What is more virtuous, delivering a pizza or administering a Covid test? As we begin to end lockdown, we discuss who was most helpful during this difficult period.

In this podcast, we examine how data can be used to assess the societal value of different jobs. We look at the Covid risk exposure of different roles, consider whether salary is a good indicator of value, and explore where duty ends and altruism begins. Finally, we ask whether heroism can ever truly be measured.

A few things we mentioned in this podcast:

• Death rates by occupation (National Statistics)
• Wages by occupation (National Statistics)

For more information on Aleph Insights visit our website https://alephinsights.com or to get in touch about our podcast email [email protected]

Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me Fraser McGruer for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Peter Coghill and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights and this week we're discussing who are the real heroes of lockdown. Nick, who are the real heroes of lockdown? Yeah well um... Podcast producers,

yes. Exactly. We kept the economy going single-handed. Yeah I mean you don't have to be much of a news hound to have noticed that we've had this lockdown going on for some time now and we haven't all died, some of us have, but we haven't you know the economy's more or less kept going you know rather somewhat surprisingly I think. We've all been stuck at home and yet you know the deliveries have kept arriving, the restaurants have been delivering, the local shops have been fully stocked. Really apart from being in your house a lot, it doesn't seem that things have got substantially worse out there on the front lines in the NHS. We've got you know obviously people shock a block in you know intensive care, we've got the health workers all over the place working at home, teachers delivering lessons, it's you know it's all a bit hectic isn't it? And everyone knows that the real heroes of lockdown are the public service workers, the nurses and the doctors who are out there treating patients. Well I want to know if that's true because you know a lot of people have been out there doing work and a lot of people have been catching Covid and you know if we were to ask the question who should we be clapping for, would it be the NHS? How could we measure, how can we think about what what heroism during lockdown is and who are the people who you know take the top spot that's that's the question. Okay I suspect you've done a bit of research. I think you've done a bit of research. I have found some interesting data actually but I think before we get onto the data let's just try the rampant speculation. Yeah well that's my as you know that's my approach to

analysis so if it served you well as a method. Yeah I'll do all right. Yeah I mean if we put aside if we put aside NHS workers for a moment the big ones are delivery drivers right that's a big one

delivery drivers who else? Well I mean who has made your life better in lockdown? Start with that. I mean you personally there you are stuck in your in your mansion house at the end of a big long driveway in rural Lincolnshire. Your domestic staff have worked ceaselessly in many cases unable to see their families for nine months at a stretch. But they know that it's worth a sacrifice for the

greater McGruer good. The people at the corner shop people at corner shop they're really good I mean they've kept going and I guess sort of I look one of the things is underneath there must be all sorts of stuff going on right because yes my delivery driver is the person I see yes the person who serves me in the corner shop is the person I see but there's all sorts of supply and

distribution stuff going on underneath there right. Yeah I've never been more aware I guess of the hidden workings of the economy you know things turn up you order them and they turn up it's a staggering achievement you know the modern logistics network surely has to be a wonder of

the world. Yeah yeah quite and yeah and also just to sort of personalize it almost there's to put this you know in an immediate context I don't know how much I can talk about this or not let's talk about it in general terms. Lots of creatives are struggling because no one's giving them any gigs. People in my industry their jobs are becoming much more technical and they're becoming much more sort of AV supporting sort of stuff like so helping people get in the VTC when their computer

doesn't work. Yeah exactly yeah I guess people who run online video conferencing services

yeah you know so that's my initial speculation that's a I don't know if you just want to you you know leave the sort of vague analysis. I'm going to put a shout out for you know people

people I'm not the first to say this but they don't immediately spring to mind but people who are in a lot of contact with with the public and not necessarily through their own choice but so the supermarket drivers who's there but the supermarket staff people have been keeping the point of sale operating making sure everyone's fed and always constantly exposed to a very large number of the public just wandering in and out so those people thank you and another big thanks I think you go to the companies and the people running the testing centers and now the immunization centers so they're again they are probably possibly the highest risk because they are seeing perhaps hundreds of people a day and who are probably symptomatic of something so there's they're they usually would go and get a test if you feel ill so you're probably the probably a large number of COVID carriers going to these testing centers so those people deserve a shout out I think but I'd be interested in drilling down past in a minute but when we stop when we got the general bit over but how you know how do we how can we measure what hero what hero-ness

is in this sense yeah because actually if you're getting paid for what you're doing and if what you're doing is what you would be doing anyway you know like teaching or something the question is is that heroic you know can we can we look at something like the the additional risk you might be taking on by doing your job that's that's one of the things you might think you know so so like people who are kind of well I guess the the more you're paid it feels a bit like the less heroic that is uh you know if you all other things being equal that um that's you uh you know the higher the more risk perhaps your job exposes you to um the more heroic you are uh are some thoughts

