Now that western governments are scrambling to approve and deploy vaccines, it must be the beginning of the end of the pandemic in the west, and I am glad of that. But I am concerned that I don’t have a coherent understanding of so much of what happened this year.
Mainstream media reporting is a jumble of anecdotes and numbers without context, but overall their big picture is that this is a disaster and we should all obey the public health restrictions until the authorities tell us that it’s over and we’re safe.
I have a sociological explanation for why this is the mainstream narrative: As the Trump/Brexit years of western populism have made clear, western mainstream media speak from a particular class standpoint—I could describe it as ‘boardroom progressivism’ - and the vaguely upper-middle-class stratum who are the social base for this worldview, are the social class who are least affected by the lockdowns—information-age professionals who are happy to work from home, and who can afford to do so for long periods. They can afford an approach of maximal precaution, and so the media and politicians who represent them, are all about erring on the side of caution, having lots of restrictions and keeping those restrictions for as long as it takes.
(This explanation could be wrong; I don’t belong to this class, this is just my attempt to read between the lines.)
Meanwhile, in social media one may find the contrarians who maintain that there has been an enormous overreaction. I find this plausible, but that raises the question, what would have been a commensurate reaction; especially when one takes into account the uncertainty which existed in the early days. E.g. suppose that a public health strategy of vitamin D for the masses and ‘focused protection’ for the vulnerable would have been a viable and far less costly alternative to the lockdowns; what are the odds that someone could have figured it out in time?
One of the key issues in the debate between the mainstream and the contrarians, is that most of Covid’s victims have been elderly. I think we all know the argument: that tens of millions of people who are at almost no risk from Covid, are making major sacrifices to protect other people who are at the end of their lives anyway. I find it hard to think straight about this. I’m a transhumanist who would like to see aged care homes become rejuvenation centers, so in principle I’m in favor of more life for the elderly, but obviously the masterminds of contemporary public health policy are not coming from this position. The critics of the mainstream Covid policy say, flu season always kills many of the old and infirm, but we never before shut down society to prevent this from happening, so why do it now?
There is not only a normative question here, the question of the right policy; there is also a simple question of fact: how and why did lockdowns become the default response to Covid? I could say that it caters to the alleged hegemonic social class of boardroom progressives that I mentioned, but I’m not sure I believe that’s the reason… Alex Berenson has written a small book on the origin of the lockdown strategy. I haven’t read it, but it sounds important for those wanting to understand how that became the standard response worldwide.
There’s a lot that I puzzle over, this is just part of it. Meanwhile, Zvi has worked hard to give us detailed numbers for America and an analysis of what they mean. At some point I’ll have to re-read his entire sequence from the beginning, and see what big picture it implies.
Lockdowns aren’t actually good for the PMCs, they’re just less bad. That being the case, the default explanation that lockdowns are to protect the elderly holds.
Let’s suppose we’re trying to understand why almost every society on Earth engaged in unprecedented society-wide lockdowns, over a virus which is certainly highly lethal e.g. for people in their 80s, but which is mostly harmless for people in the prime of life.
I like the theory above—that the lockdowns are to protect the elderly—because of its simplicity. If it’s true, it should be possible to present an account of what happened in 2020, in which that thought and intention is central.
But to develop that account, further nuances need to be brought out. For example, if we focus just on western countries for a moment, would the more nuanced explanation be, that it was largely about protecting the parents of the progressive managerial class? (is that what PMC stands for?) - in the sense that this is the social stratum whose sensibilities make the difference between one policy and another, in many cases.
But then we would want to explain that countries as different as China, India, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa also engaged in lockdowns. Was the same logic at work in all of them? But in East Asia they also had the experience of the far more lethal 2003 SARS (and, it now occurs to me, Saudi may have had the analogous experience of MERS, to encourage swift severe lockdowns).
With respect to global use of lockdowns, I think WHO and the G20 did a lot to encourage it, so that would be part of the chain of cause and effect… And another aspect of understanding how the year unfolded, would be to think of the public health response in each country, as something constantly in evolution, and also contested.
