The Cost of Folly

The aftermath of lockdown may be deadlier than Covid.

Arearea — Paul Gauguin (1892)

During the Nazi occupation of France, around two percent of French citizens momentarily ceased eating, and debating fresh air, to join the Resistance. After the war, it was said a quarter of French citizens claimed they too were part of that romance.

I remember, as a boy of 12, the one million or so demonstrators marching through London, protesting the looming invasion of Iraq. Back then, two-thirds supported with full throats and empty minds the Iraq war. Today, such people are thin on the ground. Nobody, it seems, ever supported the war in Iraq.

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I’m under no illusions. The same mental gymnastics will pretzel the memories of those who supported in full, and often with maniacal, curtain-twitching relish, the Covid-19 lockdowns.

During the first two-week lockdown, I suggested the ‘insane’ Swedish approach would likely prove right. The Swedes, a grown-up people, tend to get things on the money. Many usually well-adjusted types accused me of a desire to kill my grandparents—a strange contention—I don’t have any grandparents.

Critics claimed the Swedish approach of keeping society largely open was a grand social experiment. Somehow, our decision to turn off the economy, lock up millions of healthy people, and pay them to watch Netflix and to bake banana bread, was the sane approach.

The results are in. Sweden got it right. And we, well… take a look around. Great Britain is a soup sandwich. America isn’t faring much better.

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During those ‘trying times,’ as seemingly every email from every business I’d ever frequented dubbed them, I perused with bulimic indulgence the local Facebook page of a small town in which I was stranded. The usual fare of, ‘What time’s the market open today?’ mutated into the malicious.

“My neighbour has been out for a SECOND run today,” wrote one. “What shall I do? Does anyone have the number to report this?”

(You’d assume a man literally running away from people was, in a time of viral transmission, the lofty ideal.)

The scolds have scuttled off. They spent the pandemic grassing on their neighbours, screaming at strangers, demanding ‘two metres! Two-me-turs!’ in shops. They’ve dissolved like snowflakes hitting a lake.

Last week, British doctors claimed that more people in Britain may be dying from the aftermath of lockdown than from Covid.

Figures for excess deaths show that around 1,000 more people each week are dying than usual from conditions other than those linked to the virus. Over the last two months, this figure has ‘dwarfed’ the virus figures.

Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, Professor Robert Dingwall, said: “The picture seems very consistent with what some of us were suggesting from the beginning.

“We are beginning to see the deaths that result from delay and deferment of treatment for other conditions, like cancer and heart disease, and from those associated with poverty and deprivation.

“These come through more slowly — if cancer is not treated promptly, patients don't die immediately but do die in greater numbers more quickly than would otherwise be the case.”

So concerning are the figures that the Department of Health has ordered an investigation.

Not so long ago, to suggest that closing off hospitals was not a good idea was the preserve of addled nutters.

Anyone who suggested the cure may prove worse than the disease were written off as aiding and abetting mass death. In truth, we feared we were cutting off at the clavicle what tingled at the toe.

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Last December, me and my girlfriend ventured into Manhattan for dinner.

Being Jewish, my girlfriend is tinctured with a wonderful, healthy distrust of government authorities claiming their concern for one’s own good.

Anyway, the first restaurant we approached set the tone for the evening. As we walked up to the entrance, the door guard (he called himself a ‘greeter’) eschewed the usual syrupy welcome.

“Stop right there, please,” he motioned. “Got a vax pass?”

A luminous glee smeared over his ludicrous face. It was as if the world turned on his say so.

“Uh, well, we just want —.”

“Nope,” he gruffed. “No—can—do.” He was as satisfied as a pig in shit.

That moment was the most narcotic of his life. And to think of the future… an endless supply of this wonderful drug! Finally! He meant something. Life meant something. At last, the pitiful world recognised and indulged his greatness! His luminosity! His power!

As we slinked off, his self-satisfaction could have lighted up the skyscrapers wallowing overhead.  

In wry mode, my girlfriend said, “Well, for the first time in my life, I feel Jewish.”