okay so hold on so we're just going to two things there because one is we're just talking about who's just generally useful and who do we need to keep everything you know to keep the show on the road

well I'm not I'm the thing is about wages is you know the thing is that if you assume the labour market is functioning properly actually highly paid people are producing more so in one sense they're more valuable I mean literally more valuable in the sense that they are being paid more and you would therefore assume doing something more valuable um but it feels like it's the other way around you know that actually if you're if you're doing a job where you're not paid very well and still yet exposed to um you know some risk from covid it feels like that's you know you deserve a bit a bit more of a congratulations well that's where we're getting to the question

is actually taken quite seriously as the hero thing the hero-ness sorry Peter and as well

as I think it was yesterday there's been a one percent pay rise uh proposed by the government for nursing staff um so they don't feel perhaps not feeling terribly valued today yeah by the

way we haven't talked about politicians perhaps the real heroes of lockdown um okay are we ready

for the for the reveal Boris Johnson had died and god forbid that should have happened but god forbid that should have happened then um then MP being an MP would actually have uh become the most dangerous profession in Britain in terms of death rates from covid but thank thank the lord

that that didn't you know well have there been any MPs who died have died no I believe not uh

I don't think so um well not in not in Britain I don't think anyway but but listen I've looked at some data yeah let's hear it and an MPs not dying should not be surprising anyway because here are the top level stats right uh so in in Britain we've had about 125 000 deaths in total now how many of those deaths would you say have been of working people um ten percent of them do you think ten percent Peter you got a instinct as to how many what percentage of covid deaths have been people who are working so in the workforce people are working I'd say really quite low I'd say probably one percent yeah Peter's closer so it's 4 225 deaths this was a I think at the end of last year so in fact it's almost exactly four percent of covid death so I'd say the first absolute number one answer is old people if you're an old person and you've done and you've done anything other than sit on your arse then you yes I think you deserve I mean so old people who've I don't know maybe looked after grandkids uh or done any well that's they're probably not allowed probably shouldn't have done that but you know the thing is that if you're an old person just going outside um you know being in any contact with people would have been uh very risky but um so well yeah I don't know so I mean maybe uh old Captain Tom Moore maybe he does deserve a bit of adulation for going outside he could have been hit with a covid particle and uh you know so so anyway yeah let's so the data I've looked at is those four thousand or so people who died in

jobs so that's okay but hold on so let's just just before you do so what we're talking about because I thought what we were talking about is you know who the people have managed to keep the economy going right is to keep the wheels turning right but I guess what you're talking about there is more like well if we look at people who've worked and have died and therefore in risky jobs

then well I mean an economy a modern economy is if you assume that the economy is in equilibrium everyone is doing something valuable anyone who's doing a job is doing something that somebody wants to pay for and and it's it's very hard to say that the pound you pay for your baked beans is a more valuable pound than the pound you pay for your you know Netflix subscription it's it's you you value them all equally you know uh if in economic economic equilibrium if if if if you liked Netflix subscriptions more than you like beans you'd be spending more on Netflix subscriptions the price would go up accordingly you know demand would go up resources would be funneled into into streaming services and and the supply of baked beans would fall so I think I'm not sure it's possible to to answer that question of you know which thing is most essential I think you what you can say is that you know if if um when when GDP if you imagine GDP you know output as a big slider um the the the more you slide it up the more we produce things like Netflix you know the more the more we produce luxuries um if we were to slide that slider right down we would we would be producing you know fuel and food and uh not much else um but so you know I don't think any given any given time yeah so so that's I I think that's a difficult question to define I know what you're getting at but I'm not sure it makes sense but anyway National Statistics shout out to them always trying to big them up they really are an absolutely premium National Statistics service and they uh produce data tables which show you death rates by occupation and it's really quite fascinating so I have what I've done is I've I've looked at that they're um also divided by sex as well so they give you male and female occupation death rates right so these are what's called the minor occupation which is the the lowest level you can go to it's a it's a four digit number there's a few hundred uh separate um separate occupations and um yeah if I were to say I mean I've I've got like the anyone here has a death rate of 100 or more anyone on my list and there's about 20 people on that list 20 occupations on that list so death rate of 100 or more per 100,000 so these these are occupations where you're one in a thousand or more of them died which is pretty high um uh the who who's in there who do you think's up there at the top you who's got the highest

death rates professions okay I'm gonna I'm gonna say it's those sort of public facing the ones that Peter was talking about like the point of delivery people like in a shop the someone like that possibly this is gonna be skewed by age though isn't it anyway yeah good point yeah so

