A New Year has just started with a message of Hope: vaccination is spreading quickly, and this will firstly allow us to turn this pandemic year into a bad memory albeit one that is hard to forget, and secondly, learn lessons from it, about our health of cause, but also about the kind of society we want to live in.
Controversy will continue to rage: was “too much” or, on the contrary, “too little” done to control the circulation of the virus? Do we have to protect the weakest at the expense of the rest of the population? Do we have to limit liberty to guarantee safety? Must collective need outweigh the needs of the Individual?
This debate is not just needed, it is an intrinsic part of our democratic societies, it is written in the DNA of our culture. However, if this discussion is to be healthy and useful, it needs to remain calm, so we cannot allow it to be hijacked by conspiracy theories, which are spreading at the speed of the Internet, or in other words, very fast indeed…
No two countries have chosen the same strategy, first, to attempt to slow down the epidemic and now, to vaccinate their populations. It is too early to decide which strategy has been the best in protecting the general population, or the worst in maintaining social connections or limiting economic damage.
In France, during the first lockdown, it was decided to restrict the liberty of the most vulnerable elderly by forbidding all visits, even from close family, to old people’s homes. How many people did this drastic measure save? We will never know exactly, but if it prevented the death of even one grand-parent, can we not say that it was justified? On the other hand, what about those other grandparents who were forced to die alone, out of sight of their loved ones?
In France too, students have been severely limited in the access they have to their education for at least nine months; and of course, many stress that the greatest hardship of studying on-line, what many of them emphasize is the lack of socialization. The situation is doubtless very complicated, even difficult, but is it a tragedy? If the interdictions gained by meeting, and by famous student partying, have had to slow down to limit the spread of the virus among the general population, is it not again justified? A 20-year student can hope to enjoy another 60 years; on the other hand, a person of 60 can perhaps hope for another 2 decades: which one should be asked to sacrifice a few months – even a year of their lives? It is not a simple choice, and the answer is not black and white, but this question has to be asked.
A few centuries ago, Science had to fight against Religion, and very often the former was forced into submission at the alter of the latter. Today it seems that “public opinion” is demanding that science submits to it, since, thanks to the Internet in general and social media in particular, anybody can become an expert in virology and pharmacology. Politicians find themselves as referees in this unfortunate face-off; they have no choice but to apply the recommendations of the science, and to convince an increasingly skeptical public to act in their own best interests.
Perhaps this management of the epidemic shows the limits of “participative democracy”, as opposed to representative democracy. The latter was invented by enlightenment thinkers to avoid two pitfalls: the absolute power of one King or Emperor over everyone else, and the will of a few charismatic or ambitious idiots overriding the wisest sages. From the French revolution until now, the principle we have needed to maintain has been to let experts advise the elected politicians on their decisions which may sometimes be popular, or in the modern context, populist. Naively or not, this is what we expect from our elected political representatives, with the expectation that they forget their allegiance to the Left or to the Right. This is why giving equal weight to the informed advice of experts and to the ignorant opinions of the ill-informed is one of the inevitable risks of populism.
Of course, the general population does participate in local decisions (as in the typical French Hobson’s choice: should the village recycling bin be emptied once or twice a week?), in their regional identity (and as a Breton, I know what that means…) or even in some big issues such as climate change (from which steps the question of when an action is local or becomes global, but that is a question for another time…)
However, when it comes to deciding if wearing masks should be compulsory or if social distance should be imposed, should we not just accept the advice given by experts, or even better, by groups of experts?
There are lessons that we will learn from the sad and life-threatening situation we find ourselves in: we can all agree we need to be better prepared, anticipate more, and act faster; can we agree on more State coercion? Maybe… or maybe not. Can we agree on more empathy and humanity? Definitely.