More "big pictures" on Coronavirus. If there are alternative pathways opening up beyond it, will we take them?
These images are series of installations/artworks by Justin Brice Guariglia and Timothy Morton, titled "We are the asteroid”, 2018 - more here
Hard to keep up with the powerful commentary coming from Coronavirus… here are a few takes we’ve managed to gulp from the firehose.
Katherine Trebeck asks: can we “build back better” from Covid?
From Bella Caledonia:
There is a serious risk that, with eyes firmly fixed on a return to ‘business as usual’ beyond the current situation, the first queuing up for bailouts are the very entities which should be powered down in the face of the climate emergency. Meanwhile, those that most need it are left to make do with the already frayed social safety net that masquerades as social protection in the UK these days.
Around the world governments are recognising the needs of vulnerable workers – not just the vulnerable elderly. For example, Ireland is paying 203 euros a week to those who lose their job or income or who are self-employed and losing contracts for the next six weeks.
The Swedish government is also paying sick pay, rather than putting it at the feet of employers and increasing the amount of cover it provides to short-time workers. Even in Australia – one of the toughest welfare regimes in the OECD – the government is paying $AUD750 tax free to those on benefits and to all pensioners.
Yet these are the sort of measures that are short term amelioration – they help take the edge off an economy that doesn’t do enough to support everyone.
They are also a sign of how far away the current scenario is from a wellbeing economy – one purposed for and hence designed in a way to deliver good lives for people first time around.
Fortunately, just as covid-19 is showing us the stark divides in our economy – between those who can readily work from their kitchen tables and those forced to deliver to them – it also is showing us the outline of a better economy – a wellbeing economy.
The economic activities most needed at times like these are not the glittering cocktail bars and massive concert venues. They are the unglamorous but necessary pillars of the foundational economy – the schools, supermarkets and hospitals that can’t threaten to up and run at the lightest change in the tax system, entities which require considerable labour input and hence offer local jobs. The places prioritising those who need them most, profit or no profit (the supermarket Morrisons’ recent effort being a good example).
Local supply chains are coming into their own as global ones are disrupted by border closures and plane groundings.
And, perhaps most beautifully, covid-19 is showing the importance of community ties and informal support – none of which will do much to boost the usual measures of economic ‘success’ in the form of Gross Domestic Product, but which undeniably will be vital in helping individuals and families survive.
Local supply chains, the foundational economy, and community support in the care economy are three of the pillars we’ll all need to get through it. They are also three pieces of the jigsaw of a wellbeing economy we all need beyond covid-19.
Communities and individuals are stepping up to the challenges presented by covid-19, recognising that we all need each other and prioritising togetherness even as we are forced to be physically apart.
As the inequalities in our economic system are laid bare by this crisis, rather than returning to business as usual, countries such as the UK would be well-served to instead build back better by creating a wellbeing economy
William Davies on how the Coronavirus reveals the yawning space between communities and state
From the LRB. William is writing about the UKGov’s initial hope that it could use behavioural science - or nudge theory - to shape people’s behaviour in relation to the Coronavirus:
[The government’s stance] shifted radically upon the publication of a report by the Imperial College Covid-19 Response Team, which has been advising the government.
The report confirmed what critics had been saying, that the only way of avoiding catastrophic loss of life and the swamping of the health system (its modelling had the demand for intensive care beds peaking at eight times’ capacity) would be to minimise social contact wherever possible.
But it also warned that the only guaranteed way out of a broad social lockdown was a vaccine, which is probably at least 18 months away.
You can blame a decade of Conservative administrations for the low level of intensive care beds and ventilators available in this country (compared to similar economies), and you can blame capitalism for the fact that most people depend on wages to live.
But there was a certain sociological frankness in the nudgers’ judgment. Essentially, that a society such as Britain’s (whose state has sought to outsource, marketise and incentivise at nearly every opportunity over the past forty years) couldn’t be suddenly switched off without dire consequences for human welfare.
With Britain heading towards a shutdown, lasting who knows how long, it will quickly become evident how difficult it is to sustain society without everyday sociality.
The triumph of the Thatcherite and Hayekian vision meant that we ended up with a ‘flexible’ economy. In this zone, a large number of people are entirely reliant on the near-term vagaries of the labour market for their day-to-day survival: they have neither savings nor state guarantees to provide any back-up when that market crashes.