So maybe my provisional explanation is that there was a convergence of practice between SARS-terrified Asia and the elites of the information-age West, and that this then became a new global norm via bodies like WHO and G-20.
The unprecedented part is the global,not the lockdowns. Staying inside during plagues is well attested historically.
But to develop that account, further nuances need to be brought out
Maybe, you are not really saying what is is wrong with the simple account. You keep harping on about the professional managerial classes, but you still don’t have evidence that lockdowns are benefitting them, or that they are not benefitting the relatives of poorer people.
Wanting to make sacrifices to protect your elderly relatives is not weird.
you still don’t have evidence that lockdowns are benefitting them
I was struck by the case of a political columnist who tweeted an appeal to ordinary people, to just let their businesses fail, rather than risk orphaning their kids; while she herself went about organizing a new online business venture involving dozens of colleagues.
Lockdowns are hardest on those who are already vulnerable, and on people who can’t work from home. But digital society is run by affluent people who spend their working days in front of a computer. It makes sense that they would be much less sensitive to the drawbacks of a stay-at-home policy.
And it still doesn’t follow from that , that anything untoward is going on.
The events match the narrative where the
evil PMCs screw everyone else over, but they also match the narrative where lockdowns are the best solution for everybody.
At this point, I am not trying to show that lockdowns were an overreaction, so much as I am just trying to understand why events unfolded as they did.
How did the idea of a national lockdown enter public health contingency plans all over the world? (the idea existed before Covid, but I think people usually envisaged it as a response to a much deadlier pandemic). What are the attributes of Covid which made people regard it as dangerous enough to warrant national lockdowns? (e.g. a lethal respiratory disease, of a kind for which no vaccines existed). What made national lockdowns the global norm? (e.g. was it because WHO advised it and many countries follow WHO recommendations, or was it more a matter of public health officials in diverse countries independently coming to the same conclusion, because it really was the appropriate response).
So, just seeking the basic cause and effect of how the global pandemic response unfolded.
Now that western governments are scrambling to approve and deploy vaccines, it must be the beginning of the end of the pandemic in the west, and I am glad of that. But I am concerned that I don’t have a coherent understanding of so much of what happened this year.
Mainstream media reporting is a jumble of anecdotes and numbers without context, but overall their big picture is that this is a disaster and we should all obey the public health restrictions until the authorities tell us that it’s over and we’re safe.
I have a sociological explanation for why this is the mainstream narrative: As the Trump/Brexit years of western populism have made clear, western mainstream media speak from a particular class standpoint—I could describe it as ‘boardroom progressivism’ - and the vaguely upper-middle-class stratum who are the social base for this worldview, are the social class who are least affected by the lockdowns—information-age professionals who are happy to work from home, and who can afford to do so for long periods. They can afford an approach of maximal precaution, and so the media and politicians who represent them, are all about erring on the side of caution, having lots of restrictions and keeping those restrictions for as long as it takes.
(This explanation could be wrong; I don’t belong to this class, this is just my attempt to read between the lines.)
Meanwhile, in social media one may find the contrarians who maintain that there has been an enormous overreaction. I find this plausible, but that raises the question, what would have been a commensurate reaction; especially when one takes into account the uncertainty which existed in the early days. E.g. suppose that a public health strategy of vitamin D for the masses and ‘focused protection’ for the vulnerable would have been a viable and far less costly alternative to the lockdowns; what are the odds that someone could have figured it out in time?
One of the key issues in the debate between the mainstream and the contrarians, is that most of Covid’s victims have been elderly. I think we all know the argument: that tens of millions of people who are at almost no risk from Covid, are making major sacrifices to protect other people who are at the end of their lives anyway. I find it hard to think straight about this. I’m a transhumanist who would like to see aged care homes become rejuvenation centers, so in principle I’m in favor of more life for the elderly, but obviously the masterminds of contemporary public health policy are not coming from this position. The critics of the mainstream Covid policy say, flu season always kills many of the old and infirm, but we never before shut down society to prevent this from happening, so why do it now?
