A Philosopher's Blog

Philosophical Essays on Many Subjects

Lessons from COVID-19 VIII: The State

by Leave a Comment

Image Credit

The philosophical debate over the power and purpose of the state is an ancient one but COVID-19 provides a new. Responding to a pandemic effectively requires a robust state and the emergency can be used to warrant an expansion of the state’s power. While such an expansion can be warranted, there concerns about such expansions, and people should resist setting aside their critical faculties in the heat of a crisis.

One concern is the pandemic (or any crisis) will be used expand the power of the state to infringe upon liberty without having a positive impact on the crisis. While a crisis tends to claim reason as an early victim, the expansion of state power to protect us should always be carefully considered in terms of their negative impact on liberty and the effectiveness of the expansion in keeping us safe. An expansion that does not make us safer is clearly unjustified—we would be a paying a price in lost liberty in return for nothing. If the expansion does make us safer, then it becomes a matter of considering the benefits of the expansion in balance with the cost. As would be expected, people will differ a great deal when they weigh the benefits and costs. For example, someone who is very afraid of the threat will have a rather different assessment than someone who thinks the threat is minor or even a hoax. As another example, someone who greatly values a specific liberty (say the right to keep and bear arms) will see matters rather differently from someone who does not value (or even opposes) that liberty.  While a rational assessment of such expansions will always have a strong subjective factor in play, it is essential to have an honest consideration of the facts. Unfortunately, misinformation and disinformation often come into play in such assessments. And, of course, emotions tend to have a negative impact on assessment.

While a rational assessment of expanding the power of state is always important, it is even more important in a time of crisis. This is because people will often be heavily influenced by their emotions and politicians tend to eagerly exploit the opportunity to expand the power of the state. Businesses and individuals will also endeavor to profit from such expansions, often at the expense of others. For example, it is easy to imagine companies like Google and Facebook using an expansion of location tracking as means to monetize the crisis. As such, we should always be on guard against such expansions.

It can be objected that there is no time for rational, objective assessment in a crisis and to try to do so is both foolish and wrong. While a crisis can often require immediate action, if there is time to expand the power of the state, then there is time to think about it. I am certainly not advocating dithering about in fruitless debate, but I am certainly advocating giving due consideration to the expansion of the power of the state. It would be foolish and wrong to act without thought.

The United States has suffered from not expanding the power of the state—we knew a crisis was on the way, but many leaders delayed, hesitated and took small steps rather than acting aggressively. This was a clear case where speed was important and the failure so far has not been due to a needless expansion of the state’s power, but a failure to exercise that power effectively and decisively. Though much time has been lost, some states are acting, and one must hope that it is not too little, too late.

In addition to carefully considering the expansion of the state’s power, one must also consider the duration of the expansion. An expansion of power that might be justified in a crisis is likely to be unwarranted and unnecessary when the crisis has passed. Since rulers are rarely inclined to give up their expanded powers, it is essential to place a clear and automatic limit on such expansions with clear rules for how they can be renewed. Otherwise, these expansions can become permanent and tempt rulers to exploit them.

There is also the concern that the expansion of the state can lead to bloat, such as the creation of new positions and entire departments. Such bloat can waste resources and cause inefficiency—something that is problematic even in normal times. Bureaucracies tend to grow over time rather than shrink—so the expansion must be carefully limited. That said, there is also a risk from reducing the size of the state to the point at which it will be unable to address a future crisis. The challenge is finding the right balance between too big and too small—to get it just right. Since people are inclined to discount the future and engaged in wishful thinking, it can often be challenging to convince them to expend resources to address a real crisis that might occur in the future. Thus, the expansion and reduction of the state should be given careful consideration and based on a rational, objective assessment of likely future need. Unfortunately, this sort of approach tends to not win elections.

While the expansion of the state in a crisis is what people most often think of, there is also the matter of the state reducing its power. To be specific, the rulers might decide to weaken or suspend regulations. They might also weaken or suspend protections for citizens. On the positive side, there can be clear justifications for weakening or even suspending some regulations. For example, since there is a need to rapidly expand hospitals to deal with the consequences of our rulers’ poor handling of the crisis, it makes good sense to suspend or weaken many of the normal rules that would impede this process. As another example, the vital need for test kits and treatments can justify weakening or suspending some of the normal regulations that would slow down the process. Doing so is not without risks but can be justified as one justifies the way ambulances drive: going fast and breaking the normal traffic rules creates a danger, but this is supposed to be outweighed by the need for speed.

