may be the case that some of the analyses are less relevant depending on the date any given reader goes through this material, the historical perspective and lessons learned will remain relevant indefinitely. It is what it Is!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Sep 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9780228861126

Mak (Chanchal) Khan

Mak Khan is a Bangladeshi-born Australian, a former international civil servant with the United Nations, and a former academic with the University of Melbourne, with close to forty years of professional experience across 28 countries throughout the world. He is widely known as Chanchal Khan in the music arena, especially for his singing, and research in the field of music and society. His music genre is primarily songs of Rabindranath Tagore, the first non-European Nobel laureate in literature (1913). His extensive journey in the development sector was possible through his engagement with the United Nations system; the Australian government; and bilateral and multilateral agencies, such as the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank, UK Aid, European Union, and a few more. His passion for music, art and language brought him close to nature, and to people with many faiths, languages, and ethnic backgrounds. The COVID-19 crisis has been a great source of sadness for him after losing at least a dozen of his close friends to the pandemic in many parts of the world, including singers, actors, and writers. Mak (Chanchal) Khan writes regularly in his professional work; however, this book is his first attempt of its kind.

Book preview

It Is What It Is

COVID-19 Facts, Factoids and Conspiracies

Mak (Chanchal) Khan

Copyright © Mak (Chanchal) Khan 2021

Mak (Chanchal) Khan has asserted his right under the Copyright Act 1968 Australia to be identified as the author of this book.

Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permission with reference to copyright material, both illustrative and quoted. We apologise for any omissions in this respect and will be pleased to make the appropriate amendments in any future edition.

Images used in this book are from primary and secondary sources, some with licenses and permissions obtained from the producers. Images contained in this book also follow the fair use provisions under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976 of USA; and fair dealing provisions of The Copyright Act of Australia 1968; The Copyright Act of Canada 1997; and the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 of the UK

ISBN

PAPERBACK

ISBN-13: 9780228861102

ISBN-10: 0228861101

HARDCOVER

ISBN-13: 9780228861119

ISBN-10: 022886111X

EBOOK

ISBN-13: 9780228861126

ISBN-10: 0228861128

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

www.tellwell.com.au

Dedication

To my grandson

Zehran,

who grew amid the pandemic that restricted his right to breathe the fresh air, and meet the world, when he needed it the most. Let this be the last catastrophe for him, and for all the children on this planet.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Prologue

Chapter 1: The Crisis in Logic and Reasoning

Chapter 2: Factoids, Myths and Conspiracies

Chapter 3: Social Media BUGS

Chapter 4: Who is WHO?

Chapter 5: The Vaccine Story

Chapter 6: Life After COVID-19

Chapter 7: Missed Calls

Epilogue

Appendix

End Notes

Acknowledgements

Everyone has a story to tell. I’ve some. Time will tell if I succeeded in recording all my stories, as writing a book is harder than I thought. But it’s also more rewarding than I’d have ever believed. The first step in that journey was writing IT IS WHAT IT IS. This book would not have been possible without the support of several individuals, who were and remain a constant source of inspiration, and encouraged me to keep writing.

I’m grateful to my colleague, with whom I share many professional pursuits, Daniel Winstanley who read my manuscript and challenged some of my opinions. He played the role of a devil’s advocate, provided me with well thought out counter views, and initially edited some of the chapters.

To Dr Mushfiq Rahman, an engineer and academic by background, who’s been my friend for decades in Melbourne. He is now retired, but not tired. A man whose writings on many subjects, including the pandemic has helped me learn and has contributed to many facets of this book. When I was struggling with the subtitle of this book, he came up with what it’s now. My thoughts were enriched in several chapters through my regular interactions with him.

