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Hello and welcome to Humanities Matter, brought to you by Brill. I'm Lee John Greco, and this week we'll be looking at key issues in the field of humanities. Hello. We're sitting down here today with Dr.
Bram DeRider. He has authored the article When the Analogy Breaks, Historical References, and Flemish News Media at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Bram, welcome. Thanks for sitting down with us.
Hello and thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to this conversation. So we're talking about how the Flemish media is covering coronavirus. And you've looked at how three Flemish outlets covered COVID-19 and the historical references they included.
What's interesting is you found that 65% of these articles had historical references, and most of them referenced the Stars Epidemic of 2002 and 2003. But they also looked at the Black Death and the 1918 Flu Pandemic, plus they also referenced the 2008 recession. So before we talk about how these news outlets were using these historical references, can you just tell us a little bit about the three outlets that you looked at for this paper? Well, yes.
What you need to know about Flemish media over Flemish and generally, it's a very small region in Belgium. It's a very small population, about 7 million people. So there are not too many news outlets that you can look at. Basically, we have the Public Broadcasting which is government funded, and then you have two large media concerns that compete with one another and with the Public Broadcasting and that's basically it.
So we decided to look at the online coverage of the Public Broadcasting that being an important use outlet. And then for the two private property owned media concerns, they have one, each of them have one publication that is named a higher educated audience, an audience that demands a bit more of its coverage and one really popular outlet. And we decided that for both cases, we wanted to go with the journal or the newspaper that aims at the higher educated audience just because the chance was bigger, that we would see more history in those publications than we would see in the other two. But combined, the three outlets basically cover the day-to-day news that you would see in Flanders on a normal basis.
That were the main reasons why we decided to select these three outlets. And as I mentioned before, several of these outlets were referencing the SARS epidemic of 2002 at the early stages of the corona outbreak. And you write that specifically for Flanders, there's strong indications that relying on historical analogies provided a false sense of security at the beginning of the outbreak. So I found that really interesting because I felt the same way in the US when corona was compared to SARS, it gave me a sense that somehow coronavirus would be somewhat contained.
So can you tell us why do some historical analogies give audiences a false sense of security? That is a really great question. I'm only hasstating a bit to give a definitive answer on that. The reason for that is that first and foremost, it is one of the questions that we're trying to deal with in our broader research.
This paper is part of a broader research project that deals with the Black History and the questions of how can you use history in a proper way, in a way that helps you build instead of just being critical. So it is a question that we hope to have an answer to in three or four years. Beyond that, another reason why it is difficult to determine why some historical analogies serve as reassurances rather than something that spikes concern. It's difficult to answer that question without a psychologist.
You actually need a historian or a psychologist to get a good answer to that question. One of the reasons for that is that you actually have to also look at how people deal with information, how they process information, how they are, what kind of information they find reassuring. And that's a question that's more food of thought for a psychologist and for a historian. Beyond the fact that it's difficult for me to answer that question right now, there are perhaps some things that we won't do in the future regarding this question.
And that is that we strongly believe within the project that human beings usually only have the best to make assessments by, or perhaps not only, but it's one of the main things and one of the main resources they use to when they make decisions about the present or the future. And in that sense, the most reliable parts that they can associate themselves with this is the experience or the parts that they can immediately relate to. And in this regard, source was the nearest epidemic. There is no one who had an experience of it like that or any family members who died in the Black Death that they know of regarding the 19, 19 Spanish blue.
The same goes, it's not something that you're going to be related to. Whereas source is something that people knew and that they thought, perhaps, okay, it won't be any different because I already have an experience of this previous pandemic. Another thing that we want to look at, and this goes a bit more into the psychology territory, is that history is powerful for storytelling. There's actually a great book on this by Alex Rosenberg, how history gets things wrong.
Who is the researcher who is very critical of this idea that we use histories really as stories and that we start telling a narrative or telling a tale by using historical references, and this is perhaps something that played here as well. We knew SARS and we want to tell ourselves a story about how this epidemic could also play out. And this SARS reference played nicely into the good story, the idea that it won't be as bad as we all thought in this sense. And that is something that we did pick up in the paper.
Here's also the fact that a lot of the early coverage of coronavirus was based on visual thinking. It's not that a lot of people looked closely to a comparison between SARS and new coronavirus. They just believed that it wouldn't be different. They just believed that it would be the same and therefore it was a relevant and reassuring analogy, regardless of the actual data or the actual things that seem to be different or seem to be the same.
Those outlets though, they didn't use SARS for long as a historical marker. Can you talk about, you know, at what point in the pandemic did we see SARS lose its relevance as a historical marker and why did these news outlets stop referencing it? They started shifting at a very distinct point in time, which was around the end of January, beginning of February. And the reason for that was simply that the death toll of the new coronavirus surpassed that of SARS.
