time after time here we're going underground from the country with the worst coronavirus death toll in europe as countries across the continent begin to ease their lock downs and curfews coming up in the show risky business how to interpret our politicians at the podiums as they today give us a life or death advice on coronavirus we investigate risk literacy with risk and rationality scholar at the max planck institute harding risk literacy center director professor good grounds a 1st class passengers on a sinking ship has covered 900 further exposes deepening cracks in us as your money

power we ask award winning sociologist richard blackman how mass mobilization can now transform the neoliberal world order all this more coming up in today's going underground or 1st all around the world our politicians will today be telling you how to live your lives and not be killed by coronavirus how to decode what they're saying and bypass the politicized spin incompetence and malfeasance joining me via skype from berlin is director of the harding center of a risk literacy professor good. thanks so much for coming on so as i say we're going to all be watching our politicians tell us about the fact that they are following the science how should we interpret what those politicians tell us in the in the context of risk and literacy i think it would be really important that people themselves think about the risks to get into or only with their behavior i'm also note shows. hope that politicians know what's the best thing to do this is

a situation of uncertainty where we came not to calculate the risk but where we can know things and also to relax a little bit and do reasonable decisions rather than hurt decisions that prufrock fundamentally and this again in the context of for instance massive numbers of ventilators were bought for corona virus that in turns out we don't need why are we more scared of what is less likely to kill us the a key problem in our society is that we all have learned how to read and write but not how to become risk literate at least to understand the numbers so the numbers that made us feel the numbers of infections or deaths and also to understand the kind of thinking about what might lead to ward

problems you've talked are taking a plea out to interpret mammogram results cancer risk flu risk which i'll get onto in a moment had i better just ask you then are we more scared than we should be about coronavirus there's nobody who came to tell you exactly where this virus is going so we need to live with uncertainty but we can protect us against. reactions that creates more problems so the classic you situation of the early years 911 many americans after 911 stopped flying and what to do they used cars instead i've underlies the traffic statistics and found that for 12 months the most recent went up about up to 5 percent mostly on a long distance. and during that time about

$1500.00 americans more than usual lost their lives on the roads in the attempt to avoid the risk of flying but this is a case illustrates that our own reaction to a danger can create new dangers or be at the fear flights arguably mean less climate change for future generations do you think that that dollar trump then was right to compare when his terms what the chinese have done to the world with 911 and pearl harbor when it came to risk i'm not sure quite in the same way your comparing risk as regards probability of death wouldn't think there is a point of saying that trump was right who we might think about would be doing you know in order to avoid creating more dangerous for instance

hospitals all over the world report including the u.k. that in number of patients who come into the hospital sort of emergency departments with city year or heart problems has decreased and the interpretation is that many people who should go to the hospital don't go 'd anymore because they fear getting infected by the virus. so and that may cause another distro similar to it in the $911.00 event but in a different way in the uk so it eases 'd the hurt kind of. be aware. of behavior we're not creating more problems than be already. you see some people might think that on a daily basis even that statement common sense of a kind is what where are you using in fact

a lot of people say what politicians seem to be advising our top scientific adviser is everything they say seems a bit like common sense albeit that some of our politicians may not have ordered or prepared for the pandemic properly can you just take me back to the h one n one model that you did which seem to far be far more accurate than the google flu model and that one was using $550000000.00 search terms how is it that something you can come up in on the back of an envelope presumably can be so much better than a probabilistic determination based on so much data by one of the biggest companies on earth google flu trends trying to predict the spread of through exactly the flu related doctor visits and good idea to people might in the search terms if they have symptoms of it in it work and it most chiller reason is this is deep

uncertainty so this flu puts the swine flu was not in the winter but in this some. good flu trends being calibrated on the pastor couldn't know that so what i'm working with is the musing the intelligence of the human prey in which has evolved for many many years to drive other assumes that actually in this case up of prince we attest to the really simple. predictive fluke related doctor visits which just looked at the most recent data point and that proved to be better than big data what's to listen to listen is. in chino we shouldn't be impressed by very complex algorithms they work if the route is stable the flip side of

