Seeping faintly through the pronouncements and policies of some government responses to the coronavirus pandemic are the vapours of older belief systems; a whiff of utilitarianism, the scent of social Darwinism, and the fetid reek of eugenics.
Not that democratic leaders consciously adhere to or champion these ideologies. But these notions always seem to be lurking in the peripheral shadowlands of the policymaker’s mind.
This raises the possibility of other purposes being behind the current policies on COVID-19. That’s not to say Sir Patrick Vallance is a darkly scheming Machiavellian. But did the policy of ‘herd immunity’ that he suggested find a receptive audience in Johnson’s cabinet because of its appeal to existing psychological or ideological predilections in Downing Street?
Prominent and influential early-twentieth-century eugenicist Paul Popenoe made explicit the connection between eugenics and social Darwinism and utilitarianism. In his book Applied Eugenics (1918) Popenoe observed that ‘[T]o those who accept that philosophy, made prominent by Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, and a host of other great thinkers, eugenics rightly understood must seem a prime necessity of society’.
Utilitarianism in politics as in moral philosophy has found many powerful critics. Alasdair Macintyre described it as ‘a pseudo-concept available for a variety of ideological uses, but no more than that’. Therefore, he warned ‘when we encounter its use in practical life, it is always necessary to ask what actual project or purpose is being concealed by its use’. G.E.M. Anscombe, referring to someone justifying the killing of an innocent for the greater good by the reasoning of consequentialism, utilitarianism’s offspring, simply said ‘I do not want to argue with him; he shows a corrupt mind’.
Is it a bit farfetched to connect contemporary politics with these ostensibly outdated ideas? Take the utilitarian argument. At first blush the UK government’s policy of allowing the virus to pass through the entire population so that the population acquires ‘herd immunity’ has a sort of brutal logic to it. The community will be protected next winter if the virus returns, and the lower cost burden incurred relative to containing or limiting its spread will free up health care system resources to treat those most at risk.
As William Hanage has explained, the herd immunity approach seems at odds with the stated purpose of relieving the burden on the healthcare system and protecting the vulnerable. For it to be a success it has been calculated that ‘about 70% of the UK population would need to be immune to COVID-19’ at the end of this outbreak; more than 47 million citizens must become infected. At an optimistic minimum, 236,000 deaths might result, and potentially this approach ‘could result in the deaths of more than a million people with a further eight million severe infections requiring critical care’. Producing the greatest benefit for the greatest number is the utilitarian calculus.
What about social Darwinism and eugenics? They are sides of the same coin. Social Darwinism is an idea that fits effortlessly into the notions of nationalism and unilateralism that regard international competition—whether in trade or over political systems—as survival-of-the-fittest struggle. There was more than a hint of this in the Brexit rhetoric. Superior physical and mental traits confer an advantage on their possessors and these advantages can spread through the population through inheritance; which justifies weeding out the weaker citizens.
This logic is present in the UK’s post-Brexit immigration reforms where top priority will be accorded to ‘those with the highest skills and the greatest talents: scientists, engineers, academics and other highly-skilled workers’ while no path will be open to the ‘general low-skilled’. It is also not far from the idea of exposing the general population to a virus that will take out those with co-morbidity issues, less robust immune systems and who find healthcare unaffordable.
As western born political philosophies, utilitarianism, social Darwinism and eugenics provide a basis for reasoning that a government is acting in the greater good when it allows or permits, through inaction or positive policy, changes in the make-up and quality of the population to make them better suited to compete and survive in difficult circumstances. There is no concrete evidence that this reasoning is currently behind the actions of any democratic leaders during this crisis. Random actions are not proof of a coherent plan.
However, it is disturbing that advisers aligned with the above philosophical outlooks have some access to the inner circles of some western governments. Boris Johnson’s close aide Dominic Cummings employed Andrew Sabisky as a Downing Street adviser. It seems improbable that Cummings was unaware of Sabisky’s fascination with eugenics seeing as they were published on a blog for which Cummings was responsible. In the White House, Stephen Miller, who shares a similar outlook, occupies a position of considerable influence.
