36. COVID-19 AND PHILOSOPHY: Thinking Clearly In Times of Uncertainty

Back in February I wrote a post here about the ethics of personal illness, arguing that we act in deeply selfish ways when we are ill, asking ourselves only the question do I feel ok when deciding to interact with wider society and not will I make others ill, paying little to no attention to the possibility of our still being infectious. We cough openly, touch things with unclean hands…you know the rest. Of course you do. Because it turns out that quick burst of thought from the paranoid mind of a health-anxious ethicist nearing the self-imposed deadline of his little philosophy blog, seeking a world more self-aware about what causes the spread of disease, is now the accidental intellectual basis for our national policy on Covid-19, or the coronavirus as it is commonly called.  Wash your hands properly and frequently, with hot, soapy water. Do not gather unnecessarily in large groups. Perform social-distancing. Stay at home. Self-isolate. If you have any of the symptoms of Covid-19, or have recently been in high risk places for the virus, even if you are feeling well, think about the potential effect on others and put their needs first, not your own. Protect the vulnerable. Covid-19 may not kill you, but it will kill some, and to protect those people we have to start thinking more outwardly about our actions during this time of uncertainty with no vaccine or cure.

And it turns out that requiring people to do this has broken our entire system. Everything is cancelled. Panic buying has decimated supermarket shelves. Travel has been ground to a halt. The economy is screaming.

Be careful what you wish for - you just might get it.

Doing the right thing only becomes hard when we have constructed a world which puts embedded obstacles in the way of doing so.

We panic-buy at the thought of self-isolation and quarantine because we fear that there will be no food or supplies for us when we need them; a sensation which speaks to the real sense of abandonment we have from any faith in security from our government or social systems. If we knew that those of us restricted to our homes would be taken care of, we wouldn’t feel the need to hoard for an apocalypse.

We cancel everything because we cannot trust each other to do the right thing and self-isolate when we need to.  Because in a world that has commodified and commercialised our free-time so that people can earn a parasitical living from us we have forgotten how to entertain ourselves for free. And entertainment is expensive and we don’t want to miss out on that brief ray of sunshine in otherwise dreary lives, or lose money we cannot afford to lose because our jobs don’t pay us enough. And the companies that run these events cannot afford the uncertainty of refunding those genuinely unable to attend for the greater good. And if I feel ok why should I miss out on something just to protect a vulnerable person who is not me? When society has trained us into competition with each other, and to look out for number one, then suddenly having to think beyond our own situation flies in the face of everything we have previously been doing. Cancelling public events forces us to make the decision we are pulled from every other direction not to make.

Yet still we are pulled in the wrong direction by inconsistent policy. In the UK, schools remain open despite them being a breeding ground for all bugs and viruses, especially this one. Hundreds of students and teachers all confined in small classrooms, picking up various diseases and bringing them home to their loved ones, strangers they travel on the bus or train with, neighbours, etc. We can tell students and staff to wash their hands upon entry, but who is checking this is done, or if we even have the sinks and soaps to facilitate this? A thousand students, all washing their hands for 20 seconds each? Before school, before recess, before lunch? The UK government’s strategy here is apparently to keep schools open so that the virus can spread. Children are the most likely to survive Covid-19 unscathed, and there are lots of them. The idea is to use the children - and their families, and their teachers, and their teachers’ families - to get sick, get immune, and develop a “herd immunity” from the virus which will ultimately, in the long-term, protect the wider society. The strategy is questionable, not least of all because we do not yet actually know enough about Covid-19 to make claims about immunity from it. If herd immunity works, great, but it is a gamble because it may not. And in the meantime, what is being done to protect vulnerable students, staff and their families intentionally exposed to a dangerous petri-dish when the rest of the country has been told to distance themselves from others and avoid unnecessary mass gatherings and travel? In Kantian terms, we teachers and our students (and our families) are definitely being used as means to an end and not an end in ourselves. In Utilitarian terms the idea is that our unhappiness is being sacrificed for the greater happiness of the many. So what if a few students and their teachers die along the way? Or their loved ones, necessarily exposed to infection. As long as, in the long term, the numbers pan out so that fewer people die than suffer then all is good.

Except, let me tell you, being “herded” into this great social experiment without consent does not make me happy. Especially as a teacher with the underlying respiratory issue of being asthmatic. And the fact that people like me have been forced unwillingly into this vanguard position, on the frontlines of a public health gamble scientists around the world have called into question, means that whatever the next public emergency is it could be you. I am a conscripted soldier in a war I have not chosen to fight and this means all of us could be, which should certainly make the greatest number of us, scared rather than happy.

Also, it’s worth pointing out that the herd immunity strategy doesn’t help the real problem in need of being tackled: the strain on public services like the NHS. Self-isolation and social distancing is not about stopping the disease - it’s clear many of us, if not most, will get it, like a cold or flu. But its about delaying that spread so that we don’t all get it at the same time and put massive strain on services which cannot cope, from supermarkets to hospitals.

Again - if the NHS were better funded, and had the capacity for such a crisis this would not be a problem. But when you operate a public health system on calculations of efficiency and immediate need, you cannot ensure facilities are there in waiting for a possible future emergency. Such thinking would be considered wastage, and poor use of public funds. Because instead of running a national health service we are running the NHS in the model of business; a model not fit for public health.

But, of course, the real reason for the schools to be kept open is the fear of what school closures would do to the economy. Because, again, we have built a system not designed to serve our needs, but the needs of capital, and school plays a huge part in this in its role as daycare centre so that the parents of our students can go to work. There is a fear that closed schools would wipe 3% of the country’s GDP. And that is apparently important now in a way that threats to our GDP as a result of Brexit were not.

It is not closing schools that will break the economy though. It is having an economy built on unprotected labour. Jobs without sick pay, or without funds to deal with emergencies. It is an economy in a society where the bills will keep coming even if a national emergency stops the money coming into your bank account. Where broadband internet, which could make so many jobs possible to do remotely, is not a free public utility. Where those without jobs, or the self-employed or contract workers in the so-clled “gig economy” have zero protection. A society built on human need, and not the needs of capital, would be one which could cope with schools and businesses being closed for a few months without crisis. Doing the right thing about Covid-19 has exposed, once again, that our society is not built on human need.

My hope in all of this - besides clearer thinking and the immediate closure of all UK schools - is that it forces us to rethink quite seriously what we have been doing, and rebuild our social structures in the aftermath in a way which keeps us safe and healthy, rather than prioritising the health and safety of institutions and systems which serve only to keep us vulnerable, and our genuine needs unfulfilled.

Author: D. McKee