I have been forthright and clear about my position from the beginning: the lockdowns and drastic new authoritarian regulation of our society is an injustice and will cause a multiplicity of severe and unnecessary crises that will eclipse the potential damage of COVID-19 or any other virus. However, like most of the people I know who share my grave concerns, I have nonetheless been deferential to public unity. We saw the anxiety and the fear of those who were pushing for lockdowns and other repressive measures. We understood their pain. And in spite of everything we were determined to respond calmly and sympathetically to a political climate, advocacy, and resultant government action that were and are outrageous and extreme. Under any other circumstance, battle lines would have been drawn, and we would have been fierce in our opposition to the nascent authoritarian movement taking over our society. Instead, though still firm and unequivocal, we tried to remain understanding and patient. This was a mistake.

My patience has been thoroughly expended, and it has counted for nought. Not only was the gesture of solidarity unnoticed and utterly unrequited, but it is clear to me now, looking back, that the disproportionate fear and obsessive focus on this problem to the exclusion of all others, coupled with their obvious need to handled with kid gloves, is not incidental to the conversation; it is actually one of the most damaging and dangerous issues of the present moment in its own right.

In a crisis driven by the hysteria and the moral and intellectual cowardice of the mainstream, when I thought I was being sympathetic to the anxiety of a society in the grips of uncertainty, it turns out that the smallest gestures of deference merely validated the hysteria which was rapidly being harnessed to justify and expedite the wanton assault on what remains to us of our centuries-old heritage of liberalism and enlightenment.

“They asked no questions. They were grateful for the opportunity to work like termites on the sills of the established order.”

‘The Sirens of Titan (1959)’, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

1. Australia’s Lockdown Laws and Nascent Authoritarian Movement

It was still very early in the development of the pandemic, globally, that a narrative started to proliferate about China’s experience with coronavirus. Particularly amongst proponents of more severe “pandemic control” measures, one of the Chinese Communist Party’s main talking points was recycled and legitimized: “the Chinese” went the story, “were able to control the virus with great success primarily because the totalitarian nature of their political system and the ingrained obedience prevalent in their traditional culture made it possible to coordinate a swift, strong, and united response to the outbreak. Thank God for the wisdom and benevolence of their Communist overlords.

Needless to say, this claim is dubious to say the least. The absence of press freedom or freedom of speech at an individual level in China actively crippled the capacity of civil society to communicate or act at the earliest and most vital stage of the crisis. If the possibility for voluntary action and a civil response had not been effectively thwarted by the self interest and power of the Chinese state, we might have seen a significantly faster and more comprehensive response in the early days in Wuhan. Unfortunately, we will never know. It is worth bearing this in mind: when one thing is done in preference to another, it is very easy to point to the fruits of the option that was actually chosen. But what we cannot see or point to precisely because it never came to be, is what could have happened if we chose differently.

The importance of whether this narrative was correct, however, is eclipsed by the significance of the fact that the measures which it was used to justify were put into effect without any discussion or debate as to the relative costs and benefits of the proposed methods and what they were expected or merely proposed to achieve. Such unilateralism may seem benign to some, benumbed as the population has become to massive expansions of authority that were literally inconceivable a year ago and for the entire history of our country before that, but what defies all justification is the fact that the ruling party, now junta, did not even consider or investigate this question before pushing ahead with multiple measures of dubious efficacy and profound, society altering consequence.

Having said that, we ought to dwell on the fact that there has been almost no public discourse, fact finding, exchange of opinions, either when these measures were proposed or for the duration of their crippling effect on the people of Australia and particularly Victoria. It is an issue too monumental to cover adequately at this particular point in my diatribes how we as a society have become such an uncritical, cowardly, and dependent people who are willing to submit to the most drastic abuses at the slightest justification if its done by our governments or by incompitent civil servants and bureaucrats invoking science as though a deity not to be taken in vain or rebelled against. What will come to that, God help us. But what we need to talk about immediately is how the public allowed themselves collectively to become so frightened and hysterical, so incapable of the barest semblance of critical thought, dissidence or even inquisitiveness that they accepted almost unanimously without debate or evidence, without any time for consideration, and against overwhelming commonsense and logic, that ONE virus of an unknown degree of danger was so unimaginably destructive and frightening that literally ANY consequence was acceptable in the name of fighting it, whether theoretically or with evidence, with any amount of success, resounding or marginal.

