From early in the pandemic, I had been avoiding any talk about it with a member of my tennis club, as it soon became clear that he was some kind of covid-sceptic. He still hasn’t been vaccinated and took no precautions other than those he was obliged to. Surprisingly, he is a GP (a family doctor). However, I was never clear about exactly what he thought since we changed the subject quickly as soon as he said anything irritatingly denialist.
A few weeks ago I took the rare occasion of having an extended time with him – let’s call him Doc – to try to talk about what he thought and why. By good fortune, I had recently read Ian Leslie’s excellent Conflicted, (retitled as How to Disagree for the UK paperback edition). It’s the kind of book which is packed with information and advice, but which you end up remembering a pathetically small number of things from. For me, the main points I thought I could learn from were to avoid directly challenging what other people say and make sure you’re doing a lot of listening and not too much talking.
I’m not sure how Leslie would score a recording of our conversation, but I did find it illuminating. What became apparent was the extent to which Doc’s response to the pandemic was not driven by the specifics of the situation but his entire life history. First, he has often found himself standing outside of mainstream opinion. For example, although he’s a trained doctor, he’d rather be a naturopath and distrusts a lot of pharmaceutical interventions. So going against the grain of received and expert opinion has become a kind of habit. Indeed, “expert consensus” has become a red light for him. He prefers to think for himself, even if he is not as qualified to do so as others.
Second, politically he’s a libertarian. He hates all the ways in which governments regulate the lives of citizens beyond that which is necessary.
Put these two things together and you have someone primed to react to the Covid pandemic with scepticism. Governments were using mainstream science to place restrictions on individual liberty. It’s like both his biggest nightmares fusing into one horrible reality.
But he’s also an intelligent man and so it is hard to just force the facts to fit his preconceptions. He also needed a large grain of truth or two on which to grow his pearl of dissent. I say “grain of truth” but what I think he actually has is a grain of plausibility. This is its essence: Covid-19 was real respiratory virus but its mortality rate has never really been that high. Even governments admitted that the main rationale for lockdowns was not to minimise Covid deaths but to prevent hospitals from becoming overrun. In countries like the UK and Italy, that very nearly happened but in some – apparently including Germany – hospitals were always able to cope. So what we saw was a massive overreaction.
I don’t think this part of his thesis is right but it’s not bonkers. You could point to Sweden as an example of a country that resisted lockdowns without catastrophe following. And then you could have a reasoned argument about it. Sweden did no worse than the European average but quite a lot worse than its Nordic neighbours. Pick your comparison and it did fine or very badly. I can’t imagine how British hospitals would have coped in the first two Covid waves without action to “flatten the curve” of infections and serious illness. Most significantly, a virus that the World Health Organisation found was responsible for 14.9 million excess deaths worldwide in 2020 and 2021 doesn’t sound not-especially-deadly. (In a typical year nearly 60 million people die worldwide, so that’s a lot of extra deaths.) But his key claim that the world overreacted isn’t unworthy of discussion.
Things got trickier for Doc when we talked about what else must be assumed to be the case in order to make the massive overreaction theory true. The only remotely plausible one is near universal incompetence. Almost all the world’s public health advisors got it wrong. Since they were presumably all drawing on the same scientific literature and assumptions, this isn’t as unlikely as it seems. You’d expect experts around the word to agree when there is an expert consensus so if there were a major flaw in that consensus, the whole world would be led astray. The problem for Doc, however, is that this is cock-up, not conspiracy.
All the conspiracy theories require much more fanciful explanations for the global mess-up. To see governments behind a mass deception is crazy since governments of all stripes, even enemies, all came to very similar conclusions. I also put it to Doc that this is a crime without a plausible motive. Take the idea that it was an excuse to clamp down on our liberties. That doesn’t explain why the UK government, for example, had to be dragged kicking and screaming into bringing in restrictions and then abandoned them before most experts thought it was safe. In most parts of the world, we are now as free as we were before the pandemic.
A second theory, apparently, is that the global mega-rich elite knew that the economic system was unsustainable and had to orchestrate a collapse, although how that helps them I don’t know. But since the global economy hasn’t collapsed, merely suffered serious damage, this doesn’t look like a good plan.
Both theories also suffer from a fatal flaw: even if evil agents were trying to orchestrate a fraud, how on earth did they get almost all the world’s medical experts to peddle the same lie?
