Covid19, governments, lies and science

Confession time – for years I have referred to ex-UK PM Tony Blair as T Bliar because of the role he played in leading us into the Iraq war on the basis of the lies he spread about Hussein’s possession of “Weapons of Mass Destruction”.

But Blair is an innocent compared to current British Prime Minister Boris Johnston – renowned throughout the world for the apparently temperamental inability his entire career has demonstrated of being unable to distinguish truth from reality.

This is nowhere more obvious than in the constant refrain Johnson has offered, throughout the Covid pandemic, of simply “following the science”. The 3Quarks Daily site offers today the best putdown of this defence 

Since Covid became an epidemic it is no longer a merely scientific problem. Dealing with it requires balancing conflicting values and the interests of multitudes of people and organisations. This is an essentially political challenge that scientists lack the conceptual apparatus or legitimacy to address.

Epidemiologists can inform the political process but not replace it. In particular, they can advise governments on the sources of risk and the projected levels of risk associated with different Covid policies.

However, as we have seen in the various approaches to lockdown and rollback around the world, how governments address Covid does not follow directly from their different epidemiological circumstances. Governments make two specific political choices well or badly:

-       how much Covid risk to tolerate and

-       how that risk ‘budget’ should be allocated between competing social needs and interest groups.

 

First governments must decide how much Covid matters to them, i.e. how far to prioritise controlling the epidemic relative to their other priorities, such as economic prosperity, other aspects of public health, and their own political survival.

The health of the general population will never be the only concern, and this is entirely reasonable and moral in a world of trade-offs (or we would all demand a speed limit of 10 mph on our roads). This does not mean that we cannot criticise the specific trade-offs a government chooses to make ‘on our behalf’, for example if it seems to value its own political survival far above the lives of citizens.

Closely connected to how much to care is the question of how rosy a view of the risks to take, i.e. whether to plan for the best or worst case scenarios posited by epidemiologists. Together this exercise generates what may be called a ‘risk budget’.

 

Second, governments must decide how to allocate their risk budget among a society’s competing needs and interests. Whatever precautions individuals follow, all physical interactions carry some risk of transmission and hence of raising R nought. Which interactions are worth that risk?

For example, should the airline industry, the hospitality sector, or schools get to resume something like normal services, and thereby resume serving those who depend on them (such as children and working parents), while imposing risks on those who work in them (such as teachers)?

Because there is a limited amount of normality to go around, who gets to enjoy its benefits or suffer its consequences is a matter of intense political competition. One would hope that the political system would prioritise those whose interests have the greatest moral claims and/or generate the greatest net beneficial impact. For example, in person schooling is of great direct and indirect value to children, and also frees up working parents to do all the things we would like them to do, like run ICUs. In contrast, in person university teaching is entirely dispensable except for a handful of vocational subjects like nursing.

 

However we all know that even in the best of times and the best democracies, risks are distributed rather more according to a political than a moral logic, i.e. those groups least able to resist end up holding the shortest straw. Hence the fact that noxious and dangerous facilities like highways, refineries, incinerators and so on are much more likely to be sited in poor and minority neighbourhoods. So it is not surprising that even democratic governments who can legitimately appeal to the public interest are vulnerable to political resentment from those who lose out from Covid risk rationing, especially as time passes and their costs mount.

 

Governments pass from being seen as saviours into callous and arbitrary gatekeepers controlling who gets access to the suddenly precious domain of business as usual. People lose their jobs and fear losing their homes; business owners lose their shirts; families lose the chance to say goodbye to dying relatives; and so on just because of the rules set by the government. Set us free! they cry. 

Covid can’t be worse than this! Ironically, this challenge is only possible because of the success that Covid risk rationing achieved in preventing far more infections and deaths. It thus invokes the paradox of expertise in which the absence of catastrophe counts as evidence that there was no real catastrophe to evade, rather than as evidence that it has successfully been evaded by following the experts’ advice (elsewhere).