There is not only a normative question here, the question of the right policy; there is also a simple question of fact: how and why did lockdowns become the default response to Covid? I could say that it caters to the alleged hegemonic social class of boardroom progressives that I mentioned, but I’m not sure I believe that’s the reason… Alex Berenson has written a small book on the origin of the lockdown strategy. I haven’t read it, but it sounds important for those wanting to understand how that became the standard response worldwide.
There’s a lot that I puzzle over, this is just part of it. Meanwhile, Zvi has worked hard to give us detailed numbers for America and an analysis of what they mean. At some point I’ll have to re-read his entire sequence from the beginning, and see what big picture it implies.
Lockdowns aren’t actually good for the PMCs, they’re just less bad. That being the case, the default explanation that lockdowns are to protect the elderly holds.
Let’s suppose we’re trying to understand why almost every society on Earth engaged in unprecedented society-wide lockdowns, over a virus which is certainly highly lethal e.g. for people in their 80s, but which is mostly harmless for people in the prime of life.
I like the theory above—that the lockdowns are to protect the elderly—because of its simplicity. If it’s true, it should be possible to present an account of what happened in 2020, in which that thought and intention is central.
But to develop that account, further nuances need to be brought out. For example, if we focus just on western countries for a moment, would the more nuanced explanation be, that it was largely about protecting the parents of the progressive managerial class? (is that what PMC stands for?) - in the sense that this is the social stratum whose sensibilities make the difference between one policy and another, in many cases.
But then we would want to explain that countries as different as China, India, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa also engaged in lockdowns. Was the same logic at work in all of them? But in East Asia they also had the experience of the far more lethal 2003 SARS (and, it now occurs to me, Saudi may have had the analogous experience of MERS, to encourage swift severe lockdowns).
With respect to global use of lockdowns, I think WHO and the G20 did a lot to encourage it, so that would be part of the chain of cause and effect… And another aspect of understanding how the year unfolded, would be to think of the public health response in each country, as something constantly in evolution, and also contested.
So maybe my provisional explanation is that there was a convergence of practice between SARS-terrified Asia and the elites of the information-age West, and that this then became a new global norm via bodies like WHO and G-20.
The unprecedented part is the global,not the lockdowns. Staying inside during plagues is well attested historically.
Maybe, you are not really saying what is is wrong with the simple account. You keep harping on about the professional managerial classes, but you still don’t have evidence that lockdowns are benefitting them, or that they are not benefitting the relatives of poorer people.
Wanting to make sacrifices to protect your elderly relatives is not weird.
I was struck by the case of a political columnist who tweeted an appeal to ordinary people, to just let their businesses fail, rather than risk orphaning their kids; while she herself went about organizing a new online business venture involving dozens of colleagues.
Lockdowns are hardest on those who are already vulnerable, and on people who can’t work from home. But digital society is run by affluent people who spend their working days in front of a computer. It makes sense that they would be much less sensitive to the drawbacks of a stay-at-home policy.
And it still doesn’t follow from that , that anything untoward is going on.
The events match the narrative where the evil PMCs screw everyone else over, but they also match the narrative where lockdowns are the best solution for everybody.
So you still need to disprove that.
At this point, I am not trying to show that lockdowns were an overreaction, so much as I am just trying to understand why events unfolded as they did.
How did the idea of a national lockdown enter public health contingency plans all over the world? (the idea existed before Covid, but I think people usually envisaged it as a response to a much deadlier pandemic). What are the attributes of Covid which made people regard it as dangerous enough to warrant national lockdowns? (e.g. a lethal respiratory disease, of a kind for which no vaccines existed). What made national lockdowns the global norm? (e.g. was it because WHO advised it and many countries follow WHO recommendations, or was it more a matter of public health officials in diverse countries independently coming to the same conclusion, because it really was the appropriate response).
So, just seeking the basic cause and effect of how the global pandemic response unfolded.