you're also looking for people yeah but I mean you know if there's a profession yeah if there's a profession which is dominated by old people then aren't those old people still being more heroic if they're exposed to you know if they're exposed to risks of covid anyway that you're not far off right in that um number right I'll get to number one in a minute because I I think there's something weird that I've unearthed either the stats are wrong and they've put a decimal place there but um we'll get to that in a minute or something really strange is happening that's worthy of investigation but um so number two on the list landlords pub landlords which is death rate pubs have been shut down a lot but anyway go on death rate of nearly two percent nearly two thousand two uh yeah two thousand and a hundred thousand isn't that amazing that's amazingly high

I think yeah so sorry I just interrupt I think also because there's other sort of factors at play like pub landlords are often quite overweight and and don't always live the healthiest of lifestyles they might be older they might be they might be older yeah I think there's other things going on there but yeah sorry go on um yeah so I mean what was the absolute number of

so uh one thousand uh sorry the death rate I don't I don't actually have the number of deaths right

here there's so there's not many of them and it's a sort of statistical anomaly yeah that that I

can I can probably look it up but it's but it's uh one thousand eight hundred out of a hundred thousand which is you know a lot um yeah that's nearly two percent what we're saying is that nearly two percent of landlords okay well just died of covid I've just googled so there are

47 000 pubs in the UK so if you're assuming there's one landline per pub that's quite that is quite a large profession there's quite a lot of people doing that and and and yeah so that's then then

it's then it's butchers policemen and I say police men because it is police men police women have got a much lower death rate okay so um restaurant and catering establishment managers hairdressers and barbers and only then do we get to what you might think of as the classic you know uh sort of frontline health people it's their care workers and home carers um and and then some other bank and post office clerks um chefs taxi cab drivers they're they're all people I would consider to have a really quite high death rate so this is you know one in a thousand or more um teachers teachers or nurses who's higher on that list I'd imagine teachers and you'll you'd be right they're 60th secondary school teachers are 60th on that list and nurses who we never stop hearing about are 90th on that list so so I think that's very surprising pay rise away let's start logging for that one percent they should be paying it back they should be giving it to pub landlords anyway so so uh the the other thing I did was um I looked at now this is slightly convoluted but but let's assume let's so I also got data for wages average wages for each of these occupations um and uh I converted the weekly risk so you get weekly wages here I converted the weekly risk of dying from covid to of cash value right which sounds mental but actually it sort of makes sense it's you know you can use that as a way of sort of measuring people's willingness to pay to avoid risk and so on um and I used the figure of 1.8

million pounds did you tell us who was number one on the list are we coming to that we're still

no no sorry no you're right you're absolutely right uh so the surprising number one from death rates is bakers bakers not only that but their death rate is two and a half times that of the next person down the the pub landlords now the hypothesis number one um the numbers are just wrong and it should say 70 instead of 715 per hundred thousand hypothesis number two working with flour makes you more more liable to die of covid or getting a doctor well I yeah it could be but I but it's you know is it maybe you know it's possible isn't it that that breathing in flour all day

does something weird to your lungs anyway so both ends of the you got the early workers and you got the late workers there as well number one and number two but um but anyway yeah go on so then

um uh then I converted that to a cash value and said well how many what's the net pay that's left over when you take off the covid death tax as it were you know the the probability of dying using this figure of 1.8 million pounds for a life and um uh top of the list

lollipop ladies wait I don't understand what you've done here so I understand you're trying

to work out let me put it this way yeah waiters and waitresses on average earn 135 pounds a week okay very little a lot of them are part-time but they earn 135 pounds a week but they have a very high covid death rate yeah which is the equivalent if you take a life as valued at 1.8 million pounds it's the equivalent of 40 pounds a week being lost by working in that profession you know your probability of dying working in that profession assuming that your life is worth 1.8 million pounds is is 40 quid a week so when you when you take that 40 quid off to see what they're left with by continuing working they're getting their wage fine but remember that 40 quid of that is compensating them for the covid sort of death probability then they're only earning 95 quid a week and and therefore I are top of my list for um for for covid heroes yeah lollipop ladies and waiters and waitresses lollipop ladies get an unfair start by being paid so little in the first place but but even you know factoring in the covid deaths um and and so yeah when you when you do it like that it's actually the same bunch of people it's it's um uh your waiters and waitresses bar staff play workers cleaners and domestics kitchen and catering assistants beauticians florists basically it's poorly paid public facing people and and so I'm there that's my vote for the real heroes of lockdown is anyone who worked in a shop or a pub and and you know a lot of the year they weren't working right were they so they've also suffered from not having a job and that you can't say that of the nhs I mean they've been their business has been great for the nhs so okay and so on that list by the way nurses are 325th so um there's a lot of people who deserve our praise and I'm not saying nurses don't deserve praise but I'm saying let's put it in contact context yeah