a complicated the modeling by multi-billion dollar multinational companies is the simplistic statements we get at press conferences when boris johnson here in britain says he's following the science how should we interpret that and is that an example of harris' fix i'm not sure. but it is always for science it's often just an excuse for following a certain direction with a certain thought for instance. currently we are the face 'd numbers numbers about new infections about death rates what's needed is an understanding where do these numbers come from most of the time the numbers of people would need a and a positive coronavirus test that means they die from the bones or

with the virus or some kind of mixture and this type of understanding is important to him to understand the beauty his fatality rates are but then does that mean that our scientists our top model has. infected by something i think you've said before that the human brain itself finds it more difficult to understand deaths over a longer time period than a shorter time period maybe a genetic pre-disposition been enhanced perhaps by social and economic priorities in a new your liberal europe suddenly it's in britain in the united states where the death toll appears we have to separate dislike a lot of the principles that make us feel. from the risk literacy a good understanding of numbers and also. from day or from a conflict of interest that ended the behavior of politicians so the

principle that make us fear they include the anxiety that is caused by threat risks at the same time it is not easy to elicit our fear from situations where as many and more people die distributed over the year for instance in germany we had 2 years ago an estimated 20000 deaths to do regular through 20000 that it can cause any big fuss or we haven't rolled part millions of people who die on too close or a 1000000000 of people who are on the. basically under under the brink of dying from poverty that doesn't drop much attention so it's certain things it is like the difference between. a plane crash which makes the media and cause it exciting and the steady toll of people dying on the roads wage

couldn't bother us where much so that's a kind of the psyche politicians when they were on the other hand. are in a difficult situation today and maybe if you look ready back today swine flu we can see a politician keen. for instance confronted with a disturbance flying through there was tamiflu which was supposed to help against a severe consequences of. swine flu but there was no evidence and has stood no evidence for that but the british government bought tamiflu and you can understand a politician can make 2 errors one is to not to buy it and then something happens and then it's your fault or to spend 2 taxpayers' money in the it

doesn't harm what's coming as it did it with a swine flu and that's more or less fired so this cook defensive decision making and at the end in the u.p.a. there was an estimated $65000.00 people who died from swine flu and it was it in less than $500.00 and the government. burned pritish pounds on medication where we had never proof that it actually helps i understand it was the same model that's being used there again in britain for corona virus just finally then do you think there's a class bias in risk analysis obviously over there in germany a much more equal country in terms of a gini coefficient. no doctors no frontline medical personnel have died from coronavirus here in britain apparently nearly 200 have been and of course

disproportionately it's been the poor and not the rich and i mean had by that what we have learned is certainly true many and compared to the u.k. is that i think of a model is that the idea here that a health system should be optimized is a fatal idea. sure many has been criticised over the years for having too many intensive care beds that weren't used all the time now we are glad that we are them so one chamber lesson is if you're dealing with a situation of uncertainty don't try to optimize or get past optimization is always on the past and if the future is difference you bust through the same listen hard beam drawn from the financial crisis we're being so optimized to

capital by value at risk our collations and in something unexpected happened then they go bust so we need to learn this uncertainty and it's different from cutlip of risk present gardner and i thank you it was a pleasure. after the break as communist china continues to report 0 daily death stooges coronavirus we ask the lord willing sociologist brigitte blackman if china's experience of western imperialism has shaped its approach to crisis a little more coming up in part 2 of going on the ground. join me every 1st day on the alex salmond show and i'll be speaking to guest of the world of politics or business i'm show business i'll see you then.

