Early Lockdown Thoughts Over Saturday Coffee
April 4, 2020
In December last year I vowed not to discuss politics for the foreseeable future, on the basis that decades of political engagement had done nothing to improve my mood. However, these are extraordinary times and I’m concerned by some of what some of my friends are posting online. I don’t pretend to have any special insight but I would like to offer the following set of observations as someone who studied politics and economics and who (as a round peg in a square hole), spent a decade as a government employee, close enough to the ‘centre’ to get some insight into decision making processes. These observations don’t all flow from one another; this isn’t an essay.
Covid-19 conspiracy theories
The notion that Covid-19 has been created by a malign force in order to change the world order in some way is so fanciful as to defy serious consideration: this would require extraordinary financial resources, considerable manpower and the ability to evade the intelligence services of the world’s most powerful states. Some private sector organisations have two of the preceding things, I accept that, but if this virus was unleashed onto the world in order to put certain persons in an advantageous position, it appears they didn’t think it through very well. We have been conditioned by 20th century cinema and literature to see conspiracies left-right-and-centre (and they do exist, there is no doubt about that). Being suspicious can certainly be a positive, protective thing but spending too much time on ‘You Tube’ clicking on the suggested videos in the right-hand column is probably injurious to one’s mental health, unless one has searched for “an exposition of the scientific method with Neil de Grasse Tyson” or something comparable.
The early weeks
For various reasons - some natural - the advice ministers received in the early stages of this pandemic was incomplete. Ministers are sometimes too focussed on the 'moment' to take heed of advice when they should but one must also bear in mind that senior officials, inside and outside the health service, often fail to tell ministers the whole truth, sometimes deliberately (the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) scandal amply illustrated this) because they fear that there will be panic or because they should have flagged-up a problem much earlier and are now desperately embarrassed that they didn't, and need to cover their tracks. Limited isolation measures should probably have been introduced just after Christmas but it appears that insufficient attention was being paid to what was happening and, critically, nobody inside government had experience of exactly this type of infection. Things would be very different now had ministers known in January what they know today. No government wants to wreck the economy, our performing arts, our service sector etc but, clearly, the right information was definitely not getting to the right people in time and now we find ourselves in a late, heavy lockdown.
Press coverage of Covid-19
The tabloid press has behaved appallingly; stirring up excessive anxiety, especially the Mail and Express in their core readership. Yesterday we saw the Mail at its very worst; "warning" Matt Hancock to get things sorted. Or what? Well, we know the answer; the paper would stir up a mountain of trouble for the Health Secretary. In the BSE scandal the tabloids (with the tacit blessing of government, that must be said) went after Professor Richard Lacey, portraying him as a maverick and a lunatic. A microbiologist I knew, who resigned on principle from a government laboratory not long after the crisis broke, told me that Lacey was “one of the most brilliant microbiologists in the country; he might be wrong but no-one knows yet and all the government wants is for him to disappear so that the public keeps buying beef”.
Lockdown's economic impact
A couple weeks ago I was telling friends that everything that could carry on as normal should carry on as normal. We need to continue to prevent dense gatherings of people but very small businesses, family visits, etc should not be prevented by this lockdown, subject, of course, to the most vulnerable keeping themselves out of harm’s way. If we don’t keep the economic engine running at a certain rate it will risk idling and this may be worse in the medium to long term than the pandemic itself. This crisis has to be paid for out of the profits of industry and the pay packets of employees. There’s a desperately grim trade-off to be made here but one that can't be avoided or we won’t be able to properly finance anything going forward including, of course, all the non-Covid-19 NHS treatments.
Lockdown and mental health
This pandemic is having mental health consequences as well as economic ones. Just standing in the supermarket queue this morning the expressions on my fellow queue-ers’ faces were not all the usual ones. There was what I can only describe as ‘enhanced jitteriness’. I've always been able to focus on work to keep me going but I know all too well what depression feels like and the effects of isolation on that. There are a lot of fragile people out there who are going to find lockdown a terrible mental strain plus, of course, many who live in fear of a violent partner or parent. I live alone and my abiding background feeling of being solitary has, needless to say, got worse.
The need for critical thinking skills
Last year the brilliant textile designer Vita Gottlieb (one of her creations can be seen in the photo gallery) asked me what I would do to change the world for the better. I replied “Give everyone critical thinking skills”. I’m more concerned now than ever that a worrying percentage of the public is credulous through a want of analytical skills. These skills need to be built into our education system more systematically.
I’m wishing all my friends the least misery in this lockdown. Be well.