COVID-19 and the abrogation of personal responsibility | Orthodox Conservatives

The COVID-19 pandemic will be one of the defining moments of the decades on both sides of the year 2020. This virus, which has disproportionately affected advanced Western nations who were thought to be the most prepared to deal with such a crisis, has affected society in almost every way.  From social relations to shopping trips, the response to the COVID crisis marks a new high (or low, depending on where you stand) of government intervention into the daily lives of citizens. 

Government actions unthinkable in the past are now commonplace across all western nations. Restrictions that aspiring autocrats could only have dreamed of are now deployed daily. Regulations that would have been decried as unthinkably intrusive not ten years ago are now clamoured for by the citizenry. Policemen are allowed to enter homes without warrants, and doctors decide who can say goodbye to their loved ones, with the barest oversight or explanation. The foundations for a modern police state have indeed been laid upon the good intentions of those wishing to protect others from the virus, yet anyone who questions the effectiveness or necessity of any coronavirus prevention measure is immediately branded as ignorant, brainwashed, unscientific, or just selfish. 

This rabid retaliation exposes an almost neurotic fear of this virus, which while should be treated with the necessary caution, is ultimately comparable to flu seasons before the year 2000. Yet many in the public continue to ask for more stringent measures, hoping that through government action this relatively small danger can be completely expunged (all respiratory diseases only account for 4% of all deaths).

States and governments respond that COVID’s lethality has been reduced because of stringent and preventative government measures. Due to its high infectiousness, these lockdowns have prevented a far more devastating toll on human life. This is certainly true; statistically, lockdowns are correlated with reduced cases and deaths. To an epidemiologist, that is the end of the discussion. 

Yet we cannot fall into the trap of viewing an intervention into a complex society solely from a medical perspective. To an economist, or psychologist, or any number of “experts”, a lockdown is a nightmare for their chosen field. The job of the government is to weigh these perspectives and make a holistic decision. Therefore, having heard from medical experts, let us hear from the others. 

An article in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) calls attention to the factors neglected by policymakers. To summarise, the economic consequences of lockdowns are projected to worsen inequality and disproportionately target lower socioeconomic brackets, while the repurposing of the medical system to counter COVID will leave patients with other pathologies at much greater risk. 

For example, a three-month delay in surgery is expected to cause an extra 4700 cancer deaths in the UK. In addition to the quantitative effect of lockdowns, which are considerable and should have a more prominent role in policy discussions, we need also consider the qualitative aspect. In an extreme example to illustrate the point, a patient with a terminal disease that is a risk factor for COVID might prefer to live a few weeks with their family’s company rather than a few months alone. When the public demands a solution to the pandemic, it must make sure that the cure is not worse than the disease.

While the devastating effects of lockdown begin to be felt, perhaps it is time to reflect on how we have permitted and required such an undesirably vast and intrusive state apparatus.

This public demand, or rather need, for the government to act is a symptom of deeper sociocultural undercurrents that have eroded the foundations of Western thought. The carefully-trodden relationship between freedom and responsibility that characterised Western culture has been substantially upended, instead replaced by a near-complete infantilisation of many citizens. Where before the actions of an individual were largely his own domain, now the mechanisms of the state are called in to protect the individual from him or her-self as you would a child. 

Now, it is not apparent whether the infantilisation of Western citizenry precluded or is a result of increasing state presence, but the two have certainly accelerated together in recent years. And neither is desirable for healthy, upstanding, functional societies.

Nonetheless, with the COVID pandemic, modern society has observably fallen victim to some of the most crass and cynical forms of the “nanny state”. The population is now treated like an anxious toddler in the face of an unknown situation; smothered in soothing “we’ll get through this together” messages, taught protective nursery rhymes like “hands, face, space”, and has decisions made for it without input or consultation. 

This infantile state of fear is maintained by a bombardment of fear-inducing messages; coronavirus figures flashed onto news screens while images of overwhelmed hospitals play in the background, or alerts about record new cases in the such-and-such area. This sinks the population further into a despondent state of anxiety and fear, reduced to asking for more and more government actions to end the crisis.

Unfortunately, this state of affairs cannot be solely attributed to the government, or big business, or any of the usual suspects (though big tech corporations have disproportionately benefited from lockdowns). The state is simply responding to how society at large wishes it to act. This relationship is a bilateral agreement between the government and those it governs: we, the population, agreed to this. 

For the public, and whether we realise it or not, both the Lockean and Hobbesian conception of the role of the state (ie. protecting our fundamental rights, the principal one being the right to life, and providing security from danger) have guided our reaction to the pandemic and influenced our demands of the government. Where before people preferred to have a choice (and therefore a possibility to make the wrong choice) now we would rather have no choice at all. As a culture, we have decided that being able to choose is too much of a risk, and therefore we should have someone else do it for us. This speaks to a deep lack of maturity and emotional development in our popular culture. It is not simply that the state treats citizens like children, but instead that the state treats citizens like children because they act like so. 

Thinking which traces its roots in the Enlightenment has captured the minds of our population and influenced common attitudes towards government. Their weaknesses can go some significant distance in explaining our predicament.

One would think adults need not hide in their houses from a disease that can be avoided with simple precautions. Adults do not meekly hand over hard-won freedoms such as the freedom to worship or assembly because authority tells them to. Above all, adults do not surrender their agency, as that is the necessary condition for adulthood: The ability to make decisions while understanding the consequences. 

It is this essential concept that is missing from Western culture; that of accepting the consequences of an action. If a middle-aged woman decides the risk of contracting COVID is worth it to say goodbye to a parent for the last time, the consequences of her action are hers to deal with. If a youth, in light of his milder symptoms in case of infection, decides to continue working, can he not also entrusted with the same confidence? In both cases, they could have chosen to stay at home had they considered the risk too great, but they made the fateful choice as rational adults, and should therefore accept any adverse consequences should they arise. However, if they insist on blaming the state for their own actions, it is only logical that the state should strip the choice from them, given that they refuse to accept responsibility for making it. 

If we want to have the freedoms that adults enjoy, then we must also accept the responsibilities that come with them. Freedom is given to adults because it is expected adults can make rules for themselves- hopefully, in with the common good. After all, it is more efficient to allow individuals to optimise their own rules to suit their specific situations, rather than setting inflexible boundaries that will ignore nuance or specifics. However, once the individual is considered unable to set rules and boundaries for themselves, the state will find itself obliged to step in to provide at least some sort of framework for society.

If we allow ourselves to be governed by our base desires, as is exhibited in current society, anarchy will be the result unless something asserts control over the individual. It is the difference between allowing an adult to choose when to go to bed, knowing they will balance their work, leisure, and health to a near-optimum degree, or telling a child that half-past is lights out. One trusts that the adult’s capacities, while knowing a child has neither the maturity to make the choice nor the discipline to enforce it. We are all familiar with Orwell’s line from 1984; “Freedom is Slavery”. Yet it seems more apt to say “Freedom without Discipline is Slavery”: slavery either to our own impulses and desires, or slavery to the state that steps in to regulate them.

In the end, as it always does, it comes down to a choice: We can choose to continue as we are now, with neither freedom but without the burden of responsibility, or we can shoulder this burden again and enjoy agency as we once did. In this rather oxymoronic situation, will we choose to be able to choose, adaptively, and in our own judgement?

I suppose that in a nutshell, I am telling society to grow up. I firmly believe that the current state-society relations are fundamentally characterized by an infantile relationship at the detriment of the citizen, and the onus to rectify this situation is upon each individual in society. 

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