years ago there was a global solidarity to annihilate the scourge of caution from here the soviet union and its western allies prevailed against nazi germany today such global solidarity beside me dissing the current. in one wanks is very necessary solidarity. welcome back while in the 1st half we tried to help you understand risk based on official information given to you but if you don't trust what your government tells you today about saving your life from coronavirus here in britain it often falls to boris johnson's health secretary matt hangup to tell you how to live your life but he arguably has for more not being trusted here he is a story culture secretary accused at an official committee of misrepresenting the u.k.'s far reaching inquiry into ethics in journalism the so-called never seen

report that was sparked by u.k. media hacking of the phone of a murdered teenager you're a new secretary of state and you stood up in the house of commons and you represent it's a prime levasseur in this position and i think even misrepresented his position well so and i've told. why because supply leveson fundamentally disagreed with the government's conclusion and those are my words that there's a surprise in leveson his words so why should i believe you today because everything i said then was accurate and i. and i represented. the position of his letter as a whole that he believed that the inquiry should continue and i was standing up to explain the dying thought that taking everything into account all the changes since since the leveson inquiry all the changes in law all the changes the fact that it

so now exists i take them all to and into account i decided that the best thing is not to have a bad i know your position is all working quite well what i'm saying you know is that is that you mis represented subprime levasseur this position to the commons on the well that's your view we're not going to come to agreement on it i think i faithfully represents it as set out as as you read out and but i i understand i can see that you would rather avoid done it differently no what i would wrong would would be that you were straightforward and it's up to the british public to decide whether hancock is being straightforward about coronavirus today but his performance at the bryan leveson inquiry was widely seen as protecting the interests of britain's media all agog like rupert murdoch and the barclay brothers and today amidst a global pandemic britain's newspapers continue to be the least trusted across a european survey of $33.00 countries the united kingdom is below malta and north

of macedonia according to your a barometer in the past few days posing questions about what role inarguably captured media plays when tens of thousands of killed by disease britain of course is also one of the most an equal countries on that list and some media oligarchy may be feeling today that they're like 1st class passengers. on a sinking ship that's the title of a new book by new york sociologist professor richard lachman and i caught up with him to ask him about his book some titled elite politics and the decline of great power as richard welcome to going underground to tell me about the 1st class passengers in the sinking ship ok well this is a book that tries to explain why it is that the united states is in decline and i do it with historical comparisons to the 2 previous dominant powers britain and the netherlands and in essence what i find is that elites are able to grab

control of not just government resources but government powers and in that way it becomes more and more difficult for governments to make strategic decisions and allocate resources in ways that are needed to maintain global dominance i should say that in range there are whole numbers of empires that get discussed in the book but for you national decline cannot be stopped by just mass organizing no i think where mass organizing matters is what conditions of life will be like after the clyde will elites be able to become wealthier and wealthier and make more and more decisions or will the mass of people be able through electoral means or strikes or other sorts of mass mobilization to be able to demand improved social programs a more egalitarian society and with the debates between narrow elites controlling all policy within say the united states or or britain is it

a race then between climate change and the empire collapsing well i think the empire is collapsing regardless of climate change but the effects of climate change are certainly going to overwhelm many governments around the world and the question . it is whether in coming decades the u.s. government will have the so it's of resources and flexibility to be able to respond in ways that prevent mass suffering and so just to be clear we're talking about hedge of money was having sort of suicidal imperial. imperial instincts and there's no real rule for trade unions one little ponies while that's going on you know there there is a role for that their their role isn't to try to maintain their country's global dominance their role is to be sure that ordinary people are able to lead

decent lives and have a larger share of what working people actually are producing but in the context of this book if you want to say the democrat primary campaign a candidate perhaps like son does is is not going to be fit enough to be able to conquer the elite powers there will be trying to constrain even a slightly social democratic model i don't know health care for instance let alone these wider ideas about and the imperialism really the only good news is that sociologists are very bad at being able to predict mass movements they wrapped in ways that we really can't predict so you know that certainly is a possibility and there is levels of despair and anger in this country that should provoke widespread social movements whether those will happen in the next few years

i'm not sure but that's really the one way in which the shape of decline can be shifted away from. most people just being more and more miserable and elites getting richer and richer toward one where the decline continues the u.s. is no longer a dog. and global power but ordinary americans lead much happier and more decent lives ok so we shouldn't be really reading the book as a as a manual then but you do appear to be saying that whereas big movements of the working class in the united states have been left to the wayside have declined china and india have learnt from the imperial power over those countries by britain by the united states and that in a way is is one of the reasons they are a ascending during this decline in. yeah i mean certainly the historical