To my other friend Dr Abdul Qader, a chemical engineer who helped me immensely by sending me information from time to time from his beautiful Warrandyte home in the once gold-rich rolling hills of east of Melbourne. These messages contained the numbers that I’m poor at along with the many facts and factoids that have been shared over social media. I also must thank Dr Hemayet Hossain, an academic in the field of geography and planning for sharing his many interesting views; his thoughts were not often along the lines I was thinking, but that’s the beauty of the diversity of opinions. His many counterintuitive claims or the challenges he threw at what may be the conventional wisdom was useful in my understanding the many different sides of a story. These helped me make my analysis on issues surrounding the theme of the book: facts, factoids and conspiracies.

To Karen Douglas, professor of social psychology at the University of Kent in the UK, much thanks for sharing with me her outstanding research on conspiracy theories from the perspective of social and behavioural psychology. It’s all about why we behave the way we do when it comes to conspiracy theories.

To Mushfiq Hamid, my son-in-law who helped me with many pieces of literature, and examples of truth, misinformation, and conspiracies surrounding the COVID-19. Additionally, thank you for the productive discussions that we’d have together from time to time. To my nephew in Canada, Anonno who helped me with some of the images for chapters.

Having an idea to write about a topic that’s quickly evolving and turning it into a book is as hard as it sounds. My experience has been both personally challenging and rewarding. I would also like to thank those who’ve been a part of my achieving the goal, my friends and colleagues for many decades, Dr Karen Medica and Dr Ian Patrick; not only are they eminent developmental practitioners, but whose encouragements via phone, email, and messages helped me to get going with the book. Karen and I talked at length about the conspiracy theories and vaccine hesitancy that surround us. Ian’s response to my prologue was quite inspirational. He thought the book could be my Magnum Opus and wished for me lots of energy.

Finally, I would like to thank the publishing team whose professional support was invaluable in the many stages of the publication that helped this book to see the light of the day.

Mak Khan, Melbourne, August 2021

Prologue

Melatonin 300 mg. One tablet.¹* That’s what I took every night from the end of February until the middle of October 2020 when I finally returned to Australia. I was stuck in Dhaka, the crowded, yet vibrant capital of Bangladesh, finishing a piece of consulting work. The month of February 2020 was one of confusion, as the world didn’t know what to do about the coronavirus; news of rising infections and deaths in the Western, developed economies swept through the media reports. My emotions altered between confusion and fear as I battled with anxiety and monomania; I was glued to the television, struggling to get some sleep, night after night. My work suffered, although I could use my home office. Using WhatsApp, Twitter, and mobile phones. These became my natural companion.

I was trapped in an apartment, all by myself during a series of lockdowns, although the restrictions of the lockdowns were largely ignored by the locals. Flicking through television channels at night was like watching horror movies. Although compared to what was happening elsewhere, Bangladesh enjoyed a smooth ride in the months I spent in Dhaka, with the death toll hardly rising above 60 a day even during the climax of the pandemic. Bangladesh has a population of 170 million, and with only 50–60 reported deaths a day compared to 4,000 a day in the US, it was a non-story. Yet, I was scared, as many citizens and expatriates were that perhaps I’d be one of those to be infected by the new virus. What was I to do then? Local hospitals were grappling with a deluge of patients; ventilators, along with other facilities and medical equipment, were in short supply. However, pharmacies had a sufficient supply of masks, sanitisers, and personal protective equipment (PPE) thanks to the booming apparel industry in Bangladesh.

As several infection and death prediction models began to emerge, my eyes were fixed on the estimates covering Bangladesh and Australia, the two places I live. Predictions given in some of the models gave a dismal picture for Bangladesh, one predicting over 1,000 deaths a day or more and affecting millions over the age of 50. These models proved to be largely flawed. Bangladesh recorded around 23,000 deaths as of mid-August 2021, over the 18 months since the first COVID-19 case was detected in February 2020. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the world has recorded 212 million confirmed cases and 4.43 million deaths as of 23 August 2021. Bangladesh has recorded 1.49 million confirmed cases, and 25,282 deaths as of the same period according to WHO. Bangladesh continues to be impacted by the Delta variant, increasing fears of a dismal forecast. Australia so far (23 August 2021) had reported 981 deaths and 44,028 confirmed cases, also defying some of the modelling that projected a much worse scenario. Australia had a surprisingly good run with almost no infections for over five months, until the new Delta variant swept in, forcing a series of lockdowns to be imposed across several states between May and August 2021, while I was writing this book. Although early COVID-19 modelling was inaccurate about the projected infections, recovery, and deaths, Australia did make use of these models while making decisions and avoided a worse situation, if nothing else. The positive outcome of the modelling was that it prompted Australians to comply with the public health measures. Australia generally did well in containing the virus with merciless lockdowns and closure of its borders, which was aided by its island positioning. The number of infections and per capita deaths has been one of the lowest in the world according to the WHO.

