It is rare that the difference between politics and the scientific method is so starkly seen as it is this weekend.
I read a great deal about coronavirus because of its impact on the economy. Those whose scientific opinion on this issue has been shown to be persistently reliable are speaking as if with one voice today. They are saying that this is the moment to assume Omicron is a serious threat to human health and to behave as if that is a known fact.
The available evidence combined with previous experience and the known behaviour pattern of mutations in viruses all suggests that this is the only reasonable assumption to make right now. The consequence is that they advise compulsory masks; social distancing; working from home; placing conditions, including on ventilation, on school and university opening; and restrictions on public gatherings. This is what is appropriately called the precautionary principle in use.
Government politicians are taking a very different view. They have already been recklessly indifferent to those coming in from South Africa, who are being allowed to move into the UK unchecked and untraced. Masks are only being required from Tuesday. Johnson could not even bring himself to say that in his press conference. And mask wearing is only required in decidedly limited circumstances. Apparently we can get Covid on trains and in supermarkets but not pubs, schools and workplaces. Sajid Javid was quite explicit today that people should not work at home. The message is ‘wait and see for three weeks until we have some firm data'. By then, as bitter experience has proven, it will be too late if action is required.
So let me just say it. The precautionary principle means that sometimes we can be too careful. I acknowledge the fact. In this case the choice is between being too careful for three weeks and savings maybe tens of thousands of lives that might be directly or indirectly via NHS incapacity lost to this virus, or being reckless and see the situation get much worse as a result, with an outside chance that this might have been a storm in a teacup. I go with precaution.
The reason we have and use precautionary principles - daily, throughout our lives and right across society - is that we value life and choose to take steps to protect lives, including those lives that might never need protection because we cannot identify in advance those who might be at risk. To use a simple analogy, we all use safety belts knowing that the vast majority of us will, thankfully, never be saved by one.
The government is choosing not to use a precautionary principle this weekend. We are instead all being used as the crash dummies in the equivalent of seat belt testing. And if it is then found that we need protective measures taking them will be much harder because the virus grows exponentially, with massive hazard arising as a result.
The opposite of the precautionary principle is not ‘let's see how things go', because we have ample evidence to know that they might go very badly in this case. We have learned that over the last two years. That opposite can only, instead, be described as recklessness.
Once more in the face of the desire to save the commercial feast of Christmas recklessness is to be pursued at the potential cost of tens of thousands of lives in the New Year.
If we had never seen this happen before such reckless indifference might be supportable by some. But we have seen this before. We know what can happen. And we know it can be prevented. In that case that reckless indifference becomes culpable.
That is where we are. We have seen that our politicians are indifferent to and are willing to politicise deaths in the English Channel that they could work to prevent. They are as obviously indifferent to deaths in the population at large. People do not matter if re-election by a minority in a fraudulent voting system can happen so that corporate profits for friends might be perpetuated.
Wise people urge precaution. Our ministers pursue corporatism at cost to the people of this country. This is the modern fascist state at work.
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Sajid Javid is a banker (not a typo) and quite possibly the worst person one would want as a Health Secretary. I had to switch off Marr this morning when he would not pursue Javid on the timing of the mask regulations. He is allowed to get away with murder (metaphorically) in interviews, and potentially avoidable deaths in his actions to protect capitalists.
I have not given up hope of a world free from this scourge* but it should not take a revolution to see sense.
* Read that how you will.
I yelled at Marr….
Richard, you wrote:
“Those whose scientific opinion on this issue has been shown to be persistently reliable are speaking as if with one voice today. They are saying that this is the moment to assume Omicron is a serious threat to human health and to behave as if that is a known fact.”
It’s clear that the above also applies to climate catastrophe science and so far, nothing is going on that suggests that much leadership across the planet, apart from the leadership of China, are doing much within their gift.
Conclusion?
We’re living in a pathological system that is certain to kill us all, much sooner than anyone thought.
I decided not to add that, although the comparison was obvious
But you are right
Left without comment.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FFMqu0dXoAUL6RT?format=jpg&name=small
I know this is ‘off-piste’, but will press on regardless.
I have just come out of almost 40 hours without light, heat, or communications following Storm Arwen. My unpleasant inconvenience is neither here nor there (please dispense with the commiserations; I managed), but I wish to reflect on two matters: “markets” and “resilience”.
On markets, I discovered (only by driving miles to pick up a mobile signal) that the supplier whose service had crashed, and whose engineers were working in a storm, or freezing cold and snow to repair the power lines, was quite unlikely to be the “supplier” of many of the 80,000 affected consumers. Their “supplier” is quite likely to be drawn from any number of made-up middlemen trying to conjur a a margin (or rent) on making a market, “supplying” something they aren’t actually physically capable of delivering. Notice in this regard that my contract for electricity is with a “supplier” who doesn’t actual supply the electricity, but merely a price (so we have the “supplier”, and then there is the real supplier). In law, if a consumer incurred losses arising from the loss of service they are fated to resolve the matter with a middleman, a “supplier” and may well have no direct leverage with the only legal entity that actually delivers, or fails to deliver, the required service. This is supposed to be efficient; well it is, if you are just moving money and margin round the ether, but it cuts no ice in the real world of winter storms.
We have created an elaborate economy over-filled with middlemen, none of whom actually deliver anything, or do anything, but manage prices in the pursuit of self-created margins; in energy, as with so many “markets” we may currently recount, with spectacularly bad results; for everyone.
