Coronavirus conspiracies

Very few things in life are simple black-and-white affairs, not even Black Lives Matter. And certainly not this coronavirus pandemic.

Coronavirus, it's lurking everywhere.

Little wonder, then, there's confusion amongst the general public when we don't exactly have one clear voice from the experts as to the best way to take on this 'challenge of our time'.  

Divisive virus

On the to-wear-or-not-to-wear-facemasks debate, it appears the weight of opinion is coming down on the side that they do play some role in reducing contagion. Nonetheless, there are still dissenting voices in the scientific community putting forward thought-provoking arguments against wearing them.

As for the efficacy of widespread lockdowns when weighed up against the collateral damage they cause in a whole host of areas — not just economically but in terms of lives lost, too — there is an amount of divergence.

In terms of the lethality of covid-19, well it's a bit early to be definitive on this one. However, there appears to be convergence across a range of disciplines that, compared to the likes of the Spanish flu, it won't turn out to be too deadly. Today's microscopic enemy is quite particular when it comes to its victims.

Indeed, the finest brains in the business are trying to figure out why it picks on some folk more so than others.

(It is important to note that those who contracted the virus and survived may suffer from complications down the line. This remains an unknown. On the other hand, medical procedures that otherwise would have been carried out have been postponed the world over in the coronavirus "war", a factor not to be ignored when speaking of the aforementioned collateral damage.)

For some context — badly missing in most commentaries these days — in terms of overall deaths and adjusting for population growth, this pandemic may come to match that of 1957/58.

Called Asian flu (we wouldn't get away with that now), it passed through society without much ado by all accounts. We can only surmise people were more aware of their mortality back then. 

There was also, of course, a fair number of other lethal infections doing the rounds at the time. It wasn't worth getting all hysterical about one in particular.

'One would have thought that our leaders would do their best to placate a panicked public. On the contrary, state bodies across the globe are feeding the coronavirus frenzy, giving fuel to conspiracy theories.'

However, as you may have noticed, our reaction to coronavirus has been anything but 'qué será, será'. 

This could be seen, somewhat positively, as our distancing from death over the last few generations. Most of us expect to die on our own terms, so to put it. Thus, the arrival of a viral infection that's taking the lives of a certain sector of the population a little earlier than expected has caused panic.

It's also shown how health services in many countries were completely unprepared for even just a modest spike in patient admissions. "Developed" nations, in particular, must be held to account for this fatal shortcoming considering the ageing populations they've been (badly) dealing with for years now. The warnings weren't heeded.

Some countries, admittedly, at least in this early stage, appear to have done well in dealing with the pandemic. In other places, the opposite is the case: the virus is the one in control.

In such an environment, one would have thought that our leaders would be doing their best to placate the public. On the contrary, state bodies across the globe are feeding the frenzy, adding fuel to conspiracy theories.

A covid operation

Take mortality figures. In our simple life BC (before coronavirus, just in case you're not following), I don't think I'm incorrect to assume most of us thought that recording a cause of death was a rather straightforward affair. How wrong we were it seems.

In the last week, we've seen how Public Health England has been, if you excuse the phrase, trigger-happy in naming covid-19 as the "killer" when it wasn't actually so. A public health official in Ireland spoke on the national airwaves about the same issue there.

On top of that, I've heard of incidents back home where doctors asked family of the deceased if it was OK to attribute the death to the virus when it actually had nothing to do with it. We can extrapolate that similar obfuscation is at play here in Colombia and elsewhere.

Why this is being done, I don't know. It might be quite innocent, maybe something positive is to be gained by beefing up the covid-19 death numbers. However, it's easy to understand how others see a sinister side to it all.

Considering the consensus on whatever measures those in charge and their health experts advise, dissenting voices are left to the likes of Hoover Institution YouTube interviews and a number of side-stream media outlets. These voices aren't, as some like to view them, crackpots. They are highly qualified professionals. Yet, by virtue of the fact they're not heard on mainstream media, their views are discarded.

We should all know the dangers of silencing others because what they're saying doesn't fit the accepted narrative. What's more, our modern world has never gone through such times as these. Nobody knows the 'correct path', it's a case of trial and error.  

Focusing only on one side does us all a disservice. It also ensures conspiracy theories gain more traction.

