this book was written and published quickly. While I have checked facts where they exist, and attempted a steady, logical argument, there are bound to be errors of various kinds. I take full responsibility for these. I hope the freshness and sense of discovery in words minimally edited is some compensation.
In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.
The Works of Benjamin Franklin, 1817
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, organised citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.
Margaret Mead
About this Book
This book has a simple theme and structure, anchored in a troubling dichotomy between certainty and uncertainty. The most striking element of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the confidence of governments in their measures, when almost everything is highly uncertain and much – including knowing whether the measures will work – is just not known. This incongruity is reflected in several other imbalanced dualities, for example, science versus community values, risk management versus civil liberties, epidemiological modelling versus the modelling of broader social consequences, and paternalistic enforcement versus informed consent.
To provide a map through the mass of issues raised by the pandemic, the dualities are referenced throughout the book.
The questions embedded in every aspect of this episode are: why do human beings act as if we know what we are doing when we plainly do not? Why do we find it so difficult to admit our lack of knowledge? How is it that we repeatedly fail even to recognise our ignorance? The book addresses these questions, to try to put people's reactions to the crisis in some sort of perspective.
Most of the dualities are considered carefully. It is suggested that those on the right of the list (mostly the uncertainties (B)) should be recognised as at least equally important as those on the left (predominantly the certainties (A)). For example, while science is a powerful tool it cannot drive decision-making in a value-free way; while journalism is vital to keep citizens informed it should be investigative and open-minded and never slide into propaganda; and while disease can be a major problem, tackling it cannot sensibly be done to the exclusion of all the other problems we face as human beings.
The initial discussion of certainty versus uncertainty is focused on samples of planning documents and minutes of advisory committees which informed the UK government's decision-making. This material shows that the government's response was based on ‘best guesses’ about what might happen, from a wide range of different possible scenarios, and was single-mindedly centred on dealing with the virus. Despite pervasive uncertainty, reflected in the documents themselves, extremely assertive actions were taken, echoing similar and even more severe policies favoured by other nations.
It is impossible to think about the response to the pandemic without noticing pervasive psychological distortions. These are explained in a basic fashion, to highlight various biases that have altered our perceptions of so many facets of normal life, not least our perceptions of risk, which have been amplified out of all proportion.
With rare exceptions, ethics has been absent from media debate. This is hard to understand, not least since public health is a branch of medicine and medical ethics is normally a powerful regulator of interventions on individuals and groups. Why this has been so overlooked is mystifying. Consequently, a fair-sized section is devoted to this subject, and leads to the final part of the book, where the case for democracy is outlined.
In sum: massive decisions have been taken in the interest of public health without the involvement of the public; these decisions have been based on often highly distorted perceptions of reality; these distortions have partly arisen from a collective belief that ‘we must battle the virus at all costs', which has been constantly reinforced by a deluge of scary tales in the press, and further bolstered by unequal attention to more considered reflections. These factors, and more, underpin the book's argument for inclusive, participatory democracy: if the main problem has been an overly narrow focus on a few dominant elements, led by a handful of like-minded decision-makers, an obvious alternative is to broaden decision-making to include diverse voices, knowledge, values, experiences and cultures – as a practical, effective way to make policy.
The Case for Democracy not only explains why this is so desperately needed, but also gives examples of many existing inclusive, democratic initiatives around the world. Wide-reaching participatory democracy is already happening. While it will be a challenge to extend these examples to involve many thousands of us, it is by no means impossible. It can and must be done.
1 Introduction
This book was written quickly and is intended to be read quickly. I began writing in mid-March and submitted the manuscript at the end of May. While the story of the pandemic will be dated by the time you read it, this strange episode in human history has brought fundamental issues in psychology, risk, public health, ethics and democracy into sharp focus. As these are explained in the following pages, their enduring relevance to social organisation, planning and citizen engagement is made clear.
Originally the book was to be called A Viral Imbalance. Like many other observers I was struck – and personally disturbed – by what I saw as a one-eyed approach to a novel infectious disease. Governments around the world were imposing radical lockdowns of their populations, ordering rather than advising the public to stay at home, giving us limited information, and not consulting us in any way. An inevitable and entirely foreseeable consequence of this was severe economic difficulty for millions, the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs; anxiety, depression, domestic violence and a fearful, intimidated public. How could preventing one problem be so much more important than all the other problems the prevention was bound to cause?
Why was this virus such a threat when the evidence from data centres was that while contagious, it could be managed by protecting the most vulnerable of us? Why was so much faith placed on speculative, hypothetical models of the course of the contagion? Why were only a few scientists, doctors, civil servants, and politicians making the decisions? What was driving them? What were their justifications? From where did their moral authority derive?
Many of the questions, directly and indirectly, are about control: controlling the virus, controlling ‘the people', and people controlling each other.
Why were so many decision-makers so readily ignoring centuries of hard-won civil freedoms? Why were the public so accepting of the restrictions? Where was the discussion of ethics and human rights? Why were we so easily controlled and why were our controllers so willing to do it?
Whatever happened to critical thinking?
As an inquisitive human being, knocked off balance like everyone else, I desperately needed to try to understand what was going on. My first instinct was that there was a kind of madness abroad which had infected almost everyone. Not just we citizens, but our rulers too. At a stroke everything normal was turned upside down and distorted. Strangely, many people not only seemed not to mind, but welcomed the radical restrictions we were told were necessary.
Most of us were obviously scared. Understandably, people wanted to feel safe. But the fact that so many of us would accept almost any sacrifice to ‘beat the virus’ astounded me.
As I have researched and thought about what has happened, I have found I both understand more and understand less. I understand that the human reaction was, up to a point, predictable to those knowledgeable about risk, psychology, and social amplification. But I do not fully understand the widespread acceptance of wide and diverse negative consequences,