How is the Australian public so inconceivably, unprecedently fucking ignorant, that they were able to agree almost unanimously, immediately, and without debate, discussion, or a shred of evidence, that it was necessary and desirable to shut down all but the barest bones of our society that were required for subsistence, for an undetermined time, because a few thousand people had a fucking virus. And no I am not downplaying thet seriousness or severity of the virus, reread this paragraph until you understand that it doesn’t matter how fucking dangerous a virus it is, the conclusion is still insane. To borrow a line from Frank Zappa, it is the equivalent of treating dandruff by decapitation.

All of this was unfathomable to me for the longest time. It defied comprehension. It is only slowly that I have begun to see how this kind of irrational behaviour is an outgrowth of our political culture. Of course the public were happy to imagine and institute any conceivable measure without considering the attendant cost; it is a public which has been conditioned over a lifetime to systematically ignore or disbelieve in the cost of government action. This is a public which has been hand reared on magical thinking; the government acts to slow the spread of the virus, and this intentional consequence is all that matters. It may do anything, prohibit anything, spend any amount, furlough any number of workers and industries for any number of months, it may raise the tax rate as many percentage points as necessary, and none of this has any consequence. All that is real is the result they wished for: a few hundred fewer new cases per day. Never mind the cost.

The Public Affairs and Estimates Committee of the Victorian Parliament is currently conducting its Inquiry into the Victorian Government’s Response to the Pandemic. One official after another has been asked on what basis they determined the benefit of their policy was greater than the cost. What information, logic, estimate, what modelling or expert advice did they take account of. The answer of every single official has been that no such consideration was made. They simply did whatever they thought might conceivably achieve a singular objective, without any concept whatsoever of that objective’s relative importance or the damage that might be wrought in achieving it.

But don’t take my word for it: belatedly or not, and whether anybody else participates, I am going to have that discussion of costs and benefits in the coming pages

2. The Measures Proposed and the Evidence For and Against

One thorough examination of possible pandemic control measures, written primarily by Donald A. Henderson, is the article ‘Disease Mitigation Measures in the Control of Pandemic Influenza’, published in the journal Biosecurity and Bioterrorism[1]. Henderson is one of the most respected epidemiologists in the world, best known for heading the international effort to eradicate smallpox. With assistance from the three named co-authors, this report was put together in the aftermath of the avian flu (or H1N1), for the purpose of surveying the existing evidence for commonly proposed disease mitigation and pandemic control measures. Except where otherwise noted, the quotations in the next few sections are from this report.

2.1. Quarantine

Quarantines are the measure which most people associate with infectious diseases and public health efforts to contain them. This, however, is a reflection of “views and conditions prevalent more than 50 years ago, when much less was known about the epidemiology of infectious diseases and when there was far less international and domestic travel in a less densely populated world.” It is largely a remnant of our collective cultural memory of typhoid and similar historical episodes.

Regarding the evidence for and against quarantines, a World Health Organization (WHO) Writing Group, “after reviewing the literature and considering contemporary international experience concluded that “forced isolation and quarantine are ineffective and impractical.[1A]” This is due largely to the sheer amount of resources involved in “[arranging] to provide food and other support services.” As a result of this and other experiences, medical authorities have expressed doubts about the efficacy and feasibility of large-scale and home quarantines.”

Hendersons survey of possible measures concludes in no uncertain terms, regarding the prudence of large-scale quarantine measures:

“The negative consequences of large-scale quarantine are so extreme (forced confinement of sick people with the well; complete restriction of movement of large populations; difficulty in getting supplies, medicines, and food to people inside the quarantine zone) that this mitigation measure should be eliminated from serious consideration.”

Henderson, et al.

2.2. Travel Restrictions

Travel restrictions have likewise been “historically ineffective:” the WHO Writing Group concluded that “screening and quarantining entering travelers at international borders did not substantially delay virus introduction in past pandemics … and will likely be even less effective in the modern era.”