okay so that's that's really illuminating um okay so well that's it we've done it right those are the heroes we've on the on that on the nh scale of measurability of hero-ness on your scale nick

where do people like us sit where do people that's worrying I I'd have to I oh um let me just let me just have a look at the uh list of of occupations I think would we be uh chief executives and senior

officials I suppose so in sort of legal terms but no we're probably more close to like a sort of manager or uh like uh if there's a professional freelancer or something like that I think we're

in I think we'd be more well there's there's um how about information like uh uh there's design and development engineers there's information technology telecommunications professionals

I think Peter is a design and development engineer well you may not actually be but that's what we're gonna call him but no I know you don't think that I think what you like never is

well let's let's pretend we're chief executives let's pretend we're chief executives because we are for goodness sake we're directors yeah so um uh let me just look that up so that would be

yeah because you actually you need the opposite so we want to continue this um scale to the other

end yeah and find who are the non-heroes yeah well unfortunately there's a lot of people who just have sort of zero as their death rate because I suspect either no one's died in that profession or um or there's just the numbers are so small that they can't report the number or something but um that's still that's still indicative of that's good that right so chief executives are on this list uh sorry uh yeah they they're about 530th in in my list of uh because they get paid they get paid well yeah um so they don't deserve as much praise in in my in my zany calculus

so if you don't want to be a hero and you know that's what in the films that you watch right like the the wife or girlfriend waves off her lover and goes don't be a hero right just when when when when it gets kinetic just get out of there right yeah so um so therefore definitely

yeah I there are a lot of people I don't have I mean there is just isn't any data for but yeah if we do want to look at the bottom of the list of people where there is data it's chief executives oh yeah you know what's brilliant right at the bottom of that right lawyers oh yeah this is brilliant this is like a rogues gallery of scumbags then it's marketing and sales directors um financial managers and directors um and then there's uh yeah medical practitioners remarkably really near the bottom um and uh and senior police officers basically senior people it's it's frontline but what we're saying is that if you've been hiding in a back office directing things if you've been if you've been helping by staying out of the way then you haven't you haven't really been contributing very much um no I mean it is worth saying that obviously none of this tells us anything about the sort of you know value in terms of the sort of non-marketable value and I would I mean things like the people people who invented the vaccine for example I mean they're not they're not priced in you know what they what they've invented is probably worth vastly more than they're being paid for Peter you're gonna say something

yeah just the virtue of what they have contributed which is a much more uh social uh value than the

monetary value and actually something that you've both hit upon there actually is sometimes we can because certainly you Nick are an economist um you know so often we do sort of our discussions are often framed in economic terms but um but you've you know you sort of realized that and you you know sort of stepped outside that box for a moment um look we need to stop um before we do

one last shout before we always yeah yeah I think uh an unsung hero is all the people who have diligently stuck by the lockdown rules I mean they the contribution has been minimal um but they by doing that they have helped curb the spread of the virus so that that is worth

praising itself so the real heroes of people are the kids in their basement who've been playing call of duty playing call of duty yeah keeping out of the way really I have been helping by keeping

out of the way yeah and people like me with my backside to the uh grindstone of the sofa just going through all sopranos episodes and you know but I'm not a quitter I will you know I'm a well look I'm not going to say this others might use this word I'm not going to say this but some might say hero but I I think I think you deserve that moniker yeah and a medal um okay I don't think I haven't got anything pithy is that okay unless you've got if you're if you're

a fine if you're a lawyer who's been going out and seeing clients and going to wine bars then you're the lowest of the low with that much and it's not me saying that it's the data saying that

yeah yeah all right so we'll stop there that was really really I like that a lot I was excited to hear about who was top of the list but even more exciting and revealing was bottom of the list so I like that um the non-heroes that we couldn't even put yeah and they're definitely not anti-heroes um okay so we'll stop there if you've got any thoughts or suggestions for topics you can email us at podcast at alephinsights.com and we'd love to hear from you also um if you've enjoyed the podcast what should listeners do Nick they should definitely smash that like button they should smash that like button you should smash like that like button so don't forget to like and follow us on your chosen streaming service uh we'll stop there thanks as always for listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast I'm Fraser McGruer we've been here with non-heroes Nick Hare and Peter Coghill of Aleph Insights um until next time goodbye that was fun I like the lawyer's bit