Models are only as good as the data that goes into them. The situation in Bangladesh and India was interesting. It was all about the apparent high immunity of people living in the slums and the low-cost housing areas. With the narrow streets in the slums, congested housing, and poor sanitation, many thought the slums of both Bangladesh and India would be devastated by COVID-19. Instead of hundreds of daily cases, Dharavi in Mumbai in the spring of 2020 was reporting only single digit increases, and the number of active cases was less than 3 per cent of the total. The mortality rate was also low. However, the spring and summer of 2021 saw an opposite picture across the whole of India, with 32.4 million confirmed cases and 424,000 deaths. The slums across India weren’t spared in the later wave.

In the case of Bangladesh, a theory emerged and was confirmed by a local study that the meagre active cases in the slums of Bangladesh were due to a large proportion of the population having already been infected; it was believed that herd immunity was perhaps at play. The WHO lavishly praised the local authorities in both Dhaka and Mumbai after they embarked on an ambitious and comprehensive program to bring COVID-19 under control in their crowded slums where social distancing was impossible. But it was also about the resilience among the population that’s hard to quantify and thus remained outside of the variables used for modelling. The predictions of a high death rate in Mumbai, India and Dhaka, Bangladesh didn’t happen. As time went on, we learned more about the outcomes of this pandemic around the world and the effectiveness of policies in mitigating the worst outcomes. It remains true that models aren’t meant to be an accurate prediction number by number; rather, they show us the trends and potential future scenarios.

I’m a singer. Music has been like a lifebuoy to keep me afloat during these turbulent times. I missed two repatriation flights from Dhaka to Melbourne organised by the Australian High Commission in Dhaka. But I got onto a regular commercial flight in early October 2020 and embraced the mandatory 14-day quarantine to be able to reunite with some degree of freedom. Besides music, the lockdown provided me with the opportunity to indulge in some pleasant personal time and have a chance for the anxiety over the pandemic to recede from my thoughts. I was able to do some long overdue reading and finish off some of my work, which had been stagnant for a while. Adopting a practical (although perhaps lazy) approach, I grew a beard as there was neither anyone to visit or any formal workplace to go to. I heard similar stories from friends all over the world.

While I was in Dhaka, I had a British neighbour Shahin, who was living on the 7th floor while I was on the 4th floor of our apartment building. He was my dinner mate occasionally when we would order food through online delivery services, sanitise the entire packet before removing the food, and then eat in the rooftop open garden while maintaining a double safe distance of 3 metres, rather than the recommended 1.5 metres. This man was a great source of joy to talk to. We shared our fears, uncertainty, any agonies that we were grappling with and of course, rated the culinary preparation of the meal while we ate our dinners. We did fear some risk in handling the food from the restaurant while we transferred it onto our plates in those initial months of 2020. But it was what it was! We survived.