You can clearly see that for the most of January. There was this reassuring dependence, like it's not like SARS, it's not like SARS. And then all of a sudden there have more people die of the new virus than people had died of SARS. So it made no sense to continue arguing that this was similar or that this was not as bad as SARS had been.
So that was a very clear shift at that moment. It should also be that SARS did not completely disappear. The amount of references dropped significantly from about 53% to 18% in mid-March. And SARS still referenced that the moment, but just to a much lesser degree than it was the case in January when SARS was really done in the Bum-Chaedia.
So then we got past January. Once we're into February, the more than which is the center left outlet, they used the Spanish flu as a starting point for a hypothetical. But when the astroverologist about this, the virologist said that our medical knowledge today makes the scenario comparable to the 1918 flu highly unlikely. Can you just explain why isn't that an apt comparison?
I've been reading a lot about the 1918 flu and I keep seeing all these parallels. I think you're right and seeing those parallels. And the thing with historical analogies is that they're never perfectly right or perfectly wrong. There are just some parts of an analogy that you can bear or some parts of a present, a positive example that you can compare to the present.
It will never be a 100% fit. It's just how you deal with the differences and the similarities and determines where you're heading to. In this particular case, and I can of course not speak to the person who made the comment in the newspaper. I think what the main thing is that they're referencing is that the societal and medical circumstances were completely different in 1918-19.
As was the disease itself with regards to the disease, for example, one difference is that the Spanish flu mainly targeted young people in their 20s or 30s, whereas now we see a disease that mainly targets people over 60. Also regarding the differences in society, I mean 1918-19 is a society right after the First World War. People had been weakened by that war. Society had been disrupted by that war.
You had troops still being all over the world and being transported back home and to other locations, which is a very specific circumstance. And then finally regarding the medical circumstances, medical science was not at the level it is today, not by any standard, which I think for this virologist would have been the main point of comparison. What can we do today that we couldn't do in 1918 or 1919? And he's right that there are major differences that make such a scenario highly unlikely.
But as you pointed out, those are the differences with their equally similarities. When you look at the medical mistakes, you had still practices of bloodletting going on in 1918-19, which obviously didn't work, but you had at the beginning of this crisis, you had a famous chloroque drug that was hailed as desolutions to everything coronavirus. Then it turned out to be not so successful. In 1918-19-19, you had periods where authorities took wrong decisions just as you have today.
You had the pressure back then to open up to let normal life continue, not to restrict people from going out just as you have these holes today. So it's mainly what you're looking at whether or not the comparison is relevant or not. I think Spanish flu has to teach or can teach us a lot for today. But you have to be aware of both the similarities and the differences if you want to make a sensible comment on whether or not you can use it.
It seems like most of the similarities, they're not coming from the diseases themselves, but they're coming from human nature. We're still seeing that there are quacks out in the world telling us to take different kinds of medicines that may or may not work, and we're still seeing governments pressure to stay open. So it seems like that is the through line here. Yes, perhaps.
It's somewhat of a cliché to say that context and circumstances change, but human nature doesn't. I wouldn't go as far as substantiating that particular layer today, but I think there is, you can in every circumstance see some trends or some people behaving in a way that they would have to behave themselves if they were born in a different century. So I think you're right and a lot of similarities come from people making similar choices in circumstances that are different, but still need to do similar outcomes. So again, it's difficult to make a dissident or definitive claim regarding this question or disposition, but I think you're right that humans will make similar choices at certain points in time.
I'm curious as you read all of these newspapers that read through these three different outlets. Did you see that as journalists were trying to draw historical comparisons? Did you find that medical experts were hesitant to draw those comparisons at all? No, not at all.
Most of the coverage even was based on, or let's say the historical references that journalists used. A lot of them were based on historical references that were provided by the experts themselves. I mentioned this in a paper and then of course this is a paper about the news media and the outlets making certain choices or putting certain things and lining their coverage. But it were also the experts who were making claims about 1918, 1919, SARS, MERS, ad-evian flu, the Mexican flu and so on.
This also featured in Déric du Storrs as well. For example, you mentioned the birologist earlier who said this is blown, be the same as the Spanish flu in the sound that there was a retired researcher was saying, no, this might be the same as the Spanish flu. They were also struggling to find the right historical analogies and they also went by what they knew from history, what they had learned from history. They were not in history, they experienced earlier in their careers.
It's not only the journalists, it's definitely people, so the experts that were using history to describe what was going on. Some made the right calls and some made unfortunately. And in hindsight, I think you can mention this, they made the wrong calls. Yeah, I guess I'm curious as to why medical experts would do that.
I understand as a journalist, myself, why a reporter would want to draw those comparisons. As you mentioned, it helps with storytelling. But if you're a medical expert, I wonder why you might not be a little bit more hesitant to make those connections there. Well, you're only speculative.
I mean, I kind of decide or tell you, instead of these experts why they took the decisions or mentioned the cases they mentioned. I think it's a more broad comment regarding that's based on also my experience with other disciplines beyond biology or virology, but for example, international relations or law. History is easy to use. The examples are available, even if you don't know much about them.