Just as the expansion of the state must be justified, assessed and kept on a time limit, the same applies to reducing the state. There are the obvious concerns that weakening or suspending regulations could do more harm than good in specific cases. There is also the concern that the unethical will exploit the situation for their own advantage and to the detriment of others. For example, an unethical pharmaceutical company might misuse the change in regulations to take shortcuts to maximize profits rather than to benefit the public. As another example, tech companies might exploit weakening or suspension of privacy laws to scoop up data that they will monetize under the mask of helping with the crisis.

My Amazon Author Page

My Paizo Page

My DriveThru RPG Page

Follow Me on Twitter

Lessons from COVID-19 VII: Critical Unity

by Leave a Comment

Image Credit

Anyone who is familiar with team sports knows that if team members are not working together during the game, then the team is not going to do well. As such, good athletes set aside the conflicts they might have with teammates when on the field and come together to win. This does not, of course, mean that a good athlete will blindly accept whatever a teammate or coach has done or might do. For example, a good athlete would not allow a teammate to cheat or a coach to abuse athletes. As another example, a good athlete would not tolerate a teammate who engages in domestic abuse or dog fighting just because they are on the same team. While humans do form various competing teams, during this pandemic we should strive to see ourselves as all being on the same team—we are playing a deadly game of humans versus viruses.

Since we are all on the same team, we should adopt the attitude of good athletes when they are on the field: we should strive to set aside our differences and come together to achieve victory. To the degree we fight, bicker and compete against each other, we are hurting the team. To the degree we cooperate, we are helping team human. As would be expected, the greater the power and influence a person has, the more important it is that they work with the team and set aside less important concerns—at least for the duration of the game. While it would be unreasonable to think that everyone will be a good team player, there is still the minimal expectation that team members will not actively try to cause senseless conflict or interfere with the players who are trying to win. Unfortunately for the world, there are those who are not only bad at being team players, they are actively causing harm.

While there are examples outside of the United States, my accountability lies mainly within the borders of my country—as an American, I bear some responsibility for my leaders and fellow citizens. As should be expected, my focus will be on Trump. As the president, he is analogous to the head coach of the team—he should be directing the team to victory, inspiring the players and….well…doing his job properly.

As is to be expected, Trump has been engaged in his usual behavior. While this is bad in normal times, the harm he does is compounded by the fact that we are in a pandemic. As noted in other essays, rather than being honest about the facts of the pandemic, Trump and his allies downplayed it and then floated stories about hoaxes. Rather than listen to medical experts, Trump and his fellows spread disinformation and misinformation. Trump and his fellows also delayed our response to the virus, something that will cost use dearly. What Trump and his fellows should have been doing is playing for the team: presenting the truth and acting.  To use an analogy, Trump was like a coach who refuses to acknowledge that an opposing team is coming to play and is a serious threat. Like a bad coach, Trump insisted that his team would not need to practice and prepare, that it would be an easy win. And, of course, these were all lies told to the detriment of the team.

Now that the human versus virus game is underway in the United States, Trump steadfastly sticks to his core qualities. First, he has engaged in conflicts with various governors. Part of the problem is that Trump seems to see the government as his business and sees things in transactional terms. That is, he sees himself as engaged in business deals rather than in terms of being the leader of a country in crisis. Another part of the problem is that Trump is ruled by his ego and cannot help but engage in petty fights. He takes things very personally, something that has generally not been true about other American presidents. For example, while Bush was criticized about his handling of Katrina, Bush did not withhold help because  governors failed to appease his ego. Trump insisting on these petty vendettas divides us. To continue the team analogy, Trump is a like a coach who retaliates against assistant coaches to the detriment of the team if they fail to appease his ego and offer him the praise he thinks he deserves. Criticism, however legitimate, is met with hostility and punished. This actively harms the team and hence Trump is in the wrong.

It could be objected that the governors are also to blame—they need to be aware that Trump is a narcissist and do their very best to navigate his flaws in order to get what their state needs. So, if the governor of NY needs to praise Trump in order to keep Trump from vindictively denying the state full assistance, then he must praise Trump. While this makes some pragmatic sense, this is clearly morally horrific. In a democratic country it is not the duty of governors or citizens to appease the ego of the president in order to get them to do their job properly. It is the duty of the president to do their job, even in the face of criticism. That is how responsible democracy is supposed to work. If Trump cannot step up and do his job, he should step aside. Going back to the team analogy, if a narcissistic coach is damaging the team, the solution is not for the assistant coaches to work harder to appease his bloated yet delicate ego. The solution is to get a new coach.

Second, Trump has begun advancing the conspiracy theory that medical professionals are stealing protective equipment, citing an unnamed distributor who (allegedly) claimed that the hospital was buying too much equipment for its needs. Pushing this conspiracy theory is damaging because it can create hostility towards medical professionals—the very people we are relying on to keep us alive and healthy. Trump rather likes conspiracy theories and commonly uses the tactic of shifting blame from himself—this theory allows him to try to shift negative attention onto health care workers and to put the blame for shortages on thefts. But this does the team no good. Going back to the analogy, this would be like the head coach unjustifiably accusing the team trainers of stealing supplies and trying to blame them for his failure to ensure that the needed supplies would be  available for the big game.