pattern is the countries that are rising learning how to produce things how to order their economies how to build their governments by looking at the ones that were previously most successful but i think we're at a real turning point in global history that over the past 500 years of capitalism when one dominant power lost control there was that a struggle among a couple of rising ones and then 11 out and became the new dominant power i think now we're going to be entering an era where there won't be at jamaat anymore that you know it doesn't seem that china or india will achieve that at least in the next decades and we're going to have a world that where there's much more flux you know little about presumably the decline in funding for amtrak your national railway system moving here they're talking about a high speed rail way system that china has already offered to build in 5 years

much less than britain is focusing on for less money what kind of pressure can donald trump put on powers that seek their infrastructure being built by china say which it is actually with 5 g. in this country huawei. through the phone down on boris johnson here can can the united states try and prevent infrastructure projects being built by the perhaps future hedge amman's like china i think the u.s. will try but it's going to fail and if trump gets reelected i think countries around the world at that point are going to decide that they have to move very decisively to try the order of their economic and geo political affairs so that they have much less to do with the united states you know when bush was 1st elected in invaded iraq i think many people around the world thought this was just a fluke and that obama came in and there is the view well the united states is back

to normal and drums 1st election was seen as another fluke but if he gets reelected i think the reality will sink in the presidents like bush and trump are the norm for the united states and obama is the brief exception and so they're going to have to figure out how they can organize themselves so that when their future trumps the it doesn't affect them as much as it does now and one of the ways to do that is to exclude the united states as much as possible. obama was a was a wartime president to seem. to the global south how does the media play into your thesis about elite power the well in 2 ways i mean one the the media very narrowly 0 and in the united states and with the end of the new deal regulatory system where you have the fairness doctrine add limits and how many

stations can be owned by any one company that you have a move away from media that are locally based and have to give air to a variety of views to these sorts of ideological networks like fox that could have stations covering the entire united states and just present a single party line without having to offer alternative viewpoints and so between that and a couple of companies dominating the internet people are the day to day basis exposed to much narrower points of view that are much more open to manipulation and so it makes it harder to. real debates. you know what alternative points of view there are for the most part confined to sort of narrow alternative media the unfortunately don't give very much of an audience and then while working

class organizations organizers try and retain what little they have left after the 28 graces would rule do you think sabotage amidst elites can play in trying to create a a better world within the elites as it were but i mean certainly historically conflict among the leads provides an opening for the mass of people to achieve political victories i think what we're seeing now is not really conflicts among the leads in the u.s. but rather various the leads gaining total control over narrow sectors of the economy and being able to block government from interfering with. that sort of structure doesn't really provide much of an opening for. non elites to play of significant political role unfortunately so would the idea be to smuggle

oneself into the lead to i don't know huge political violence rather than peaceful political organization. i mean i don't think that's going to help very much and historically in the us when there's been violence from below after kids to violence antiwar violence in the 1960 s. that's backfired and it's led to a turn to the right so that has never been a successful strategy i think you know the only thing that can be done is to make the effort to try to organize however hard it is and probably the best place to put that in is in trying to rebuild unions that would be the probably most effective strategy in the united states that. reza richard like went thank you it's a pleasure to talk with you. professor richard lachman speaking to me there and his book 1st class passengers on the sinking ship and the politics of the

decline of great powers is out now that's over the show we'll be back on wednesday with needing human rights lawyer geoffrey robertson q.c. to discuss the legal ramifications all through the virus when it comes to civil liberties i think. the world's most famous publisher julian assange until then wash your hands and join me on the ground by following up on you tube twitter facebook sounds that instagram. the world is driven by a dream shaped by one person. who dares thinks. we dare to ask.

about is the. police. operation in. some of the wealthier neighborhoods it's far more contained in the numbers are much lower than some of the more a neighborhood start to see if anything we're working with can source outside of the state is there just so 'd it's here so i think that it was. something.