- Mistakes were made.
- Had we been better prepared, the crisis would have been handled better.
- More planning ahead would be helpful for next time.
All worthy assertions. Whether expanding them into over 700 pages is a worthwhile exercise is another matter. Still, this is the standard stuff of Inquiries: produce a weighty tome to satisfy the desire for official critique and the need to apportion blame. What's less clear is why, unlike other Inquiries, this one has to run to ten volumes, eight of them still to be published.
Some things which seemed to be ignored in 2020 are now being belatedly acknowledged. In particular, the effects of lockdown and other interventions on the economy, and on people's mental state. The fact that these issues were largely brushed aside in the stampede to 'do something' will perhaps teach us to have a bit more humility next time, exercise a little more caution, and be less zealous about using a simple medical objective (e.g. preventing deaths) as the overriding factor. Perhaps.
Looking at the bigger picture, the two things that stood out about the policy response to COVID have not been addressed by the Inquiry at all. First, the episode told us something about the dominant ideology; secondly, it revealed the enormous power of the medical profession.
What the Inquiry hasn't considered so far, and seems unlikely to, in the further 8 volumes still to come, is the influence of ideology on governmental responses to COVID and any future crises. Ideology inevitably comes into play when major government decisions are made. If such decisions seem to be largely based on science, as in this case, this merely conceals the fact that they are ultimately driven by ideological preferences. By 'ideology' I simply mean: ways of thinking about big issues that fundamentally are not about facts but about values.
When the state decides whether to intervene with coercive measures, as in the COVID crisis, the key ideological issue is:
• collective interests (or what they're presumed to be),
versus:
• the individual's right to decide for him- or herself,
and the relative weight which should be given to each.
Ideology is neither correct nor incorrect, neither true nor false, except in the eye of the beholder – though some ideologies do seem to cause more harm than others. Everyone has their own ideological preferences, though these can be shifted to some extent via education and propaganda, or via cultural output such as movies and TV. Ideology is an unavoidable part of life, for highly educated elites as much as for everyone else. Attempts to eliminate ideology from thought and discussion are futile and, ironically, tend to be proposed by people who are highly ideologised themselves.
Ideology is difficult if not impossible to measure, so I'm relying on impressions. But thinking back to 2020, and thinking globally, the overall picture was of a world in which the elites in power were informed by a predominantly collectivist ideology. An ideology that said "we must intervene whenever society is imperfect – which is basically all the time – particularly when there is some crisis". It seemed at times as if COVID provided intervention‑enthusiasts with the excuse they had long been waiting for. Power was to be put into the hands of trained experts (including themselves), instead of leaving things to individuals and markets.
There were a few governments holding out against the tide of paternalistic advice from professionals and intellectuals. In Sweden, and a few other countries such as Taiwan, individualist resistance won out, at least with regard to lockdowns. The result for the persons deemed responsible for those relatively libertarian policies, in the case of Sweden, was not good: heavy censure, and blame for causing loss of lives. The hostility was an indication of the prevailing bias in favour of interventionism and collectivism, and a sign of how intolerant the dominant ideologists were of any major disagreement.
Now, with the benefit of hindsight and more information, the positive effects of lockdown are turning out to have been less significant than was claimed. Weighed against the negatives, it could easily be argued that lockdowns were a tragic mistake.
In Britain there was some attempt to hold out against the insistence that strong-arm intervention was necessary. Ultimately however, so it seemed, there were not enough people within the Conservatives who were willing to resist pressure from those in the medical and related professions and from the Civil Service.
The mildly individualistic resistance of the British government at the time, against pressure from medical and other experts, illustrates the broader divergence between, on the one hand, the majority of voters and the politicians they tend to favour; and on the other hand, elite power blocs such as professional groups within medicine and education. This divergence between elites and populace is one that increasingly seems to colour every area of politics in Britain, America and other Western societies. The elites are confident that their expertise allows them to know what's best for people. Meanwhile people themselves beg to differ.
What happens when individualist resistance meets collectivist dogma? Conflict is what happens. The Inquiry skates over this problem in simplistic fashion. Yet given the mismatch between voter preferences and elite ideology, it's an important problem, likely to recur in connection with any future crisis, and one that shouldn't just be dismissed as a sign of poor management. The Inquiry claims that it "accepts the need for challenge" but opines that "challenge does not need to lead to conflict". It strongly censures the alleged culture of conflict within Boris Johnson's administration at the time (see Module 2, 11.182).
More generally, the Inquiry comes down hard on Johnson's team, which at the time included pro‑Brexit campaigner Dominic Cummings. However, the evidence it provides for some of its accusations such as misogyny, and the claim that rule-breaking caused "huge distress", seems weak or non-existent.*
The bias in favour of collectivism in 2020 was hardly surprising. The pro-intervention model has been preferred by university intellectuals for decades. As those intellectuals have increased in numbers, and been assigned more weight in decision-making, and as more young people have come under their influence, the remnants of pro-individualistic thought inherited from 18th-century Enlightenment and 19th-century liberalism were bound to give way to collectivism. There are entire institutions, such as Oxford's Nuffield College, devoted to developing the thesis that society should be improved by means of intervention, imposed from above by the wise and the trained. Such thinking now dominates the humanities and the social would-be sciences.
Some ideological biases are only to be expected among particular professionals. The political class is likely to show a statistical bias in favour of more power for the state. University intellectuals forming a class of supposed experts, particularly when authorised by the state and remunerated with state funds, can be expected to favour collectivism over individualism.
The class of medical professionals is also likely to exhibit a bias in favour of collectivism, particularly in a society such as Britain in which most medical services are supplied via the state. Just as surgeons have a bias in favour of operating, so medical professionals in general are likely to support 'rational' interventions, independently of the wishes of recipients.
What take-home morals are to be had from the whole experience? Just because something looks like it's concerned with issues analysable by science, doesn't mean that science – whether it's solid (controlled experiments), speculative (theoretical models), or just wannabe (armchair theorising) – is the overriding thing that should determine policy. Scientists, intellectuals and medics may be good at the scientific bit, but their assertions also tend to reflect the biases that are to be expected from their membership of particular professional groups. As Terry Eagleton might say, "there's no such thing as a disinterested statement."
Conclusion? Don't be afraid to disagree with what's presented as evidence-based advice, if hidden within that advice there are value judgments.
This blog will be back in the new year.
* Ibid, 11.170, footnotes 320 and 321; and 11.218, footnote 433. The language used in some of the electronic conversations is highly aggressive but not necessarily misogynistic. And post-Climategate and its hacked emails, we should be used to the idea that private exchanges between like-minded professionals, referring scathingly to their opponents, can be shockingly different in style from what we might expect from the public image.