Trump’s defenders will, of course, scour the web for reports that validate Trump’s theory of theft.  I would certainly expect his defenders to point out that Governor Cuomo said that masks and equipment were being stolen from hospitals. This would seem to allow them to try to accuse the critics of hypocrisy: “interesting how the liberal media gives Cuomo a pass on this while the fake news goes after Trump for saying the same thing!” and to also claim that Trump was right in his claim. However, a look at the details shows that this is not the case.

While it is true that Cuomo said that people are stealing equipment, the people accused of theft seem to have been opportunists looking to sell the stolen equipment, not medical professionals. Trump’s accusation was aimed at medical professionals, though his ardent supporters will probably try to recast him as talking about opportunists in order to “prove” him right.

Trump’s defenders can also try to use the fact that health care workers are stealing supplies. Because of the shortage of equipment (partially caused by Trump’s failure to act in Januar) health care workers have resorted to the morally problematic practice of stealing from each other. Some units have more resources than others and in a time in which the CDC is suggesting the use of bandanas when masks are not available, it is not surprising that people are engaging in theft. Many places are relying on donations, often from relatives, and these can tempt people who have been using the same mask for a week. Or those who are wearing bandanas in place of masks.

I am not trying to morally justify the theft—stealing from other medical professionals for medical use is still wrong. The point I am making is to refute Trump’s claim that medical professionals are stealing equipment that they do not need—that the high numbers requested by NY are due to theft and not need. While medical professionals should not be stealing from each other, even for medical use, they should not need to do so—we could have been well-prepared, and the Trump administration bears some of the blame for this.

Trump’s defenders might, at this point, assert that surely there have been some thefts—for example, some resident surely stole some disinfectant wipes to use at home. While this is certainly true, Trump’s claim is not that there are a few cases of petty theft of some supplies—his narrative is about large-scale theft. There is currently no evidence this is occurring and the need for more supplies in a pandemic certainly seems legitimate.

I do think we should be on guard against people trying to exploit the pandemic for personal gain; I obviously have no objections to leaders expressing concerns that are backed by evidence and not presented in a divisive manner. For example, congress put transparency measures into the COVID-19 stimulus bill aimed at preventing companies, Trump and his family from misusing the funds. As should be expected, the Trump administration has said it will not comply with the law. If the money was going to be used properly, there would be no reason not to accept transparency, so there are certainly legitimate concerns about this.

Trump supporters might, at this point, accuse me of vile hypocrisy: “How can you speak of unity while criticizing Trump? You give lie to your own words, you clown-nosed socialist!” Since I use concerns about inconsistency myself, I am certainly obligated to address such a charge.

The first reply is one of logic: even if I were being a hypocrite, this would not refute my claims. To think otherwise would be to fall victim to the ad hominem tu quoque. One version of this fallacy involves concluding that because a person’s actions are inconsistent with their claim, their claim must be wrong. But this is bad logic. For example, suppose that Bill Clinton claimed that people should not commit adultery and then committed adultery. This would show that he was a hypocrite but would not disprove his claim.

The second reply is that, as noted above, my view is that we should have critical unity. This is contrasted against uncritical unity in which people are expected to simply go along, most likely with whatever the leaders say and do. Uncritical unity has the potential to be worse than a lack of unity. For example, imagine if everyone simply went along with Trump’s initial claims about the virus and no one ever pushed back against his misinformation and disinformation. We would be in far worse disaster than we are in now. As another example, imagine that in a state controlled by Democrats they went through legal channels and legally seized all businesses and the wealth and property of the wealthiest citizens in order to distribute the resources evenly among the people. People should not, obviously, just say “well, we must unite behind our leaders” and get to work renovating the mansions of the rich into apartments for the homeless.

The critical part of critical unity in a crisis does need to have limits—the criticism should be grounded in truth, based in principle and aimed at addressing real problems. Criticizing Trump’s disinformation, misinformation, conspiracy theories, and so on while urging unity is in accord with critical unity. I apply the same standards across the political spectrum. So, for example, if someone provides true claims about a Democratic leader spreading COVID-19 disinformation or refusing to do their job properly because they are spatting with some Republican, then I will be critical of them as well. I will also be supportive across the spectrum when leaders are stepping up and doing the best they can. For example, I disagree with Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on some things (although we both went to college in Ohio) but I credit him for his solid and serious response to COVID-19. I am very fond of Ohio and I am reassured that DeWine has stepped up to the challenge.

