Coronavirus, Correlation & Causation

Martin Jenkins uses the virus to test our knowledge of causation.

- Martin Jenkins

Because of the coronavirus, the skies are bluer, and my vision has improved.

Do those assertions sound crazy? Well, they probably do; but I can demonstrate that they are, if not literally true, logically justifiable. It is an undoubted scientific fact that one result of the lockdown was a severe reduction in travel – both flights and on the ground. As a result, pollution levels have dropped significantly, and so the sky is bluer than usual for want of haze. Also, that lack of haze means that I can look out of my bedroom window, and, for the first time in thirty-four years, see clearly to the horizon –in my case, several miles away in north London. So my vision has improved, in the sense that I can see further than I used to.

Now if we choose to be pedantic, it could be said that these effects are not caused by Covid-19 but by our response to it. But on the other hand, if Covid-19 hadn’t happened, our response of less traffic would not have happened, and so the effects would not have happened; so the effects lie at the end of a chain of causation which begins with Covid-19. In other words, without Covid19, these things would not have happened, so it is legitimate to describe Covid-19 as (in some sense) the cause of these effects.