Doc accepted that these were all unanswered questions. But they didn’t bother him because he wasn’t particularly attached to any particular conspiracy theory. He was interested in them because they took his more general concerns seriously, while the mainstream narrative ignored them. What matters is that he is on the same general side as the conspiracy theorists, not that he buys their ideas wholesale. Shared values and general world view make him a sympathiser, not any conviction about the details of their arguments.
I think there’s a general lesson here. Most people believe that they hold their opinions for good reasons and that they are rational. They also assume that other people are trying to do the same and that when they are wrong, it’s because they’re not thinking straight. But we tend to be wrong about ourselves and others. Much of what we believe is simply taken on trust because people we judge to be sound say they are true. Much else is believed because it seems to conform to our general world view. We do not carefully interrogate all our beliefs one by one. Rather, we rely on the fact that we belong to “communities of knowers” to have others validate our beliefs for us.
When people believe what seem to be crazy things – conspiracies, fundamentalist religion, crank diets – we make a mistake if we think that all they need to do is to look more carefully at the facts and think more clearly. Their primary allegiance is to other people who hold the beliefs, not the beliefs themselves.
Rather than trying to convert people to our way of thinking, perhaps it would be more effective to steer them towards better bedfellows. If you’re an Afghan Muslim opposed to western imperialism and the only group you know that agrees with you is the Taliban, you may well end up joining them and not thinking too hard about their interpretation of Islam. It would be much better if you could find more reasonable anti-imperialist Muslims. If you’re fervently pro-trans rights and it seems everyone on that side of the debate thinks JK Rowling is a witch and gender critical feminists are transphobic, you’re unlikely to change your views until you see people you recognise as unambiguously pro-trans rights who have a less Manichean view.
People who think that governments seek to gain more control over citizens and that the global rich will do anything they can to shape the world to fit their needs are not all paranoid or deluded. The problem is that the most visible ones are. We need more people who take these concerns seriously without going down a conspiratorial rabbit-hole. Otherwise, those who have them are left with the choice of either feeling alone in a crazy world or flocking together with others whose antidote is to postulate an even crazier one.
News
The final three episodes of series one of the Royal Institute of Philosophy podcast Thinking Hard and Slow, which I host, has been put up. Work – A Short History of a Modern Concept with Axel Honneth requires the hardest and slowest thinking of the three. Differentiating Scientific Inquiry and Politics with Heather Douglas does a terrific job of distinguishing sense form nonsense in the idea that science cannot be value-free. Has Science Killed Philosophy? is the 2021 Annual Debate, featuring Carlo Rovelli, Eleanor Knox, Alex Rosenberg and Ritula Shah in the chair.
I’ll be taking part in a couple of debates at the How The Light Gets In London Festival 17/18 September. I’m also chairing a session at the Values and Virtues for a Challenging World public philosophy day in Cardiff on Wednesday 20 September. Other events are coming up – stay subscribed to find out more in due course.
I’m still looking for a home for some Lithuanian translations of How the World Thinks.
On my radar
Monday is ferragosto, a public holiday in Italy associated with empty inland towns and cities as the summer exodus to the seaside reaches its peak. It’s a great time to watch the film Pranzo di Ferragosto, which in English is the meaning-missing Mid-August Lunch. It’s a very gentle and humane comedy, starring and written and directed by Gianni Di Gregorio. A plot synopsis would make it sound dull.
People often say that Big Oil has conspired to deny global warming and prevent an energy transition. Well this is a conspiracy theory that’s true and the BBC’s excellent Big Oil v the World makes a damning case, as well as showing that the world only narrowly missed a couple of big opportunities to take action earlier.
If you can get behind the Economist’s paywall, there’s terrace and disturbing long read on Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Muhammad bin Salman. Behind the reformer persona is a nasty piece of work. There’s also an extraordinary piece on the lengths people go to make viral videos. It’s serious professional work but if you’re a creative it’s a Faustian pact.
The Intelligence Squared podcast has got some really strong episodes. Putin’s Long War: From Chechnya to Ukraine, with John Sweeney was stark in its assessment of the enemy we face while The Future of the War in Ukraine featured the ever-insightful Fiona Hill.
* * * * *
That’s it for now. After my summer slowdown, Microphilosophy will be reverting to fortnightly from September. I’ve also got lots of supporter-exclusive content lined up to add to the website and we’ll also be resuming the supporters’ only Cafe Philosophique discussion.
If you enjoy these newsletters, want to support my work and get some exclusive content and offers, please do consider becoming a supporter from just £5 per month. And remember that if you buy books online, you can avoid the tax-dodging giant and buy through my affiliate shop which gives 10% to independent bookshops and 10% to me.
Until next time, if nothing prevents, thanks for your interest.