The lesson here is that we need to have unity in times of crisis (which is obvious), but it would be unwise to have unthinking and uncritical unity (which is equally obvious). While we should work with our leaders, they need to prove worthy of our uniting under their leadership. Trump will, I predict, serve as  paradigm historical example of how a leader can actively  and stupidly divide rather than unify in a time of crisis.

My Amazon Author Page

My Paizo Page

My DriveThru RPG Page

Follow Me on Twitter

Lessons from COVID-19 VI: Sacrifices

by Leave a Comment

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, Trump has wavered on the practice of social distancing. One reason for the wavering is that billionaires have argued for getting back to work during the pandemic. Put in neutral terms, the gist of their argument is that maintaining the current pandemic practices will cause damage to the economy that will far exceed the damage done by sending people back to work. This is a classic utilitarian position in that the right action is the one that creates the greatest good (or the least harm).  Lieutenant Governor  Dan Patrick has advanced a similar, but much harsher argument. On his view, the damage done to the economy by the means taken to protect people from the virus far outweighs the damage done by putting people at risk. He went so far as to claim that he would be willing to die for the economy and seems quite willing to sacrifice other seniors as well. While this is obviously not a mainstream view, it has been getting some traction on Fox News and encourages Trump. While the billionaires and Patrick at least acknowledge that there is a downside to their proposals, there are those who see the deaths this approach would cause as a good thing—another plus rather than a minus. Presumably some of these are trolls, perhaps Russians trying to get Westerners to kill each other.

While it is tempting to simply dismiss the billionaires as greedy sociopaths who are happy to sacrifice the health and lives of others to add a bit more to their already vast fortunes, they do raise an important general moral problem: to what extent should some be sacrificed for others? We are already allowing, and rightly praising, the sacrifices being made by people such as health care workers, grocery store workers and many others who are risking exposure for the good of others. As with the billionaires’ argument, this is morally justified on utilitarian grounds: the few put themselves at risk for the good of the many. They are literally keeping us alive by taking care of us, ensuring that food is still available and so on. It is, I think, inarguable that these sacrifices are good, essential and heroic. It is also inarguable that some of these people will die because they are staying at their posts, doing what must be done to keep us and our civilization alive. In the case of these essential goods and services the risk is warranted—though everything possible should be done to reduce the risk. But what of the broader economy?

The billionaires are correct that a badly damaged economy would be harmful to workers—one merely needs to look at what happened to workers during the various depressions and recessions inflicted upon them over the years. Things were already quite bad for many even before the pandemic and the economic damage will make things even worse. As such, there is certainly a good argument for getting the economy back on track as soon as possible. But does the utilitarian argument support the billionaires’ view?

When engaging in an honest utilitarian calculation of this sort, the three main factors are values, scope and facts. In the case of the facts, one must honestly consider the consequences.  The scope determines who counts when one is assessing the harms and benefits. The values determine how one weighs the facts and what is considered good and what is seen as bad. It is a fact that the social distancing practices are doing economic damage—many people are unable to work, many businesses are either closed or operating at minimum levels and so on. It is also a fact that relaxing social distancing to get people back to work will result in more infections which will cause suffering and death. The billionaires and those who disagree with them both agree on these facts; but they disagree about matters of scope (who counts) and value (what counts more). The billionaires have generally shown no concern in the well being of workers and it would be absurd to think they suddenly care—as such, the scope of their concern would seem to be, at most, their economic class. In terms of values, the billionaires clearly value money a great deal—more so then the well being of the workers (otherwise they would provide better pay and benefits). As such, their argument makes perfect sense to them: relaxing the restrictions would seem to benefit them financially and the harms would, as always, be suffered by others. Those who think that everyone counts and who value life and health over profits for billionaires will see the matter rather differently.

It could be objected that while the billionaires are interested in their profits, they are also correct in their claim that workers will be hurt more by the ongoing economic damage. As such, we should relax the restrictions because it would also be better for the workers.  There are two main replies to this argument. The first reply is to argue that the billionaires are wrong in their assessment: even in their economic terms, relaxing the restrictions would cause more economic damage than keeping them in place. To use an analogy, imagine a business in a large building that is on fire. One could argue that having the firetrucks pump water into the building will do a lot of damage and that the fire should be mostly allowed to burn out naturally while the employees continue to work. But this can be countered by pointing out that allowing the building to burn will do far more damage in the long term—and kill more people.  As such, unless the goal is short-term profits and long-term disaster, then it is best to keep social distancing in place until it is medically unnecessary.