Wages, rent, credit card repayments and everyday consumption are locked into their own ‘just-in-time’ supply chain, which is stressful enough even when it’s up and running.
Having spent decades overhauling the welfare state to promote a more entrepreneurial, job-seeking, active populace, driven by an often punitive conditionality, Britain has little to fall back on when the most urgent need is for everybody to stay at home. The class divide between rentiers (those who accrue income without having to do very much) and the rest has immediately grown starker.
As everyone looks around anxiously in search of their ultimate backstop, we are witnessing a collision between rival ideologies of society. Communities look desperately to the state, while the state looks hopefully to communities.
Who’s to say how many desperate young men, seeing the impotence of both, will instead turn furiously to the ‘nation’ as their last resort?
If there is one institution that has stood as the symbol of society throughout most British people’s lives, it is the NHS. Nobody expects the safety net that it provides to hold adequately over the next three months. At some point something new will be born, for better or worse.
Anders Sandberg on how we must defeat our cognitive biases to learn the proper lessons of this pandemic
From Oxford University’s Practical Ethics blog:
The Covid-19 pandemic is not the end of the world. But it certainly is a wake-up call. When we look back on the current situation in a year’s time, will we collectively learn the right lessons or instead quickly forget like we did with the 1918 flu? Or even think it was just hype, like Y2K?
There are certainly plenty of people saying this is the new normal, and that things will never be the same. But historically we have adapted to trauma rather well. Maybe too well – we have a moral reason to ensure that we do not forget the harsh lessons we are learning now.
The availability heuristic makes humans unwilling to consider events that have never occurred before to them or in remembered history. This is a serious problem for mitigating big, unprecedented risks since before they happen few care about them (and afterwards it may be too late).
Sometimes smaller disasters are salient enough to trigger remedies. If the disasters are devastating enough there may be an immunization-like response where society responds with a “never again” and begins to reduce the risk seriously.
This may have happened in regards to medical atrocities during World War II (and to a lesser degree genocide in general): legal and ethical frameworks were drawn up, treaties and institutions emerged, and arguably the risk was reduced. At least Europeans may have learned the lesson, leading to the formation of the EU.
Other cases are less reassuring or less clear-cut: the Cuban missile crisis, economic depressions, the Chelyabinsk meteor, etc. Still, the missile crisis led to the establishment of the Moscow-Washington hotline and the Partial Test Ban Treaty even if it did not end the Cold War.
…There is a fundamental problem with mitigation actions against unprecedented risks. If mitigation succeeds it is likely that the risk will appear minor and the mitigation effort overblown (like Y2K). A truly successful intervention may remove the risk altogether.
This produces an appearance of unfalsifiability, not unlike the story of the man throwing paper around himself on the street to scare off tigers: “But there are no tigers here!” “See! It works!”
Where does this leave us with Covid-19? It is plausible that after the whole situation resolves many people will reinterpret it as an overreaction – especially if interventions actually work well – and tired from the whole rigmarole choose to ignore it, even if it was disastrous.
If physical distancing works, we will underestimate severity of Covid and blame decisionmakers for wrecking the economy and our convenience due to fear-mongering hype and bad models. If it fails, we will blame them for wrecking the economy and our convenience for nothing.
If health care systems are not overloaded (regardless of what efforts are made) the conclusion will again be that it was a flash in the pan and our systems are resilient.
If they are overloaded it is also likely that many will explain the failure in terms of their favourite explanations. The left will blame austerity and profit motives. The economic liberals will blame inflexible regulations. The nationalists, globalisation.
There is also a risk that less useful mitigation methods become prevalent since they signal concern with a risk. Like 9/11 led to massive “security theatre” that did not improve actual security but indicated that the problem is taken seriously, we may end up with “hygiene theatre”—calming nerves, but actually not reducing risk.
An example may be airport thermal screening, which seems useful but is not effective enough. If people keep the Wuhan shake but stop washing their hands little will have been achieved.
…What kind of lessons do we need to learn? The basic ones are what strategies work and does not work, whether in epidemiological strategy, social life or how to handle the experience personally.
That different countries have approached the issue of containment and mitigation in very different ways give us a valuable chance to compare what worked and what did not – and why.
There are lessons about the use of social media and handling the economy, as well as the promise and perils of rapid scientific investigation and emergency medical hacking. Comparing to find best practices is extremely useful.
“Agricultural Landscape”, Justin Brice Guariglia, 2018