******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ********************
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*****************************************************************
(I generally don't copy and paste a full article from Richard since this
is the way he earns some income but am sure he would not object to
republishing this. His Patreon account is definitely worth a
subscription: https://www.patreon.com/richardseymourwtf)
The basis of optimism is sheer terror
Those people you see in the gym, giving their macho vox pops about how
coronavirus is just one of those things, are the same people panic
buying. The people you see filling up pubs are also stuffing their
pockets with hand sanitiser. The blonde Californians complaining about
'unconstitutional' lockdown will definitely have their year's supply of
toilet paper - make your own joke about how full of shit they are. This
is the thing about denial. It is a form of knowing. We know what denial
looks like in everyday life. It looks like the frightened
rationalisations that we always give for our self-destructive
behaviours. They know. They know what's coming, and they're terrified.
Not all of this mix of confusion, denial and bravado can be blamed on
the government and its tabloid and broadcaster auxiliaries. There are
aspects of popular culture that are just primed to react like this.
Notably, little of this behaviour has been seen in Hong Kong. However,
the government's toxic and dangerous communications strategy, is also
set up to exploit those reactions. Ambiguity, mixed signals, outsourced
rumours, gaming the public, are all an established part of the
repertoire. Taken from the far-right playbook, they worked very well in
the general election. But it isn't just communication. It is often
claimed that the government has shifted from 'mitigation' to
'suppression'. In policy terms, it hasn't. It has stopped talking about
'herd immunity' but, whatever the reasons, its actual policies thus far
look like a moderated version of 'herd immunity'. That's why,
notwithstanding the patriotic fervour of the national press, the UK is
still an object of satire and disbelief internationally.
The one thing about which the government has been clear, is that it is
all about timing. The right measures at the right time. Don't panic
people too early, or they'll 'fatigue' of controls later on. Better to
'optimise' the number of deaths, having more early on, and (they hoped)
fewer later. So, why are the government always at least one step behind
events? Why are they always being forced to change tack at the last
minute? Why did it take from 24th January to 8th March for the
government to even have the first Cobra meeting about this? Why did they
only 'realise' late in the day that their 'herd immunity' strategy
killing hundreds of thousands would not be a good look? Why is the UK
still on a steeper mortality curve than Italy, with a younger
population? And why has the government said or done nothing to indicate
the severity of this?
The chief medical officer isn't helping. Every time he speaks on this,
he gazes out at the press corps with his placid, unblinking, hypnotoad
eyes, and says that most people will not die. We know that. We know that
the majority of the population is not about to die. The Spanish Flu
didn't kill most of the population. But at a mortality rate of 1-2 per
cent, it still wiped out millions across the world. And most of the
population knows and loves someone who is at risk of being hospitalised.
And whether they know it or not, the NHS will not be able to cope with
the spike that is coming. Unfortunately, this sort of statement is
widely circulated among the type of people who ordinarily think experts
are liars, to 'prove' that it's all hysteria and nonsense. At least
Whitty has the justification that calming people down is often a good
thing to do in a crisis (although not, perhaps, when so much of the
population isn't taking it seriously). The government has no such excuses.
Why do we still have a far less prepared NHS than Lombardy did when the
crisis struck? Why aren't NHS key workers being tested for the virus
even when they show symptoms? Why is the government tweeting out calls
for manufacturers to convert to making respirators, while an established
respirator manufacturer tells Newsnight they have received no increased
orders from the government? Why did they drag their feet on closing
schools, instead releasing stats claiming that 3 percent of GDP would be
lost by such measures? Why did it take parents, teachers and pupils
imposing their own shutdowns to force a change of policy? Why are they
still dragging their feet on giving workers and renters the necessary
support so that they can self-isolate? Why aren't they locking down
London, but instead allowing rumour to send carriers of coronavirus
scattering all over the country? Why aren't they forcing pubs and
restaurants to close? Understand: they are going to have to do all these
things they don't want to do anyway. The only question is how much
damage and suffering they will inflect through their heedless delays.
As Chris Giles points out in the FT, one reason they're perpetually
behind the curve might be the hubris of medical technocrats who have
absolute faith in the numbers. They have no idea what the 'right time'
is. The data they're getting in on the progression of the disease is
always out of date, and change is very rapid. The same will doubtless be
true of the economic data they're getting in. Another reason, also given
in the FT, is that Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak are desperate to avoid
spooking the City of London by supporting harsher measures. If that's
the case, it isn't working. The pound fell to its lowest level since
1985 on Wednesday.
Nonetheless, there's a certain logic here. It wasn't until the economy
really started to take a hit that governments in the US, UK, Russia and
Brazil began to take this crisis seriously. And if the main concern is
avoiding a collapse of the financial sector, you can understand the
stasis, the foot-dragging, and the drastic last-minute measures as part
of a desperate sequence caused by trying to second-guess and reassure
investors. Even on its own mean terms, this concern might be misplaced.
As Adam Tooze has suggested, this looks far less like a crisis of the
banks than 2008, and far more like a hit to the whole body of global
capitalism: extraction, production, supply chains, service industries,
everything. And the blow is unavoidable: either it is managed, with the
government deliberately shutting down production and organising the
transition, or it is chaos and procrastination, with lots of unnecessary
death.
Even taking as given the purview of a right-wing government, committed
to protecting the status quo at all politically manageable costs, this
government's approach is disastrously short-sighted and reactive. As I
said, they will get it together. The new reaction thrives on catastrophe
- as, to an extent, reaction always has. But they're going to hurt and
kill a lot of people on the way.
_________________________________________________________
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at:
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