The second reply is that people will suffer, as they have been for a long time, because of the economic and social structures that we have constructed. We have vast resources to mitigate the harm that will be done—the problem is that these resources have been hyper concentrated into the hands of a few and thus most people lack the resources to endure the pandemic on their own (and many lacked the resources to endure “normal” life before the pandemic). The truth is that we can get through the economic harm of the pandemic if we are willing to share the resources and wealth that we all created. But the billionaires would be right if it remains business as usual—hyper concentration of wealth and rage at even the idea that the richest should become slightly less rich so that others can avoid the horrors predicted by the billionaires if the many are unwilling to risk their lives for the profits of the few. It is indeed ironic that the billionaires have a fix on hand for the all the harms they predict: the economic and social structures could be adjusted for the good of us all, rather than focused on the good of the elites.  I certainly expect the usual objections of how the billionaires and rich earned their great wealth and that the lesser people are just lazy takers eager to get something for nothing.  Those who have served as able enablers of vampire capitalism bear their share of the blame for where we are today, and I must admit that I am exhausted by their evil bullshit.

The lesson I hope we learn here is that the sacrifices of those in essential areas, like those working to provide food and health care, are morally justified and laudable. Another lesson is that the sacrifices extracted from the many by the few to expand their wealth are neither justified nor laudable. What is perhaps more horrifying than the billionaires’ view that people should die for the economy is that they believe they can make such statements in public with impunity and without fear of consequences. I hope, in vain, that more people will see this vampire capitalism for what it is and they will work at changing the economic and social structures so that we will be able to endure not only future crises but everyday life.

My Amazon Author Page

My Paizo Page

My DriveThru RPG Page

Follow Me on Twitter

Lessons from COVID-19 V: Xenophobia & Racism

by 6 Comments

As COVID-19 continues to ravage the human population of earth, xenophobia and racism are alive and well. For example, an Iranian leader is playing to his base by playing on fears of America and Israel. He is advancing, without evidence, the claim that the virus was created specifically to target Iranians. In addition to conspiracy theories that the Chinese engineered the virus (either to reduce their own population or for use against other nations) there has also been a worldwide rise in xenophobia and racism against Asians.

One reason for the xenophobia and racism is that people are looking for a visible enemy upon which to take out their fear and anger. Many people feel helpless and afraid in this crisis and humans are naturally inclined to focus on other humans as threats—thus the rise in xenophobia and racism. People are also naturally inclined to try to explain the causes of things and just as humans were prone to blaming the gods for such woes as floods and earthquakes, they are also prone to seeking an intelligence behind dangers. Since humans suffer from in group bias and bad leaders feed xenophobia and racism, it is no surprise that people are seeking a scapegoat for this crisis: someone must be to blame. Someone must pay.

The United States, with a long tradition of racism against Asians, has seen an increase in xenophobia and racism. While most incidents have been limited to verbal hostility, racism in the context of a disease raises serious concerns. The United States does have an established history of weaponizing racism in the context of diseases and we should be on guard against this tactic as leaders endeavor to appeal to their base and divert attention away from their failings. The most obvious example of an American leader’s effort to use xenophobia and racism to their advantage is Donald Trump’s insistence on using the term “Chinese virus” in place of “coronavirus” or “COVID-19.”

Trump does have excellent, albeit evil, reasons to use this term. One is that it appeals to certain parts of his base—the use of this dog whistle sends the message that he is speaking to them and still thinking about them. A second reason is that its use helps shift attention and blame from Trump’s utterly inept and damaging early handling of the crisis. By casting it as a Chinese virus Trump could create the appearance that the threat is the responsibility of a foreign power (and race) and thus mitigate Trump’s responsibility. Third, it helps create an “us versus them” mentality which can bring non-Chinese Americans together against the Chinese (and other Asians, of course) and motivate them to support Trump. Unfortunately, while Trump can gain some apparent advantages from this approach, it comes with considerable cost.

There are certainly those who defend Trump in this matter. My first response to such defenders is to point out that I am using Trump as one example for the broader problem of xenophobia and racism. If a Trump defender insists Trump was not engaged in any racism or xenophobia, then I simply appeal to the cases in which others are blaming the United States for the virus—I would suspect that a Trump supporter would agree that the xenophobia of other countries towards the United States is not helping and is, in fact, detrimental.

My second response is that Trump is clearly and obviously engaged in intentional racism and xenophobia. He is using a well-worn xenophobic/racist trope of the foreign disease and the diseased foreigner—one that was most recently used in the racism aimed at the allegedly diseased caravans heading towards the United States from the south. That Trump’s defenders must engage in relentless and regular efforts to try to explain away his seemingly racist claims tends to undercut their own case—one would need to argue that Trump unintentionally but constantly uses stock racist tropes, language and tropes. While not logically impossible, it does strain the boundaries of possibility.