I also discovered when I lost power, bereft of everything and plunged in an instant back to the 18th century; dark, cold and out of touch: that we have pursued phoney-efficiency and phoney-markets to the point that when one thing goes – electricity here – everything goes; utilities, telephone, internet, mobile. All went off together, all came back on together. We have stripped out all redundancy from our systems in pursuit of marginal profit; and destroyed the resilience of our system to adapt or survive unforeseen events (for anyone who was infirm and immoble, they would not even know what was happening, until the electricity came back on, 40 hours later)
; we have destroyed the resilience that protect us from the very events that change our lives. With Covid, or Brexit it was ‘just-in-time’, supply chains and delivery. The problem is in fact anything that was not planned; and of course virtually nothing is planned in “markets”, save margin and profit.
Is “market” now becoming the dirtiest word in the English language?
I hope it is resolved
We have replaced middle managers with middle men
It turns out middle managers were of more use
One reason why in the Scottish Currency Group we insist cash must be retained. Cape Town has had 8 hours a day load shedding (new term for a power cut) which means all digital payment methods cease. A purely digital money would be another huge vulnerability.
Good point….
Get a radio with a battery power option, candles, and torches for the net power cut.
Really? Well, I do not have a battery-option radio, but I do have candles and a torch; and somehow or other, I do not think that quite solves the problem.
Thanks. I must remember to tell any very elderly and infirm residents among those deprived of power (still), that all they need is a torch, some candles and a battery-option radio. Presumably the candles will heat , cook and light the house. Who needs electricity?
John – in answer to your question – Yes!
It should be, no doubt about that.
To add to the concerns about marketisation; I was talking last week to someone who is a lead player in wind-farms, in the North Sea and elsewhere. Knows his stuff. I was asking about his views on the role of other sources of power (tidal, nuclear etc). His argument which Ive not heard before was that battery storage has huge potential in off-setting lulls in wind power (cue Mike Parr…). Plus other forms of energy storage.
The surprise was that there is already a substantial base of battery storage with much more being installed. The worry was that this is mostly being funded by the speculative end of finance who see the opportunity to short-term arbitrage electricity prices. ‘So there is a power shortage – how much are you going to pay us to keep the lights on’.
The wrong people own and run our energy system, along with water and so much else, with completely the wrong agendas.
We are hardly likely to get anything other from a Government that has already shot the country in the foot with BREXIT and austerity. This is why they go into denial mode as soon as this raises its head.
They knew BREXIT was a high stakes game anyway – they were just not clever enough to see Covid coming?
Why?
Because they’re are still using 19th century (if not older) management techniques to solve 21st century problems.
Hopelessly out of their depth the lot of them and badly caught out by Covid.
All we can do is not forget this moment and all the other moments they’ve messed up. Let is be seared on our memories I say and then ram home the memory at the next election.
Having a no-nothing politician on podium or on Marr fronting the pandemic response, unquestioned and unchallenged (for example about the precautionary principle) , is the country mocking itself.
Whitty and co lending credence by standing there, and too many other funding-dependent scientists keeping their heads down so depressing.
Such a lethal combination – eugenics of the Great Barrington Declaration ultra- rightists in the States, the sheer childishness of some Conservative politicians – ‘we want it to be over so it is over’, and economic illiteracy – not understanding that letting infection rip damages the economy, and that economies that have done best are those that have suppressed infection and death.
Wish there could be a legal challenge to a policy that has already killed thousands unnecessarily, and could kill thousands more.
I am sure Jo Maugham has looked at it
Agree John S Warren that a battery radio, candles, and torches don’t solve the problem of power cables being blown down in gale-force winds. You raised the point of being cut off from the outside world, so just thought I would mention a minor alleviation of your predicament. Whether masts can be made to hold up in gales of 98 mph and trees falling over them etc is another matter, maybe underground cable, but again highly expensive and impossible in the Highlands.
My point was about an approach to problem-solving that does not focus on cost efficiency alone, but provides resilience, and does not depend on over-confidence in market solutions; not the personal response of those affected. I was not looking for a DIY manual on household storm effect limitation.
I do not expect trees not to blow over in a storm either, but I might note in passing that some utility services in the country are perhaps too close to the tree-line. At the same time old or infirm people found themselves placed in difficult circumstances, and I did not see any market-makers riding over the horizon to the rescue. In fact even with available communications, the information on when the problems would be fixed were vague (I didn’t find a public mention of my area at all); and the estimates people locally were discussing, failed to materialise (whether accurate or not that was how matters unfolded).
I agree, Javid was completely dreadful this morning. It makes one wistful for Matt Hancock who at least tried to understand health even if he couldn’t run it. My doctor friends tell me the best Health Secretaries in their time have been Frank Dobson and Alan Johnson, who both concentrated on making the NHS work as well as possible rather than assuming they knew better than professionals.
The problem with Omicron is that we just don’t know. I am sure people are working around the clock to find out. But until we do know the precautionary principle is the best guide. It could be more transmissible – but not necessarily, that hasn’t actually been measured. It might have milder effects – but there might not yet be data on more vulnerable people. It might evade vaccination – but we don’t know since the theoretical work to date has been on single mutations not many simultaneously. We just have to be very cautious and wait a few weeks.
On the thread drift topic of electricity cuts, John Warren is right: the “competition” is about who can set up the best direct debit not who can deliver the best service. Competition is meaningless unless you are offering both. On a personal level we are thankful we had got my mother-in-law (age 87 and frail) for a few days visit when the power went off in her village. She would only have had a torch and candle for lighting, a duvet for heating, bread to eat and water to drink.