“Similar conclusions were reached by public health officials involved in the international efforts to control SARS,” which was a coronavirus closely related to COVID-19 (also known as SARS-CoV-2).

2.3. School Closures

The authors note that attendance at public and social events might decrease as a result of people’s concerns during a pandemic, and that some events might be cancelled.due to local concerns, but suggest that “calling for communitywide cancellation of public events seems inadvisable.”

A submission to the Senate Public Accounts and Estimates Committee’s ‘Inquiry into the Victorian Government’s Response to the COVID-19 pandemic stated that “it should be noted that the decision to close schools went against the prevailing advice of the country’s top infectious disease experts and the unanimous advice of the AHPPC, of which Professor Sutton is a member. It also went against the advice of epidemiologists advising the federal government. Epidemiological modeling for the national cabinet showed that the spread of coronavirus would be either curtailed or remain the same if schools were open which suggests that closing schools at best would have had no effect on the spread of the virus and at worse might have increased the spread of the virus.[2]”

—

You may have noticed a theme is beginning to emerge. In Australia, we enacted all three of the above measures, and we did so without any debate. Why should this have been the case, given that — firstly — it is unclear whether these measures are actually effective at reducing community transmission of infectious diseases; and secondly, given that even if we were certain these measures were extremely effective, experts like Henderson and others too numerous to count have expressed well-founded doubts that the benefits in terms of disease control would be sufficient to offset the monolithic costs attendant to these policies.

So far have we in fact strayed from being guided by evidence and discussing the merits of a given policy before hastily introducing massive and potentially devastating structural changes to the political, social, and economic structure of our society, that the three proposals discussed above were enacted without consideration or debate; and this despite the absence of any conclusive evidence supporting them, and despite each of them individually being considered too costly by the few examinations of pandemic control measures which have bothered to weigh the probably costs against the probable (or merely hypothetical) benefits.

And we haven’t even come to the most drastic and far-reaching of the measures which collectively make up the ‘Lockdowns’ we’ve been asked to believe are necessary: that is, the wholesale closure of a significant percentage of the economy, according to an arbitrary, and centrally planned, bureaucratic decree as to what is or isn’t essential to 25 million people individually and collectively. It is to this we now proceed.

2.4. “Lockdown,” or Wholesale Economic Shutdown

All of this would be bad enough if the government’s response to the pandemic had been restricted to the three measures, but we’ve yet to discuss the most sweeping, severe, and impactful measure: the suite of prohibitions, repressive executive edicts, mandatory behaviours, and forced closure of entire sectors of the economy — collectively referred to as ‘Lockdown’s, and categorized by ‘Stages’. The former group, consisting of measures which — although their efficacy was dubious — were at least longstanding proposals for disease mitigation which had been discussed and even implemented, albeit with mixed or unclear results. The latter measures, the ‘Lockdown’ to which entire countries were subjected without much warning, without any sound basis in evidence, and in a lightning-fast and monumental break with the established laws, procedures, and political, economic, social, and legislative mores which define our — at least ostensibly — liberal societies and traditions. At no point in the history of our Western democracies, not even during the undeniably greater crises of two World Wars, during which all of our countries lost a number of our young people staggeringly larger than the most pessimistic estimates of the risk posed by COVID-19, estimates which turned out to have overestimated the risk by an order of magnitude.

The predictable consequences of these measures are so ubiquitous and severe it’s nearly impossible to exaggerate, and these measures passed into effect, and routinely abused, extended, and upgraded in their severity, all without the barest whisper of these consequences anywhere in the mainstream press, the Federal or State parliaments, or the great majority of public opinion, least of all anywhere in the bleating of sanctimonious, newly proto-fascist youth whose sermons on tik tok and Facebook made a handful of bogans resisting the order to wear masks sound like extremists who’d been thwarted trying to carry out an act of terror. And when I say they made these people ‘sound like’ such a person as a thwarted extremist, I mean that they spoke of them as we’d have spoke of such a person last year, say, before we all lost our fucking minds. Remember that guy who drove through Bourke Street Mall last year trying to hit pedestrians? Try to call to mind the tone of news and public opinion about him at the time. Take this as your yardstick. Now compare it to the way we talk about someone whose refusal to wear a mask still leaves 99.99% of people masked and sanitized, and the risk of our national COVID-19 death toll rising by as much as one death exacerbated by perhaps 0.001%:

“Disgusting…,” “Selfish,” “Risking everyone’s lives,” “making this whole thing last longer for all of us,” “Criminal.”
Meanwhile, the very existence of the “Lockdown,” not to mention the uncritical, fanatical devotion to its uncritical and total implementation on the part of the majority of the citizenry, is — and let me be unequivocal about this — the single greatest failure of moral and intellectual courage I have seen in my lifetime, a crime for which I hold very little hope my generation can or will ever atone for.

If that sounds excessive to you, that’s why I — quite deliberately — made that statement before quantifying the consequences of the “Lockdown,” and the measures discussed above, to which we will turn in a moment. First, we ought to dwell briefly on the origin of pandemic control measures which have been implemented universally and unopposed, but which nobody had heard of prior to their dramatic global implementation.

3. Experts, Insular Academics, and Bureaucracy — the Problem of Hyper-Specialization.

I’ve already mentioned the hysterical, fanatical tone to which our discourse has risen to match our hysterical, fanatical public policy, but it bears some repeated examination here. In particular, it seems prudent to address certain narratives which have been proliferating which seek to discredit, if not suppress entirely, any dissenting opinion on the course our government has taken. One of the main rhetorical flourishes I’ve been seeing often, and one which has a long history of being used by holier-than-thou, elitist curators of opinion, particularly of the sort that believes everyone who disagrees with them is ignorant and immoral, and that on any given topic there exists a “scientific consensus” which invariably supports their viewpoint. This is done most effectively by means of that most pernicious form of the appeal to authority, the invocation of some expert in a specialized subject who is an abject halfwit outside the narrow confines of the academic study of his chosen field — and oftentimes within it, too.

This problem has been a part of the conversation for nearly a century, in the broader context of the humanist and liberal stance against the increasing bureaucratization, centralisation, and mechanisation of our society; but it has never been more relevant than it is right now. While I may be tempted to suggest a few epithets for this kind of political pawn[3], I will defer to the Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset who coined the aptly descriptive term “learned ignoramus.[4]” This theme was taken up by many of Gasset’s liberal contemporaries, becoming — as it was — an increasingly ubiquitous and consequential phenomenon, but Gasset’s analysis was especially incisive.

It is a problem of specialization, obviously; but it is more particularly a problem of how increasing incentives for certain kinds of actions and certain choices, as well as the reinforcement of certain attitudes and assumptions, are the consequence of this kind of specialization. It …

“… creates an extraordinarily strange type of man. The investigator who has discovered a new fact of Nature must necessarily experience a feeling of power and self-assurance. With certain apparent justice he will look upon himself as ‘a man who knows’. And in fact there is in him a portion of something which, added to many other portions not texisting in him, does really constitute knowledge.”

… “The specialist ‘knows’ very well his own tiny corner of the universe; he is radically ignorant of all the rest.”

With regards to the way this pernicious ignorance is harnessed to justify the absurd schemes of bureaucrats and to shut down any semblance of dissent, debate, or critical thinking (without which our democracies can not survive), a recent article justly noted[5]:

“Those plebeians who dare to question ‘experts’ such as Fauci and Emanuel are lectured to listen to their betters, who use ‘science’ to understand the situation and are far more knowledgeable. In other words, ‘stay in your lane’. Yet such critics miss their glaring contradiction. Public health officials certainly have a role to play, but they themselves are not experts at everything. By definition, they do not fully understand the other consequences and considerations that must be weighed and balanced, and they, of course, are lacking in the local dispersed knowledge needed to make such decisions[5]. Yet that does not stop them from making declarations dripping with arrogance, such as Fauci’s assessment of the implosion of the economy and the resulting unemployment and hardship as being merely “inconvenient from an economic and personal standpoint.”