One rather clear piece of evidence is that Trump used his infamous sharpie to cross out “Corona” in his speech and replace it with “Chinese”, thus showing that his usage was planned and intended, rather than a slip of some sort. His defenders can engage in various gymnastics to explain this. One strategy is to argue that Trump is using “Chinese virus” like “Spanish flu” has been used. While this approach has some appeal, calling the flu the “Spanish flu” is also problematic. Labeling a disease with a specific country or ethnicity tends to lead to stigma and racism. As such, using the “Spanish Flu” defense is like defending the use of “wetback” by pointing to the use of “wop.”

A second strategy is to argue that Trump is just referring to where it came from and, for bonus points, one can point out that it was originally called the “Wu Han virus.” One can, with a sly wink, say that it cannot be racist or xenophobic for Trump to use “Chinese virus” because the Chinese used “Wu Han virus.” The easy and obvious reply is that the use of the term “Wu Han virus” was also seen as problematic—for the same reasons that “Spanish flu” and “Chinese virus” are problematic. To use an analogy, this would be like a Chinese leader talking about “Caucasian flu” and saying that was just fine because, for example, Americans first started using a term like “Connecticut flu” when the disease first appeared. Since Trump intentionally decided to refer to it as the “Chinese flu” and there are no good reasons to use that term, the best explanation is the obvious one: Trump was engaged in a xenophobic and racist dog whistle, cashing in on the well worn trope of the diseased foreigner and the foreign disease. For those who would expend considerable energy trying to cast his usage in a positive light, one must ask why do so? And why defend him against the umpteenth reasonable charge of racism and xenophobia?

As noted above, there was already racism and xenophobia against Asians (and Asian-Americans) and Trump’s insistence on calling it the “Chinese virus” is likely to have contributed to the uptick in such incidents. Using such a label also helps put the United States at odds with other counties (and other countries blaming us has the same effect). Having Americans turn against other Americans is always harmful and is especially so during a crisis in which community unity is a key part of our survival toolkit. It is also harmful to try to create conflict between nations when cooperation will significantly improve our response to the virus. It is, as I have noted before, a war between humans and the virus. Creating conflict between humans might serve the selfish goals of certain leaders, but it does humanity no good. As such, a key lesson from the COVID-19 virus is that using the tools of racism and xenophobia will only make things worse—something that is always true.

My Amazon Author Page

My Paizo Page

My DriveThru RPG Page

Follow Me on Twitter

Lessons from COVID-19 IV: (Mis)Information

by 14 Comments

Image Credit

In the face of a crisis politicians do have strong incentives to conceal, lie and even spread disinformation. There seems to be a natural impulse to do so, to try to avoid blame or perhaps out of a form of wishful thinking that reality will somehow conform to the deception. A politician might even have seemingly good reasons to conceal and deceive, such as avoiding seeming weak to other nations or to try to avoid panicking the population. No matter the motivation, concealing the facts will only make the problem worse, while disinformation will make it even worse than silence would.

One lesson that should have been learned from the 1918 influenza pandemic is that honesty and accurate information are critical to fighting a pandemic. The threat of the flu was initially downplayed, allowing it to spread and officials failed to inform the public of the true danger. One example of this is the infamous Philadelphia parade which allowed the flu to spread like wildfire.  This resulted in the deaths of over 1,000 people and over 200,000 were infected. While this disaster should have provided a clear lesson to others, the denial, downplaying and deceit continued in the United States. The inaction extended all the way to the top, with President Woodrow Wilson (a Democrat) remaining silent. While there is no way to calculate exactly how many people would have not died if a policy of providing accurate information had been adopted, it is reasonable to infer that many lives could have been saved.  Given this clear historical lesson, one would have thought that we would have been ready to address COVID-19 with honest, accurate information. But this was not the case. As an American, I will focus on my government, though examining other nations would also be useful.

When COVID-19 was first identified in January, former Trump officials  (Bossert and Gottlieb) started sounding a warning about the virus, drawing the obvious and tragic lessons from the 1918 pandemic. The initial response from Fox News was to cast the virus as a hoax intended to harm Trump.  In the previous version of this essay I asserted that both Trump and Fox put forth the claim that the virus was a hoax.  According to Snopes, Trump did not directly claim the virus was a hoax but instead accused the Democrats of creating a new hoax—the target of the alleged hoax being his inept and dangerous handling of the virus. This evolved into downplaying the severity of the threat, with Trump making dangerously false claims about the spread of the virus and other critical matters. While the White House and Fox news eventually seemed to take the threat seriously, dangerous disinformation was still being spread. One example of utter moral irresponsibility is the claim that test kits were readily available so that the federal government would be able to provide them to the states. This was, of course, not true and the lie costs the states precious time they could have used to create and distribute their own test kits. To use an analogy, it is as if your apartment building were on fire and the fire department said that they were just about there and ready to fight the fire with their great new firetrucks. But they were lying—they were not on their way and only had a few hand pumped hoses.