People like it when you use history because it sounds authoritative. You know, or you give the impression that people were talking about. People also have their own experiences with history and they might absorb information easily if they can compare it to something. I mean, I'm definitely not accusing the journalists or the experts that they made a very great or substantial mistake and that they should have known better.
I also made the mistake of thinking this would be something like SARS earlier on. But the thing is, they also, the experts also have to communicate this in a way that people understand. So if people know SARS, if they know Mars, if they know the Mexican flu, then why not use these cases to tell your story. Unfortunately, it was the wrong story.
Turned out to be a mistake in case that to compare to these three examples, but if people know these examples, you can still use them to describe it. Other than that, and then this may be a final point on this again, this is about racial thinking. My impression that this is only an impression I concentrated through the research is that the information in January and early February, coming from China was, it might have been better than during SARS, but it was far from perfect. And again, there are a lot of scientists involved to the decision to do or have the impression that this would not be worse and that the lessons from SARS have been learned and that they genuinely believe that this would not be different than the data was not pointing to something different.
It would be a very interesting question actually to interview perhaps some of these experts and ask them again in hindsight, did you have the data in January and February to really see or to really believe that this would not be worse than SARS or where there are already indicators that you have missed because you thought it would be like SARS. That is more a question for them than it is one that I cannot speak. And something else that you repeated in your work was that a lot of the commentary at the time in January and February was saying that the Chinese government was handling this very well. We know now, at least in the US, according to intelligence reports that came out in early April, that the Chinese government was under reporting.
So I imagine that that probably influenced the more optimistic outlook that people had about this early on. Probably, I mean, this definitely was one of the lines or the early lines that you could see in the media coverage, like when they were making the comparison with SARS, the universal tone in the media was the Chinese government is much more forthcoming in providing information. It's more much more direct in dealing with this. It will bridge much better with the World Health Organization than it did in 2002 and 2003.
So that really was an optimistic tone. I can't decide or I don't have enough information to see whether or not that was accurate and whether or not Chinese government should have done more could have done more. I think there are people better place to make that call that than I am, but purely from this research. Yes, in January and February, people believe that that China was doing a great job and that has indeed changed at the moment.
So what's the lesson for journalists who want to provide context here? Obviously, this is a totally unprecedented event. So reporters are just trying to help people make sense of it all. So what advice do you have for them?
And then what advice do you have for readers who might be reassured by reading about previous plays and pandemics. Well, with regard to journalists, and I again would like to stress that the paper is not intended to point out a huge mistake they made or one that they could have avoided. I mean, this was the first time we did this kind of research. So all the conclusions are pretty new also for us.
And I don't think they made they did the best as what they did, what they could do with the means of their disposal. The only thing that given the research that we've done currently, I would like to see them differently is to be more aware of how you're using history. The other thing is you provide the cases and comparisons you make. Yes, they can help you to tell a story.
Yes, they can help you to clarify some of the points you want to make to your audience. But perhaps do check with a historian, a trained historian or someone else who knows about these cases. Is this really an accurate comparison, not an accurate comparison, but a comparison that makes sense of comparison that does compare the things that I want to say with the actual case in history instead of. I would say using it as a shorthand for all sorts of ideas you have about how to smite the balls.
Do check how you have your using history be aware of that. That would be the main advice. And beyond that, I don't think journals can or should change much in how they are covering this. They're doing their best with the means they have.
And this is just one one minor or major depending on your point of view. I think that the way that you can change would be more aware of. With regard to readers who might be reassured too soon. I think it's sort of the same approach as journalists to be aware of how history is used, how it influences the coverage.
But beyond that, try to keep it open mind. History is a great resource because it shows you how things can change rapidly and how things don't stay the same forever. And you can see coverage that compares the present or the future with some historical case. Be aware that there are other cases that might point to something different.
And that a lot of the historical coverage or the historical analysis you see in the media are abbreviated to service certain purpose and are not necessarily the best ones available. In this regard, when it comes to keeping an open mind, for example, something that you see a lot of historians, but also biologists talking about here in the second wave. The virologist experts who are dealing with the disease itself continuously worn for this. And I think they are joined in that morning by a lot of historians as well.
Neil Ferguson also mentioned this is a couple of times other historians also do it. Usually these diseases going one in two or three ways with the second one being the worst. Let's hope that this time might be different. History not necessarily repeats itself.
But there is equally a chance that worse than still to come. But historians nor the virologist can tell you that for sure that there will be a second wave more than they predict that it will be worse than the first wave. But there is a good chance and we do well not to be surprised when a second wave comes. Really fascinating paper.
Dr. Brehm, Director, he is written when the analogy breaks historical references in Flemish news media at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Brehm, thanks again so much for talking with us today.
I'm really looking forward to reading the rest of your research going forward. Thank you very much. And I'll keep you posted about future results. You are listening to the Humanities Matter podcast.
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