The next place, a block or two down, was different. The girl behind the bar explained softly, as you would someone with a terminal illness, the reality of the situation. She tried her hardest.

“Seriously,” she said. “I’ll accept a photo of your pass—any pass—is cool with me.” We left in spite of her efforts to circumvent what she obviously deigned to be bullshit.

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I wonder where that little Hitler from the restaurant is now. No doubt, these post-pandemic days are tasteless to his heightened palate. Indeed, he’s probably convinced himself he was against such madness all along. He’s forgotten what that little whiff of power did to his brain.

 Sociologists say one third of any society harbours a ‘latent authoritarianism.’ All they need is a little wink and a nudge from someone in a lab coat.

For such people, the pandemic was the glory days of a humdrum existence.

They were the winners. They studied the ever-changing rules, the more ridiculous the better. They pretended Sweden didn’t exist. They willed Florida to swamp herself in Covid deaths.

When such measures failed, they recanted with primitive fervour: ‘We didn’t lock down hard enough!’

The pandemic celebrated usually negative personality traits. High neuroticism combined with high agreeableness—the psychic soup of scolds and puritans—became the stuff of winners.

Back then, ten percent of people consistently told pollsters they’d lockdown indefinitely. A crazy poll in The Economist found forty percent wanted masks to remain; a quarter would shut down all nightclubs and casinos; another third craved socially-distanced theatres, pubs, and stadiums. A sizeable number wanted a 10 p.m. curfew! And they wanted all this regardless of Covid-19.

No doubt, the same people would now tell pollsters much different. The social currency of lockdown fanaticism has, like our money, eroded in value. But they’re still there, and given the chance, they’ll fall in line when the conditions are right.

In his work, The True Believer, Eric Hoffer said that “by embracing a holy cause and dedicating their energies and substance to its advancement,” such people, “find a new life of purpose and meaning.”

To some, the pandemic was the great equaliser. Freedom to them is an ‘irksome burden’ and revealing of one’s shortcomings. As Hoffer said, they want freedom from freedom itself.

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Why is it so many obey authority when coerced?

Social psychologist Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments found that people obeyed either out of fear or out of a desire to fit in, even when obeying went against their better judgements.

In Milgram’s classic study, sixty-five percent were willing to administer a fatal dose of electricity to a fellow human being, provided an authority figure told them to do so.

Participants were told the experiment would study the effects of punishment on learning. The ‘learner’ (an actor) was rigged up to electrodes.

The ‘teacher’ (an unknowing participant) was instructed to ask the learner questions, and zap the learner for any wrong answers, increasing the severity of the shock for each wrong answer. The shock generator was marked from 15 volts (a slight shock) to 450 volts (Danger! Severe shock.) The final shock was marked: ‘XXXX.’

The actor would provide the wrong answers on purpose. And dial up the volume of his complaints as the shocks got worse. A slight shock elicited a grunt. He’d scream in agony at 285 volts. Further up the scale, he’d complain of heart pain. At 330 volts: total silence.

When the teacher hesitated, the experimenter would pressure him to keep going: From, ‘please continue,’ to ‘the experiment requires that you continue,’ to ‘You have no choice but to continue.’

One teacher who begged to end the experiment was told he must continue. He went on, repeating to himself: “It’s got to go on. It’s got to go on.”

Milgram found that over two-thirds of ordinary people, when ordered to by an authority figure, would administer a fatal 450v shock to an innocent human being.

Another study found many will change their beliefs to fit in. Solomon Asch asked participants to match one line with three other lines. Two lines were of obviously different lengths, and one line was of obviously matching length.

Without actors present, 99 percent of participants answered correctly. When surrounded by actors claiming a shorter or longer line was actually the matching line, the result was much different. A full 37 percent of participants would change their mind to agree with the others, despite the correct answer being childishly obvious.

Asch said of the results, “That intelligent, well-meaning, young people are willing to call white, black is a matter of concern.”

And don’t we know it.

Freedom is not our default state. Our default state is of safety and suspicion. The free society is an aberration. That’s something we tend to forget.

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