The capacity of governments to respond to appropriately crises has never been more important. The COVID-19 pandemic is serious, but of far lesser significance for the world than the inevitable and mounting crises at the intersections of global warming, population growth, wealth inequality, resource depletion, biodiversity collapse and global instability.
The pandemic has been magnified by the inability of governments to learn from past pandemics and put in place long term preparations. It has been mishandled through a lack of international cooperation and a sluggish response from an overcautious political class. Messages critical to saving lives and limiting economic damage from leaders have been and continue to be mixed, inaccurate and sometimes ignorant. How will they respond to greater crises? Where will they find their moral moorings?
At a minimum, people should be worried if governments act on the basis of utilitarian principles when the lives of individual citizens are in peril. They should worry if governments are consistently cavalier or imprudent in planning for foreseeable crises. And they should be concerned about what they have seen from governments in the past three months.
Mike Scrafton was a Deputy Secretary in the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment, senior Defence executive, CEO of a state statutory body, and chief of staff and ministerial adviser to the minister for defence.
Mike Scrafton was a Deputy Secretary in the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment, senior Defence executive, CEO of a state statutory body, and chief of staff and ministerial adviser to the minister for defence.
Comments
12 responses to “MIKE SCRAFTON. Shades of herd immunity stalk COVID-19 government responses.”
I confess that I am not really au fait with the term herd mentality in political philosophy terms however I can manage the understanding the behaviour of a herd of cows being driven to the markets like a Hollywood cowboy movie.
China has claimed success in the containment of virus with their lower morbidity and mortality stats but still remains cautious about relaxing their lockdown plans despite the closure of 16 temporary hospitals in Wuhan due to lack of patients. China has began to look into economic recovery and their fight to re-open factories has been described a “factory block by block” fight against the virus to resume production. The Banks and the government is happy to give financial assistance to overcome the loss and it was estimated that 10 million people has lost their job (temporary or otherwise) because of the virus. Increased in domestic spending through infra-structures spending is on the agenda.Opening China to the world markets is also considered.
In Australia, the community is just started to feel the lockdown coming with big economic loss to our business and community. In IAN JOHNSON article “China bought the West time. The West squandered it” (P&I), we have lost time in containing the virus and do we persists in our herd mentality (ignoring any good things coming out of communist countries and consider them necessarily bad) and not learn the quick lessons of economic recovery from China?
The global herd mentality should be a united front to combating the spread of the Coronavirus and save lives; and the second should be economic collaboration and re-coupling to save the world from a great economic depression.
The “herd immunity” discussed looks suspiciously like the usual Australian complacency and self absorption played out at from the platform of the epidemic…”herd immunity” is always to do with avoidance of thinking.
Perhaps I’ve seen to much silliness involving supermarkets and bog roll.
Having been named after Jeremy Bentham I enjoyed Mike’s post. We are confronted by a world-wide public health crisis and an economic depression caused by the greed of financiers and the weakness of regulators. The banks are going to kill more people than this virus, which seems more likely to have come from a laboratory than from bats and wombats. We need herd immunity to unregulated capitalism. The antidote is called social democracy.
A pandemic with the potential to sweep away the old would be expected to split societies afflicted by individualism into young and old factions; the young pushing for herd immunity (the cruel response) , and the old pushing for a compassionate response. This is different from, and in some respects opposite to the traditional one splitting individualists, in which the poor ones push for a compassionate society (which they abandon if they get rich), and the rich ones prefer the cruelty of Social Darwinism. The rich and old (which tend to correlate now in Australia) might get their comeuppance, but a cruel response to the pandemic is unlikely to lead to a more compassionate, less individualistic society. It is worth noting that the response of the Chinese government has been the compassionate one (as we would expect from socialism, in contrast to individualism), and it seems to be working.
There is an interesting perspective on the topic global pandemics and herd immunity too featured on the Counterpunch website:
Getting Viral by Stuart Newman the author of the book Biotech Juggernaut.