Because of the downplaying and deceit, there will be many deaths that could have been prevented by the truth. If Trump and Fox News had told the truth from day one, people would certainly still have gotten sick—but we would have been far better prepared with test kits and with defensive measures that could have greatly mitigated the virus. Instead, Trump and Fox News (and others) have aided and abetted the enemy with their disinformation and some of the deaths that have occurred and will occur are partially their fault.  While damage to the economy would have still occurred under an honest administration, it would have been less since the virus’s impact would have been lessened.

The lesson from COVID-19 is essentially a repeat course of the lessons from the 1918 pandemic: those in power need to provide honest and accurate information to the public in the face of public health threats. Such honesty can impose a cost on a politician, especially if they are ill equipped to handle and actual crisis. But the cost of silence and disinformation is always vastly higher on the public. And a politician can, from a selfish viewpoint, stand to benefit from being honest—if they are able to handle the crisis competently, then they can be rewarded by the public. However, the main concern of a leader should always be the good of those they lead, not their own perceived private good—especially not at the expense of the people.

It could be objected that there have been cases in which silence and disinformation were beneficial—that is, the leaders’ concealment or lying yielded a better outcome than the truth. While this might have some merit, this does not seem to be the case—as the 1918 pandemic shows. To claim that there might be some secret cases in which silence or deception were the best choices would be to use a variant of the appeal to ignorance fallacy—asserting that silence or deceit might be good because there might be unknown cases in which they worked is obviously terrible logic. While the above focuses on politicians and leaders, it is also worth considering the threat of disinformation from members of the public.

As would be expected in a time of crisis, citizens also spread misinformation. In some cases, this is the result of ignorance—people might be acting from benevolent motives, but they are doing harm because they are spreading untrue claims. For example, a person might believe that bleach drinking can cure COVID-19 and they share this because they care. While such benevolent motives cannot be faulted, people have an obligation to critically assess claims about a crisis before they share them with others. A quick test of a claim is to check it against one’s own observations, against one’s background information and against established credible claims. Using the bleach example, bleach bottles figure prominent warnings about the dangers of bleach (observation) and most people should have in their background information that bleach is a poison.  If a claim matches up with all three, then it is reasonable to accept it as likely be true. If it does not, then it can often be reasonable to doubt the claim or at least suspend judgment. People also need to critically assess the sources of claims about a crisis. If no source is provided, then one must go with the methods of testing a claim. If a source is provided, the source must be confirmed (for example, is it really from the CDC?) and assessed. The credibility of source depends primarily on the knowledge of the source (how likely they are to be right) and their lack of bias (a biased source is less credible, since they have a reason to lie). In general, knowledgeable and unbiased sources are good sources; biased or ignorant sources are not. When in doubt it is wisest to suspend judgment.

There are also those who spread misinformation knowingly. This might be to make money, such as Televangelist Jim Bakker’s efforts to sell a fake corona virus cure or for political advantages, such as Russia’s efforts to worsen the pandemic by spreading disinformation in the West. There are, as always, the trolls who will spread disinformation because they find it amusing or because they want to hurt people. There seems to be no reasonable way to argue that it is morally acceptable for people to lie in health crisis to make money or from a free-speech-for-trolls viewpoint. But perhaps a case can be made justifying nations weaponizing misinformation. After all, if the use of war and means short of war that involve hurting and killing people are morally acceptable, then hurting people through misinformation would also seem acceptable. That is, if we accept killing people with bullets and bombs, then it is hard to balk at killing with lies.

One possible response is to argue that a pandemic is a war with two sides: humans and the pathogen. As such, when a country uses disinformation in a pandemic, they are aiding the enemy of all humanity—that is, they are committing treason in a time of war. A less dramatic and more pragmatic response is to point out that misinformation, like a virus, tends to spread—so a country that weaponizes misinformation runs the risk of it infecting their population. Social media is, of course, the vessel of choice for distributing most disinformation and misinformation.

While there can be sensible debate about what sort of political speech social media should restrict, if any, there seems to be no good arguments that social media companies should allow and enable the spread of misinformation and disinformation about a pandemic. Returning to the virus analogy, this would be like Uber having a policy of allowing drivers to knowingly transports people infected with COVID-19 around to interact with health people just because they can make some money doing so. There is also the war analogy—if social media does not fight misinformation and disinformation in a pandemic, they are aiding and abetting the enemy in a time of war.

In closing, the lessons here are clear: leaders need to immediately provide accurate information about pandemics, citizens need to be critical in their acceptance of information, and intentional spreading of disinformation should be regarded as moral crime against humanity in a time of war.

