Lessons From Nature Can Improve Our Pandemic Response

This post was co-authored by Terence Taylor

While data and modeling give us critical tools to understand the trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic, successfully managing a pandemic also requires a basic understanding of human behavior (Van Bavel et al. 2020). As strange as it may seem, insights from behavior in animals who seek to ward off predators, and more generally, from evolutionary biology, have deep value in developing effective pandemic response strategies. Governments and other officials now responsible for managing public health need to apply a range of evidence-based data to develop successful future policies, rather than to base policy on reactions of the moment.

Humans are the descendants of a long line of successful ancestors who have been able to identify threats, assess risk, and make decisions to enhance our survival (Blumstein 2020). Much of the field of evolutionary psychology focuses on our immediate human ancestors, but the ancestors that shaped our behavior go back much, much earlier to when the very first animals evolved (Natterson-Horowitz & Bowers 2012). And because the neurophysiological responses that evolved to deal with existential threats can originally be traced back millions of years, we can identify successful strategies and identify key lessons from life by studying our ancestors.

One key lesson is that it is impossible to eliminate all risk and it can be detrimental to try (Blumstein 2008). For example, ground squirrels and marmots cannot remain in the safety of their burrow forever lest they starve. Similarly, we cannot remain locked down with our economy in an economic coma for this will create an economic depression. The challenge we all face depends on properly assessing the risk in a way that permits us to thrive in an uncertain world and another key lesson from life is that it’s essential to get help from others.

To assess risk, we, like dik-diks—small antelopes that live on the East African savannah and fall prey to at least 36 different species of predators—require information from many sources. Fearful dik-diks seek it from the alarm calls of other species that share similar predators—including go-away bird—a true sentinel of the savannah that perches at the tops of trees, scans the horizon, and readily calls upon detecting a predator (Lea et al. 2008). In our case, we can learn from other countries’ successes and failures in dealing with COVID-19, suitably adapted to local circumstances.

The international collaboration among scientists follows a time-tested script of collaborating with those who face similar threats. The international collaboration that led very quickly to an effective diagnostic test for the SARS-Cov epidemic of 2002-2003 is a fine example (Chow et al. 2003 and Heymann et al 2013). The initial outbreak prompted the establishment of a global scientific network that used teleconferences and secure websites. This effort overcame most of the traditional rivalries in the competitive fields of virology and international politics. Very soon after the outbreak, through this collaborative work, the causative agent was identified and a reliable diagnostic test was quickly developed. This action was important in containing the outbreak to 26 countries (WHO n.d.). The greater the barriers to free and honest exchange of information, the more slowly we obtain the data required to properly assess the risks

Sharing data will help all of us understand risk properly—and get people back to work and economies up and running when it is safe to do so. The policy implication is clear: we need more high-quality data to put into our epidemiological models and we should support international collaborations that enable fact-based and appropriate comparisons. This point was made abundantly clear in the US National Academies 2017 report on the West African 2014-2015 Ebola outbreaks. With regard to the failure to share data on clinical trials In their report they drew attention to negative effects of international competition rather than international collaboration saying: “Events on a global scale generally require a global solution, which in turn requires international coordination and cooperation. There are no events for which this is more applicable than emerging infectious disease outbreaks, for even when initially localized within a country's borders such outbreaks can quickly become global. Within our recent memory, outbreaks due to severe acute respiratory syndrome, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), Ebola, and now Zika have amply demonstrated the truth of this view.” This lesson clearly has yet to be learned.

We, like many animals, may wisely over-estimate the risk of dying or being killed (Johnson et al. 2013). A rich literature on human behavior shows that we are more fearful of things that we have limited control over; in particular, things that cause sickness and death (Blumstein 2020). Because dying of COVID-19 is particularly horrific (we can’t breathe and may die alone), we are likely to initially over-emphasize the mortality rate. Yet deep down we understand that the true risk of dying is not precisely known now, and that it varies with age and with the presence of a suite of pre-existing conditions. Because of this, the human bias towards overestimating risk must also be carefully factored into policy decisions—as well as human behavior following the relaxation of restrictions.

Disease has been an integral element in the evolutionary history of all forms of life and there are important lessons to be drawn from our history. Humans’ immune systems and behavior have changed in response to past epidemics and pandemics. In recorded history there is a wealth of information from the Justinian plagues (541–542 AD, with recurrences until 750; Horgan 2014), through the Black Death that devastated Eurasia in the 14th Century (Cohn & James 2020), to the Great Influenza pandemic of 1918-19 that killed tens of millions (Barry 2004). It has been more than 100 years since our last pandemic, and modern medical and hygienic practices have reduced the number of widespread infectious diseases in the developed world. Human behavior in the 21st century is now challenged by a risk beyond living memory, which requires us to better understand our behavioral responses to this threat (Trosi 2020).

As is evident in the majestic diversity of life, there are many solutions to a given problem (Sagarin 2012). Each country (and in the case of the United States, each state or region) may thus have different effective solutions. An important lesson from biological evolution is that we should learn from the diversity of successful solutions. Rather than having a top-down pandemic response process, governments and officials responsible for making these critical economic and safety decisions should evaluate the different responses being deployed around the world and adopt those that best fit local conditions. This is not to say that the World Health Organization is not valuable at this point of the pandemic—it most certainly is—in particular in promoting communication and the easy exchange of ideas, analyses, and data among countries. It is vital that science-based experience is shared so that governments can develop strategies that suit their individual circumstances. There is no one-size-fits-all solution and a major lesson of life is that learning from others who share similar threats is a time-tested recipe for survival (Sagarin 2012).

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Terence Taylor (taylor [at] iclscharter.org) is founding president of the International Council for the Life Sciences and co-edited Natural Security: A Darwinian Approach to a Dangerous World published by the University of California Press.