Mike Scrafton is onto a very important – indeed vital – theme here. Chinese cultures instinctively respect their elders and try to help them sustain a long and productive life. We have just seen this ethic at work in Wuhan. Anglo-Saxon Eugenics starts from a different, ethically darker place, as Mike well describes.
In a class-based society, the rich (like the Boris Johnson Cabinet, for instance) will protect their family elders from COVID-19 ( unless greedy to inherit), through access to good hospital intensive care which is available to the rich through the expensive private healthcare system . The elderly poor and middle classes will take their chances, if the public hospital system becomes overloaded by a spike in cases. That’s why ‘herd immunity’ as applied to COVID -19 is so evil and pernicious an ideology that threatens to distort policy if not exposed. And it is still lurking there in the shadows of the Morrison Cabinet, as well as the Johnson Cabinet. I note Greg Hunt referenced it on ABC Insiders on Sunday.
I am working on a lay person’s paper developing these ideas from an agegroup-cohort statistical perspective, based on an important scientific paper just published by a large team of top researchers led by Professor Neil Ferguson from Imperial College London Medical School. I found their paper on Facebook today, and copied the Abstract to my Facebook Page. I cannot find and reproduce a URL but a diligent journalist could locate it.
The paper includes this important table drawn from the team’s model.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10207379919613437&set=a.4057155124474&type=3&sfns=mo
More to come later.
Actually we don’t know if herd immunity would result this year in time for next year even if we ignore moral questions. The serological evidence is insufficient to determine the extent to which herd immunity is possible for SARS CoV 2. There is already some limited evidence for negative serology for people who have contracted the virus shortly after recovery (i.e. no antibodies and they became reinfected). Moving from containment to mitigation (‘flattening the curve’ through social distancing etc) looks like being the most sensible policy at this time, until we have effective vaccination and treatment options.
The political classes are now listening to medical science, yet continue to refuse to listen to climate science, betraying a selective preference and a fatal double standard, no doubt related to the huge economic role of the fossil fuel industry. Imagine the chaos when global tempratures rise above 2 degrees Celsius and higher, as climate scientists are warning.
With respect: the pandemic has been ‘magnified’ because a virulent strain has escaped into a world grossly-overpopulated and under- cautious, and imprudent about the natural environment.
Considering this contributor derives from a ‘political class’ – I’m getting a little behind, here, with the logic…
It is very refreshing to read something so easily. Like Flaubert said, the easier the read, the better the preparation. So you have done the research, and I benefit. Well done, and very informative.
While I cannot discount the influence of a eugenics-based philosophy in the UK’s response to COVID-19, I cannot help thinking that the herd immunity approach is primarily aimed at simply minimising the duration of the outbreak and thus – as indicated early in Mike’s post – incurring a lower cost burden relative to containing or limiting its spread. In other words, the possibility of more than one million deaths is just the ‘unfortunate’ cost of ensuring the best outcome in terms of the UK’s economic health and the rate of economic recovery once the pandemic subsides – the manifestation of callousness. I also fear that the UK’s response is not too dissimilar to that in Australia where it is appears, to date, that economic health trumps public health too.
Sir,
Social Darwinism and Utilitarianism raise the paradox of what we mean by “the greater good” ; or whether “survival of the fittest” in human terms is necessarily good for a nation. We are all flawed individuals. The desired traits of physical robustness and mental ability do not always come as a package. Nor do other strengths and weaknesses of humans. Do humans decide what the flaws are that decide which of their denizens deserve elimination or abandonment for the greater good? To cut the argument short, take the late super physicist Stephen Hawkins as example. If he were alive and making invaluable contributions to our knowledge of physics, how would British society benefit from not shielding him from the ravages of a pandemic?
My understanding of Utilitarianism is that where it works, it works better for a near homogenous society with greater parity for everyone. In a multicultural society, it can be misused by the mainstream to perpetrate a “dictatorship of the majority”. There are many instances of this among the countries neighbouring Australia, especially among those who use religion as a national identity.
Sincerely,
Teow loon Ti