University of Auckland Professor Ananish Chaudhuri on Covid-19 policy decisions, their implications, lockdowns and cognitive biases in pandemic decision-making.

Professor Ananish Chaudhuri says that a single-minded focus on the pandemic may have prevented deaths due to Covid-19 but at the cost of much higher deaths from other causes.
 

The researcher, who recently published a book on the subject titled Nudged into Lockdown? Behavioural Economics, Uncertainty and Covid-19, provides a critical perspective on the role of cognitive biases in decision-making during the Covid-19 pandemic drawing on research in economics, psychology, political science, neuroscience and evolutionary theory.
 

Chaudhuri examines the impacts of lockdowns on economies and the public and says the aggregate costs of lockdowns far exceeded any benefits, both in Aotearoa New Zealand and other countries around the world.
 

“Worldwide, there was tremendous emphasis on calling upon epidemiological expertise without an adequate appreciation that Covid-19 was not merely an epidemiological crisis; it was an economic, social and moral crisis that required multi-disciplinary expertise to assess and address different facets of the pandemic,” he says.

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