My Amazon Author Page

My Paizo Page

My DriveThru RPG Page

Follow Me on Twitter

Lessons from COVID-19 III: Politicization

by 12 Comments

Image Credit

When a threat to all humans exists, it would seem irrational for a political party to politicize the matter. But this does happen.  One reason is that while it seems Americans are extremely polarized; this is often more appearance than reality. While Americans do disagree strongly on certain limited issues, there is considerable consensus about many issues. Because of this, there is often a need to manufacture conflict in which political points can be scored. Since a threat generates considerable emotional responses it can be ideal for politization—a party can tap into the emotions and manipulate them to its advantage. There are also cases in which taking a threat seriously is seen as contrary to the interests of the influential and they work hard to politicize the matter. If they succeed, they can recruit voters to their side and get them to support policies that put them in danger. Thus, a political party can have two excellent reasons to politicize a threat to everyone: to score political points and serve the interests of those who benefit from allowing the threat to remain unaddressed.

Politicization can be extremely effective at engaging emotions and disengaging reasoning. There are numerous fallacies (such as group think) and cognitive biases (such as in group bias) that feed and are fed by ideology. If you have strong ideological views you were almost certainly thinking of examples of how those you do not like have engaged in the behavior described above—or similar behavior. For example, if you are liberal, then you are likely to have thought of the Republican politicization of climate change. If you are a conservative, you might have been thinking about the sins of the Democrats. If so, then you can see how effectively conflict can be created along party lines.

The COVID-19 virus presents a clear threat to everyone, but it quickly became politicized. Initially the Trump administration downplayed the virus and  accused the Democrats of using it to attack Trump. While the administration eventually accepted it as a real threat, the idea that is a hoax aimed at hurting Trump persists. There were certainly some perceived short-term advantages to politicizing the virus—to keep the markets calm through ignorance, to allow business to continue as usual and to hope that the virus would not arrive until after the 2020 election. Political points could also be scored against the Democrats by accusing them of making up a virus threat to hurt Trump and to buffer Trump against accusations of incompetence—he would have solved the problem but for the hateful Democrats.

From the Republican perspective, the Democrats were the villains—doing all that they are accused of in order to harm Trump and impede his efforts. On their view, it was the Democrats who were manufacturing the conflict; first by creating a virus hoax and then by interfering with Trump’s efforts to address the very real virus.  It could certainly be argued that the Democrats will exploit Trump’s failings to help them in the 2020 election and this is politicizing the threat to score political points. How one sees this matter will, obviously, tend to shake out along ideological lines—thus politicizing the issue of politicization.

While, as noted above, political points can be scored by politicizing an objective threat this has negative consequences. The most obvious is that time and resources are spent fighting each other rather than uniting against a threat to all of us. Another consequence is that manufacturing a conflict requires that one (or both) sides are engaged in misinformation, thus misleading people and this can have enduring consequences. In the case of the virus, while Fox News and the White House have shifted their position to match reality, the groundwork they laid early on still serves as a foundation for the enduring view that the virus is either a hoax or not very serious.

Some Republicans will certainly want to blame the Democrats; a common narrative is that their impeachment efforts are partially to blame for the virus crisis. As would be expected, one’s ideological lens determines how one sees this matter: Trump and Fox News as the villains who politicized the virus or the Democrats as the villains who distracted Trump from the virus.

There are three solutions. The first is that politicians need to exercise both judgment and restraint before engaging in politization of a crisis. The obvious problem is that politization can be advantageous and it is one of the stock tools of a politician. As such, getting politicians to use good judgment and exercise restraint will be challenging. The second solution is that voters can decide to support candidates who are more likely to exercise such judgment and restraint. Third, voters also decide how they respond. If they resisted efforts to politicize crisis that should be non-partisan, then the efforts of politicians to do so would be far less likely to succeed.

One clear concern is that the charge of politization can be used, ironically, to politicize and issue and to try to silence legitimate criticism. For example, the facts show that Trump’s initial handling of the crisis was terrible and that he was engaged in willfully or from ignorance making untrue claims about the virus and the situation. As such, the legitimate criticisms aimed at these problems could be non-political. But if the critics happen to be Democrats or liberals, then they could be accused of politicizing the matter because they are being critical. To address this problem, critics should endeavor to focus on the facts and try to steer clear of what might appear to be overtly political. This will certainly be challenging, since the other side is almost never going to accept even legitimate and fair criticism and will instead try to cast even such criticism as unfair politicization. As such, the manufactured polarization in the United States that has served the parties so well has done considerable damage to America. As should be expected. Unless we address this, new crises are likely to involve the same problems as the COVID-19 crisis.

My Amazon Author Page

My Paizo Page

My DriveThru RPG Page

Follow Me on Twitter

%d bloggers like this: