The imposition of lockdown that was justified as ‘following the science’ did not quite achieve the consensus that the claim implied and there were a number of voices challenging it at an early stage.

One epidemiologist in the Washington Post stated that ‘of the first 1,023 people to die in Wuhan, China . . .  only one was younger than twenty.’  He wrote that “The high death rate from the coronavirus is driven almost exclusively by the oldest cases . . . the virus causes severe disease almost exclusively in older adults.”  In March 2020 an op-ed in the New York Times was entitled ‘Is Our Fight Against Coronavirus Worse than the Disease?’ (In Covid’s Wake, p 72). This blog also had enough information to point this out in March 2020. 

Unfortunately, ‘war’ had been declared on Covid-19 and the cliché that the first casualty of war is the truth proved only too true.  The consensus in the US was supported by Harvard’s Safra Center on Ethics, the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, and the ‘progressive’ Center for American Progress and focused on testing, tracing and quarantining the infected.  The policy that had previously been predicted to be unsuccessful was now the establishment view that brooked no dissent.  Yet it made little sense when the virus was already widespread, was asymptomatic while infectious and completely asymptomatic in many who had contracted it.

Sweden presented an alternative in which large gatherings were banned; people over seventy were advised to limit contacts with others; it was advised not visit to nursing homes, and recommended but not mandated that those who could work from home should do so.   Society-wide lockdown was not advised: “The storm was already here,” judged Sweden’s health authorities and what remained to be done “was to protect the most vulnerable.” No large-scale test-and-trace regimes were attempted.  Masks were never mandated. No stay-at-home orders or restrictions on movement were imposed’ and restaurants, gyms and schools for younger children and adolescents remained open. (In Covid’s Wake, p 85).

The head of Sweden’s Public Health Agency, Anders Tegnell, thought that “the world has gone mad” while ‘many thought Sweden had gone mad’ or ‘insane’.  The New York Times described Sweden as a “pariah” and some European media described it as like “a banana republic” (In Covid’s Wake, p 86-7).

The Great Barrington Declaration published online in October 2020 was another alternative view to Lockdown that pointed out the costs and proposed a policy of ‘Focused Protection’: “Our goal should therefore be to minimise mortality and social harm until we reach herd immunity.”  Those who had such immunity ‘could play an especially important role in helping the sick and frail.’ (In Covid’s Wake, p 96 & 97)

Herd immunity, however, became a term of abuse, as “simply unethical” and a call to “let it rip”.   It was ‘dangerous’ and came from ‘fringe’ and ‘maverick scientists.’ (p 74, 97 &106). One doctor, who had earlier in March gathered 800 signatures warning of the costs of lockdown had seemingly changed his mind; “I have no more fucks left to give.  Except those peddling pseudoscience, bankrolled by right-wing, libertarian assholes can kiss my queer ass …. This fucking Great Barrington Declaration is like a bad rash that just won’t go away.” (In Covid’s Wake, p 100)

The vitriol involved in such denunciations reflected not so much a long established scientific consensus as a moral consensus that had especially gripped the ‘left’, becoming the left position because the left had adopted it, assisted by most of the support for the Great Barrington Declaration coming from the right, confirming that this was indeed the right-wing position.  The effect was to close debate and remove critical thinking–in moralistic arguments there is simply no arguments in favour of the ‘bad’.

Who made the arguments defined what was right and not the arguments themselves so that ad hominem became de rigeur.  From liberal Democrats to the ultra-left, moral condemnation could not be strident enough: The Great Barrington Declaration became ‘A manifesto of death’; ‘mass death, is a benefit to be sought’; ‘the White House’s embrace of the document is a statement of intent for mass homicide’; ‘the ruling class’s drive to allow the mass infection of the population can be imposed only by violence’.  Those who defended it on the left were from ‘the pseudo-left’ while ‘the herd immunity policy has found support not only within the capitalist oligarchy, but among sections of the upper-middle class.’

The pandemic was an unprecedented suppression of the most basic civil rights employing the weapons of fear and state surveillance, yet the largest part of the left not only endorsed it, its policy was to intensify it.  This was the policy of ‘zero-covid’ that could only ‘be imposed by violence’ as lockdowns began to be relaxed in 2020, only to then be reimposed.

The left website above stated that ‘Workers around the world must welcome the categorical and courageous stand taken by public health experts in opposition to the ruling class’s policy of herd immunity’, except the experts were divided and previous advice stood squarely against lockdowns.  Not unsurprisingly, the moralistic and catastrophist argument proved more attractive to a left for whom socialism will only come through capitalist crisis and repression, through force of circumstances, and not through the building of a class conscious movement committed to socialism that is the result of years of political education, clarification and struggle.

The authors of the book note that ‘if recovery from infection would not afford immunity, it is not clear by what mechanism vaccines would confer immunity either.’ (In Covid’s Wake, p 102).  In June 2020 the World Health Organisation website defined herd immunity as “indirect protection from an infectious disease that happens when a population is immune either through vaccination or immunity developed through previous infection.’ (In Covid’s Wake, p 104).  In November the reference to acquired immunity was removed.  The voice of ‘science’ was to be put in the service of government policy.

Back to part 1