Simply wishing away that which makes us uncomfortable isn't the solution, in the same way as we can't wish away this coronavirus. We have to learn to deal with it whilst trying to continue to live our lives. 

In other words, it's a case of aiming to live healthily rather than hiding away in a bid to avoid illnesses. To opt for the latter is not living. (Although, for some maybe it is. Recall the old joke, 'he died aged 80 but he stopped living at 30.')

This narrow-minded, black-versus-white approach we're witnessing is only increasing division, making a bad situation worse.

You'd almost be forgiven for thinking the powers that be want it that way.

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Coronavirus' auxiliary killers

'For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.' Most of us have heard that statement before, Isaac Newton's third law of motion as it is. It has, of course, significance in our daily lives. That is to say, every decision we take has additional consequences, with these often being quite removed from the focus of the original action.

Stay-at-home orders: Doing more harm than good? (Image from Facebook.)

In the aftermath of the rather panicked, dithering response (eh, thanks China and the WHO for properly forewarning us, not) from many countries to our current pandemic, it is now quite clear that those making the decisions did so, ultimately, with just one goal in mind: 'Stop coronavirus at all costs.' Scant consideration appears to have been given to the knock-on effects of the extraordinary measures introduced.

Once the mantra flipped from 'it's just like the common flu' to 'this is a dangerous and deadly pandemic' (the flu is deadly as well, of course), all efforts were put into defeating it — for the most part, at least.

The early projections of a shocking global death toll — in the millions — convinced governments of the unquestionable necessity of widespread lockdowns and stay-at-home orders.

'As long as a majority believes that coronavirus must be stopped "at all costs" we will persist with measures that are deadlier than the very agent of destruction they're meant to defeat.'

Dissenting voices as to the efficacy of such measures and their unintended consequences were, indeed continue to be, largely discarded. Leaders were looking at those mortality projections if a light approach was taken and no doubt saw in them figures that would also kill their careers.

Be that as it may, while modelling and projections are helpful at the start, they are at root theoretical. They don't reflect the reality on the ground and they tend to treat society as a homogeneous unit. You can't beat real data and we now have a fair amount about coronavirus.

All lives matter

These data, as Dr Scott Atlas — Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University and a member of the institution's Working Group on Health Care Policy — and a number of other equally qualified experts point out, show how shockingly (the word some commentators like to use hysterically in reference to the coronavirus death toll and cases) wrong those projections were.

Moreover, again highlighted by Dr Atlas, the lockdown measures, so data suggest, are responsible for a far greater loss of 'life years' than Covid-19. That is to say, government-imposed restrictions are leading/will lead to more deaths than those linked to the virus. The damage has already been done.

As Atlas explains in his Hoover Institution Uncommon Knowledge interview, the numbers show a significant loss of said life years due to unemployment and a general lack of economic activity, together with delayed or foregone healthcare. That's just a synopsis of the issues at play, in the interview he goes into much greater detail.

I touched on this in previous posts, more from the perspective of what I imagined to be the unintended consequences of lockdown measures. Atlas's analysis spells it out more alarmingly.

Of course, talking about lives that will be lost in the future due to our actions today versus lives being lost right now, the latter will always dominate our attention. It must be said there are other preventable-for-a-time deaths occurring simultaneously with those linked to Covid-19, but it's the newness of coronavirus that ensures it dominates the discourse.

It's similar to the outpouring of emotion and willingness to help when people die due to a natural disaster or plane crash compared to a general lack of interest in the millions who die each year from a slow burner such as starvation.

What's more, it is understandable and somewhat forgivable that politicians, when shown worse-case scenarios relayed to a frightened public via sensationalised media reporting, want to show that they're doing all they can to ensure no untimely deaths happen on their watch. (Advisers and the media have a lot to answer for here.)

'The coronavirus-containment strategies that many countries have adopted are the complete opposite of utilitarianism.'

The thing is, as already highlighted, this is tunnel vision in the extreme. However, as long as the vast majority of the public believes that coronavirus must be stopped 'at all costs' we will persist with measures that are indeed deadlier than the very agent of destruction they're meant to defeat.

The coronavirus-containment strategies that many countries have adopted are pretty much the opposite of utilitarianism. We're inflicting greater harm on a greater number. It's one reason why the eminent historian Niall Ferguson sarcastically suggested that future historians will view Covid-19 as a mental illness rather than a virus-transmitted infection.