Intake of Melatonin did help with my sleep, taking it every night (or rather at 2 a.m.), as did the books, music, and dinners. Nature was joyfully thanking the lockdown with clean leaves on the trees, not covered with filth that normally came from the construction sites, which were shut down at the beginning of the pandemic. The air was fresh, instead of the typical smog generated by the fumes from millions of unfit vehicles plying the crowded streets. The heat was unusually tolerable throughout May–June in Dhaka as the thousands of externally wall-mounted fan units of office air conditioners remained switched off. Mornings were beautiful, with the dawn chorus of local Cuckoos in the South Asian springtime, providing a big relief to my mental and physical health. When I heard the first song of the Cuckoo or the first sight of it pecking at my apartment window, I felt an enormous sense of comfort and satisfaction. As the poet Ted Hughes wrote about the annual return of swifts, "They’ve made it again, which shows that the globe’s still working…"

Climate change, human interference, intensive farming, and noise and air pollution are just some of the genuine existential threats to the future of our birds. The afternoon singing of the spotted dove, which I haven’t heard for a long time tells me that spending time connecting with the natural world is the perfect antidote to the pressures of modern life, and certainly from the stress of the pandemic uncertainty. The incessant honking of vehicles in Dhaka came to a significant halt, with only a few three-wheeler rickshaws picking up and dropping off their passengers in the near vicinity. The birds felt the freedom and celebrated it with happy tunes, both solos and choruses bringing me closer to nature. Being closer to nature brought me not only physical benefits, but it also helped me improve my mental and emotional health and find happiness in solitary confinement. The evenings and nights were quiet, tranquil. The street dogs around where I lived were desperate to show their joy too. They assembled around their families and friends and fed themselves on the leftover food provided by some kind people in the neighbourhood. Their barks weren’t aggressive, these were just a higher-pitched bark to request companionship, sometimes rising in tone to sound almost like a plaintive yelp. It sounded to me like the meticulous reflection of joy they were sharing, while thanking the humans for not chasing them away.

So, do we need lockdowns forever? We do! We need to lock ourselves up in good thinking, positive spirits, and to enjoy the truth of life and harmony that we must establish between us and nature. I recall a Bengali drama Prakritir Pratisodh (literally The Ascetic, translated as Nature’s Revenge) by Rabindranath Tagore, the first non-European Nobel Laureate in literature, which was written in 1884. This leads me to wonder if the era we’ve entered into is indeed a revenge of nature. In his memoirs, Tagore described the play’s themes as:

An introduction to the whole of my future literary work; or rather this has been the subject on which all my writings have dwelt–the joy of attaining the infinite within the finite.

The COVID-19 pandemic has showered us with many opportunities like any crisis does, albeit with many missed and wasted opportunities, concerning good governance practices and political and economic policy upgrades. To me, the first is about compassion, sympathy, and empathy that we’ve demonstrated as humans. As the pictures and videos of dying people, the helplessness of health workers, and the mass graves in Europe and America surged, we in our homes felt powerless, and inept seeing deaths of that magnitude never seen in our lifetime. People donated money, food, bottles of sanitisers and soap, and winter clothing to those who lost their employment while showering words of sincere sympathy towards their neighbours, friends, and relatives. The only element of humane empathy they were unable to demonstrate was to give shelter to the sick people in their own homes. That was neither possible, nor appropriate during the pandemic. Empathy and compassion would mean a lot and go a long way to help improve the world if this behaviour becomes embedded in our regular social habits. People learned better hygiene practices and if it becomes a continued, regular human behaviour will mean less infection. The protection won’t only be from this virus, but against all kinds of bacteria, viruses, and deadly diseases that kill millions in Africa, Asia, and even within better-developed countries. Whether or not practicing new hygienic rules excessively would make us more vulnerable to other new diseases, as immunity is built from exposure and contact, only time will tell. We saw what we love to call the new normal, as opposed to the old normal, practices spread across businesses, workplaces, food industries, travel and aviation, schools, housing, and health services delivery. Some of these practices will find a permanent place in the way we, our children, and grandchildren interact and behave in our society.

We’ve experienced numerous bad practices. Many lessons from the past and the present we decided in our wisdom not to heed. We learned how populist religious practices and politics played their part in bad decisions of the governments, giving leeway for the virus to spread at the cost of selfish acts of the governments. This applies to the wealthy Western world, as much as to the poorer regions. Chapter 7 is titled Missed Calls where I talk in more detail about bad governance, bad politics, and bad citizenship.

