Raising the alarm
Second-wave pandemic less ons from a space shuttle catastrophe
Months ago, early in the pandemic, I wrote about the fascinating historical case of United States army Lt. Kermit Tyler, who saw the attack on Pearl Harbor coming but didn’t know what he was seeing. Radar was a relatively new technology in 1941. The militaries of the world were just starting to figure out how to use it. Tyler had reported for his first duty shift at a radar installation in Hawaii. He was there to familiarize himself with the environment and the equipment. He had not been trained on it. He had not been taught how to raise an alarm if anything were spotted. A few hours after he arrived, Tyler and his men observed on their radar scopes a large group of aircraft moving toward Pearl Harbor. It was assumed to be a flight of incoming American planes arriving from the mainland, but even if Tyler had correctly deduced it was an enemy formation, there was no system in place to raise an alarm. All he and his men could do was step outside and watch the attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet.
When I wrote about Lt. Tyler in March, it was in the context of a modern- day parallel. In February, an influenza monitoring network operated by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States caught something unusual: more flu tests than usual were reporting negative results, particularly in the Pacific Northwest. Doctors were seeing something that looked a lot like the flu — fevers, respiratory distress — but it wasn’t the flu. Only with hindsight did it become clear that this tool, designed for a different purpose, was probably tracking COVID19’s arrival in North America.
In the future, I wrote in
March, tools like this might provide an early warning of other emerging threats. Today, our theme is similar: early warning, and how to use it in time to make a difference. But our historical comparison is different. Let’s talk about Roger Boisjoly.
Boisjoly was an American engineer who worked for rocket company Morton Thiokol. In 1985, he studied an incident that had occurred during a launch of the space shuttle Discovery. Boisjoly determined that a critical part of the shuttle’s solid rocket boosters, specifically the rubber O-rings that formed a seal between different segments of the rockets, had failed badly. Discovery survived because the second of two rings held ( and just barely); the first failed completely. Boisjoly wrote a report in July 1985 warning that the O-rings were flawed and risked a catastrophic failure that would destroy a shuttle and potentially the launch facilities, too. The design flaw was exacerbated by cold weather, though that was not normally a problem in Florida, where the shuttles launched. The colder the weather, the greater the risk. Discovery had launched when the temperature was 10 C. Boisjoly warned, in repeated memos, that the problem had to be fixed to avoid catastrophe, and that the problem was especially critical in cold weather. Nothing was changed. In January 1986, months after Boisjoly filed his reports, NASA was preparing the Challenger for a mission. Boisjoly and some colleagues strongly urged their managers at Morton Thiokol to give a no- go recommendation for the launch, especially as temperatures in Florida were forecast to be sub-zero. At first, Morton Thiokol’s managers concurred, and recommended against the flight, but under pressure from NASA and over Boisjoly’s ( apparently loud) objections, eventually changed their recommendation to go.
With no remaining nogos, on Jan. 28, in -2 C weather, the space shuttle Challenger launched. The O- rings failed, exactly as Boisjoly had warned they would. Seventy three seconds after liftoff, the shuttle was lost with all hands.
The story of what came next is fascinating, and if the above has interested you at all, you should read further — you won’t regret it. But for our purposes today, the point is made: even when you have the data you need, and recognize you have the data you need, you still need to know what to do with it. Boisjoly had the data. He gave the data to his bosses. They were initially convinced by it, but then changed their minds. Seven people died.
The relevance to our moment ought to be clear: countries all over the world are seeing a rise in their COVID- 19 case counts. In Canada, this is most clear in
Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia. This is a clear danger sign.
But it’s not a irrefutable one. It is not absolutely certain that disaster looms.
There are genuine, real reasons to face the second wave with some optimism. The second wave won’t be a rerun of the first. We know more about COVID-19 now. We seem to have got better at treating it. We have hopefully got better at protecting the most vulnerable populations. Our testing capacity has increased. We’ve had months to prepare hospitals and line up more robust sources of personal protective equipment. The recent rise in cases is mostly among younger people, whom, based on our experience with COVID-19 thus far, will likely have better health outcomes than the aged. As noted by my colleague Colby Cosh recently, there is even a fascinating possibility that widespread mask usage is having the unanticipated ( but extremely welcome!) effect of variolating the population: people are being exposed to COVID-19, but thanks to masks, they’re getting barely exposed. This is producing very minor illnesses that might give them at least some immunity against future infection.
COVID-19, at least in the Canadian context, is a fascinating public policy challenge. The best-case and worst-case outcomes are both still very plausible. It is possible, for the reasons noted above, that the second wave will be absorbed and managed without major death or economic disruption. It’s also possible that the second wave will be devastating, largely because misplaced optimism causes people to lower their guard, or perhaps because COVID-19 remains sneaky and unpredictable.
No one knows which one it’ll be.
In other words, the challenge we have now isn’t with a lack of early warning. It’s with knowing what to do with the warnings we have before us. That isn’t a medical question or a math question or an economic question. It’s fundamentally a political one: elected leaders and public health officials are going to have to make their best guess on what an appropriate response is, and do so knowing that all their indicators are going to lag by weeks. Any protective action they take will have real costs on quality of life and the livelihoods of Canadians. Actions they don’t take may, in hindsight, be looked upon by historians as an unfathomable refusal to act before a disaster.
Boisjoly, who died of cancer in 2012, was haunted by the loss of the Challenger and her crew. Who wouldn’t be?
Months or years from now, we’ll know if those who are today most loudly demanding a rapid return to further restrictions on daily life were overreacting, in good conscience and good faith, or if they were the Boisjoly’s of 2020.
The best-case and worst-case outcomes are both still very plausible.