As Ferguson et al. have pointed out on umpteen occasions, there are smarter ways to tackle this pandemic. From a Colombian perspective, I don't buy it that the country can't implement them.

Yet, the many who appear to believe that coronavirus is the worst thing in the world, ever, tend to view those of us who suggest otherwise as, at best, heartless, selfish individuals, at worst some sort of neo-Nazis. (I'm curious to see the reaction of such types when we're faced with a virus that kills indiscriminately and in huge numbers. I take it mass suicides will be the suggestion.)

Time to broaden that range of vision, folks. Think about the fallout from the actions you blindly endorse and wipe that blood from your own hands before you start pointing accusatory fingers.
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Listen to Wrong Way's Colombia Cast podcast here.

Facebook: Wrong Way Corrigan — The Blog & IQuiz "The Bogotá Pub Quiz".

Niall Ferguson: 'Colombia didn't have the capacity to do East Asia's smart coronavirus policies'

Renowned historian and author Niall Ferguson believes Colombia had little option but to impose what he refers to as the 'pretty blunt instrument' of a lockdown for dealing with coronavirus.

Professor Niall Ferguson chats to Wrong Way's Colombia Cast.

Speaking to Wrong Way's Colombia Cast podcast (recorded on 19 June) Professor Ferguson, Milbank Family Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, revealed Colombian government officials contacted him for advice on dealing with the pandemic.

'It became clear (in conversation with government officials) that Colombia didn't really have the capacity to do the smart policies of some East Asian countries in tackling coronavirus and therefore had to rely on cruder policies,' he said.

While he highlighted the relatively good performance of the authorities here in dealing with the health crisis in contrast to other South American countries such as Brazil, Chile and Ecuador, he warned that the data suggest Colombia will be in a 'worse position four weeks from now.'

'It won't be the first time a pandemic has had a very severe impact on South America,' he explained. 'The big ones of 1918/19 and 1957/58 hit Latin America very hard indeed and there's a sense this history is repeating itself. The explanation for this lies in the fact that the region has big cities with dense populations and rather poor public health infrastructure with wide inequalities.'

'Early detection, early action. If that had happened in Colombia in January people wouldn't now be locked in their homes and the economy wouldn't be in the tank.'

Ferguson, author of a number of influential books including The Square and the Tower, Civilization: The West and the Rest and Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World, did admit he doesn't know 'what good option there is for Colombia in tackling coronavirus.'

He did, however, offer this advice for the next pandemic which 'will come and could be much worse':

'There's no real reason why Colombia should not be able to do testing and contact tracing if it does it early enough. Most people have mobile phones and a significant amount have smartphones ... Early detection, early action, that way you avoid lockdowns. If that had happened in Colombia in January people wouldn't now be locked in their homes and the economy wouldn't be in the tank.'

'In Venezuela, you have a regime that is as destructive as any that we've seen in the world in the last 50 years ... It is a criminal racket ... Under those circumstances, it seems kind of a no-brainer to do something to tip the scales in favour of the democratic opposition.'

As regards the temptation for Colombia's electorate to seek comfort in extreme politics in the years to come as it deals with the coronavirus fallout, he said 'the key is to make sure that the range of political options is not too wide. As soon as you have the populism of the left or the populism of the right offering their quick fixes you risk destroying either the economy, which is what the left specialises in, or destroying the free, open society which is what the far-right tends to do.'

Speaking in relation to the possibility of direct US military intervention in Venezuela, the Scottish-born American citizen called the Maduro administration 'a criminal racket' and, as such, 'it seems kind of a no-brainer to do something to tip the scales in favour of the democratic opposition.'

In a wide-ranging interview, Ferguson also talked about the 'dithering response' of the US and the UK to coronavirus, the problems with and unintended consequences of the Black Lives Matter movement, today's 'cancel culture' and counterfactual history in relation to Colombia and colonisation.

Listen to the Wrong Way's Colombia Cast interview with Niall Ferguson in full here, on Spotify or at Apple Podcasts. (Also on YouTube at https://youtu.be/8r06Lv6sKC8?si=70up0zGlUSoB0zyF.)
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Listen to Wrong Way's Colombia Cast podcast here.

Facebook: Wrong Way Corrigan — The Blog & IQuiz "The Bogotá Pub Quiz".