Conspiracy theories began to spike in social media immediately after the initial news of COVID-19 appeared in the media towards the end of 2019. The virus was thought to be a hoax by many. Some believed it to be a bioweapon designed in a Wuhan laboratory. These conspiracy theories and hundreds of others typically are part of inter and intragroup interaction dynamics; one group blaming the other for their involvement in either creating the virus or suppressing public opinion about it. Social psychologists have conducted some remarkable research regarding conspiracy theories, their history, and the individual and group flavours that follow in the creation and spread of the conspiracy theories. These have now taken the shape and form of what we’ve known previously as an infodemic, a terminology in circulation and recognised by the WHO, researchers, and the media globally. In this book, I’ll take you through some of the aspects of the conspiracy theories in Chapters 2 and 3, and touch on the topic again in other chapters. This may give us some insight into how people are drawn to the conspiracy theories in general, and the reasons conspiracy theories reached new heights during the pandemic. To me, the conspiracies, lies, and rumours have all become interwoven. Students, politicians, religious priests, homemakers (both male and female), and even academics, doctors, and scientists can’t free themselves from the blame of manufacturing, spreading, and deceiving people (the last is more appropriate for the politicians and the religious leaders).

Two world leaders, Donald Trump and Boris Johnson seemed to compete in spreading erroneous information or conspiracies about the pandemic risk, which to me is closer to deceiving their followers, however naive their intentions were. Trump presented himself as an anti-mask supporter and promoted unproven remedies, such as the intake of Hydroxychloroquine as a treatment option, despite the fact he is neither a doctor nor a medical scientist. These messages were harmful, leading people to stock plenty of these medicines, even over the counter in countries where buying any medicine was easy, that’s if the pharmacies had them in stock. Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms took some measures to remove such unproven posts or tweets, although not enough. Auspiciously, some psychologists are still trying to find the root cause of this phenomenon. Their findings may suggest unexplored approaches to protecting people from conspiracies and helping to prevent the spread of inaccurate information.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson once suggested that he be infected with the COVID-19 virus while live on television to prove it wasn’t dangerous. Dominic Cummings, a key aide behind Boris’s 2019 victory and an adviser on Brexit, said that the Boris government’s delay in pressing the panic button early on, when most politicians were still skiing, had caused unwanted carnage. He said when people needed them most, the government failed to respond. COVID-19 wasn’t the most important agenda at 10 Downing Street in the early part of 2020. As COVID-19 spread rapidly, the international community’s chaotic and mindless response to the organisational and system-wide challenges demonstrated the complexities of managing public health emergencies and alleviating public concerns. The result of this highly uncertain situation was unprecedented; from the exponential spread of rumours and conspiracies, down to the panic buying of toilet paper on a global scale.

Conspiracies, lies, myths, and rumours are somewhat entangled. I’ve provided the analogy of the spaghetti structures of octopuses to help explain. While they overlap, one leads to the other and not always in an orderly fashion. They use camouflage when hunting and to avoid predators. To achieve this, they use specialised skin cells to change their skin’s appearance by adjusting its colour, openness, or reflection. They use their colour-changing ability to communicate or warn other species. The conspiracy makers change colour and communicate with the innocent masses, often with warnings that their behaviours and actions must follow only their theories, regardless of what science and reasoning dictate.

There are consequences, mostly negative of conspiracy theories concerning individuals, groups, and societies at large. There are also potential strategies for addressing the negative consequences of conspiracy theories, which I’ll discuss in this book. We’ve many reasons to blame social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube for not doing more. While these platforms gradually increased their efforts to identify, flag, and delete inaccurate COVID-19 information, their work is not yet perfect. In addition to questions about what incentives drive social media companies’ behaviours around the issue of whether to regulate or not regulate content, they also face significant logistical and technical challenges due to the sheer volume of content. Millions of people were posting millions of contents with billions of words a day. There are also legitimate discussions around liberty and