Prepare for the British pandemic blame game over epic incompetence

Brace yourself for the next wave: not of the coronavirus as such, but of the socio-political pathology it has generated. Prepare for a political and media storm of recriminations, accusations, rewriting of history, buck passing, self-justification, denunciation and competitive appeals to conflicting and unproved scientific assertions. The characteristic feature of this war will be that the less certainty there is, the more confidently the contenders will assert their claims, as they have done since the first intimations of the crisis.

The pandemic has occurred at the very moment in history when the mood among the public in Western countries was increasingly to reject the authority of the elites and of experts. Will that public feel that the contribution to the crisis of those elites and experts has re-established their right to dictate the course of events, or will it be seen as having further eroded and dissipated the vestigial trust reposed in them by citizens?

Answers, as they say, on a postcard…

Lockdown was bad, then it was good, now it is turning bad again. Fashions in the containment of a deadly virus have risen and fallen with as much volatility as hemlines. Initially, driven by economic concerns and corporate lobbyists, the government hoped to avoid the paralysis of enterprise. The first kite to be flown was British exceptionalism, in a bid to exploit the post-Brexit spirit. Let the Chinese, under authoritarian government, huddle in their houses: for Britain it would be business as usual.

Indeed, it seemed the one area in which Chinese citizens could still go free-range was the concourse of Heathrow airport. As the gravity of the threat became more apparent the British public learned with stupefaction of the planeloads arriving every day from China, then from stricken Italy, and debouching from air terminals to mingle with the British population. Of course the authorities were not so irresponsible as to make no intervention: travellers were “advised” to self-isolate for a time. 

By early March the macho mood of the establishment reached a crescendo. Shut schools? Certainly not; heaven forfend that parents should be put to the trouble of finding childcare provision; this isn’t China, we have no intention of disrupting the routines of your little golden-haired super-spreaders. Lockdown was for wimps. It was at the beginning of March that a confused public began to realise that elements of the establishment appeared to be relishing the pandemic.

On 6 March, Professor June Andrews, former director of the Scottish government’s Centre for Change and Innovation, told the Scottish parliament’s public audit committee: “Curiously, ripping off the sticking plaster, in a hospital that has 92 delayed discharges, a pandemic would be quite useful because your hospital would work because these people would be taken out of the system.”

These remarks alerted the public to the existence of a certain – er – utilitarian mentality among the establishment elites and provoked outrage from the untutored masses who translated “these people” more concretely into Granny and Uncle John. But even the storm of criticism provoked by this incident did not sufficiently impact the authorities to persuade them of the need, at the least, to clean up their PR act. Worse was soon to come.

On 12 March, Sir Patrick Vallance, the UK’s Chief Scientific Adviser, told BBC News, with regard to Covid-19: “It’s not possible to stop everybody getting it and it’s also not desirable because you want some immunity in the population.” 

That was how the British public became fully aware of the implications of the government’s embrace of the theory of “herd immunity”. It was the words “and it’s also not desirable” that shocked the country into awareness of the level of irresponsibility that was informing public policy. Up and down the land, reasonable, phlegmatic Britons of the type portrayed in the Telegraph’s Matt cartoons pondered what they had heard. The conclusion was unavoidable.

“That chap is the chief scientific officer. That means he has a leading role in protecting us from the virus; but he doesn’t think it is desirable to stop us getting it. That means we are unprotected.” The revelation that it was thought desirable that 60 per cent of the population should be infected, in the interests of “herd immunity”, stunned the public, not only with fear of the virus but with the realisation that powerful elements within the establishment, holding authority over us, were madder than a sackful of fighting cats.

That was the impression that had been formed during the Brexit crisis; this lethal insouciance confirmed it. The reaction was irresistible. People began voluntarily to self-isolate; by 20 March all UK schools were closed. The government abandoned herd immunity in favour of Professor Neil Ferguson’s lockdown thesis. Now Ferguson has resigned after breaking his own lockdown principles to keep an assignation.

To the public, that is just another instance of the “Don’t do as I do, do as I say” privileged exceptionalism of the elites. It recalls the arrogance of Catherine Calderwood, Chief Medical Officer for Scotland, who also had to resign earlier in the lockdown for visiting her second home.

Yet Ferguson’s lockdown must have saved many lives. These days, everyone is a self-proclaimed epidemiological expert. People who formerly pontificated about the offside rule in soccer or the lbw rule in cricket now speak with assumed authority about such concepts as the “R” ratio and viral load. Nobody, including the experts, has genuine expertise respecting this still largely unknown virus. Yet some basic facts can be adduced from common sense. 

Among them is the self-evident fact that someone who lives alone, sees nobody and has supplies delivered, though not guaranteed immunity, is less likely to contract the infection than somebody living a normal life and in close contact daily with hundreds of people. But the balance of power is once again changing and Ferguson’s departure is likely to accelerate the shift in the tectonic plates. Public unrest under weeks-long confinement allied with understandable concern about the atrophied economy are combining to provoke a further volte-face. The herd immunisers are back in the ascendant.

Good luck with that. Some epidemiologists believe herd immunisation can only be achieved after 80 per cent of the population has been infected. That proportion was not reached even by the Black Death, nor by the 1918 influenza pandemic. It would take years and the death toll would be grotesque. Immediately after the peak of the coronavirus epidemic in the Netherlands it was claimed only three per cent of Dutch citizens had immunity. A modern society should strive to prevent infection by protecting the population by every means possible until a vaccine can be developed. 

That is the context in which we can expect the forthcoming war of words to be waged. Why did British experts discount testing in the early stages when other countries have used it to great effect? Sweden is a model to be imitated/a catastrophe to be avoided. The WHO has responded well/dismally. Expect, too, to see politicians exploit a disaster that has killed tens of thousands of British people in the pursuit of self-interested agendas.

Even now we are massively ignorant about the coronavirus and the mutations that will follow – though we have committed trillions to combating the computer-modelled perils of climate change. Negligence in the early weeks of the pandemic has made things much worse than they needed to be. Nobody will admit to ignorance or responsibility. Once again Joe Public looks at his masters and sees a confederacy of dunces, a collection of naked emperors. When to bereavement is added the economic consequences of this crisis, do not expect the public mood to be either accepting or deferential.