There is possibly no more exemplary example of the moral grandstanding oblivious to consequences which I’ve been referring to than Fauci’s epic and condescending concession that the measures he championed are “inconvenient from an economic and personal standpoint.” These are not standpoints which interest the hyper-specialised expert like Dr. Fauci — he is a health expert, not an expert on economics or on the numerous disciplines involved in studying the ways in which these far reaching consequences are personally “inconvenient;” not even in regards to how the economic and personal consequences are likely to impact upon the future health of individuals and the population as a whole. When those effects come about, he can merely design more health-specific policy prescriptions which disregard where these problems came from or what new problems can be expected to result from a cure for them designed according to the same premise which caused them in the first place.

But without further preamble, we should proceed, now, to give as thorough an examination of the costs attending the lockdowns and other government policy designed to combat COVID-19.

4. The Costs, Tallied

4.1

Thankfully, not all scientists, academics and healthcare workers are hyper-specialized to the point of blindness, and there is still — for now — a strong, if marginal, tradition of holistic practice and of the broadly educated “man of letters.” As such — and contrary to the popular notion that the orthodox opinion on any given subject is simply “the science,” and only disputed by hillbillies and “neolliberal” intellectuals with an anti-minority or economy-centric hidden agenda — a very large and diverse cohort of scientists, intellectuals, NGO-workers and NGO’s, and frontline healthcare workers have been amongst those to push back against orthodox opinion by questioning the wisdom of ‘Lockdowns’.

In one of the more notable instances, more than 600 practicing physicians in the United States signed an Open Letter to President Trump urging reconsideration of these policies and outlining what they saw as the attendant harms. This letter is intelligently and lucidly written, and it paints a chilling picture. It begins by explaining that “thousands of physicians in all specialties and from all States … write … to express [their] growing alarm over the exponentially growing negative health consequences of the national shutdown.[6]”

… “In medical terms, the shutdown [is] a mass casualty incident.

During a mass casualty incident, victims are immediately triaged to black, red, yellow, or green. The first group, triage level black, include those who require too many resources to save during a mass crisis. The red group has severe injuries that are survivable with treatment, the yellow group has serious injuries that are not immediately life threatening, and the green group has minor injuries.

The red group receives highest priority. The next priority is to ensure that the other two groups do not deteriorate a level. Decades of research have shown that by strictly following this algorithm, we save the maximum number of lives.”

This system of triaging a large number of patients in the aftermath of a crisis is known to ER doctors and nurses, and EMT’s all over the world, but it is especially prescient, here, and serves a very useful purpose: it provokes people to look at the issue from a fresh perspective, and by making the reader understand and think about the triaging system, it introduces them to the concept of priorities, and of rationally calculating and comparing the relative costs and benefits of multiple choices, even in dire situations where people will respond to rationality in emotionally-loaded ways. This kind of responsible weighing of evidence and discussion of alternatives is precisely what has thus far been missing from the discourse surrounding COVID-19.

“Millions of Americans,” they suggest, “are already at triage level red …[including:]”

“150,000 Americans per month who would have had a new cancer detected through routine screening that hasn’t happened, millions who have missed routine dental care to fix problems strongly linked to heart disease/death and preventable cases of stroke, heart attack, and child abuse. Suicide hotlines calls have increased 600%”

These concerns are valid in the Australian situation, as well; though nowhere near 150,000 in our significantly less populous country, the Australian Financial Review reported that the number of early cancer diagnoses (or “pathology cancer notifications”) that were missed in our frenzied and single-minded focus on coronavirus was nonetheless at least 120 a dayday[7] during the first national lockdown from March to May. This period accounts for at least two full months, and therefore easily in excess of 5,000 Australians whose diagnosis of cancer was delayed, it remains to be seen with what consequences for their ongoing prognosis. This was subsequently backed up by the chief executive of Cancer Council Australia, Professor Sanchia Aranda’s statement that “up to one in 10 people may have put off cancer screening during the pandemic, and the statement from the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre’s chief medical officer David Speakman that following the imposition of ‘Stage 4’ restrictions in Melbourne, patient referrals had once again “nosedived.[8]” And in addition to the drop in diagnoses, there is a related drop reported to the AFR by Dr. Pockney, a colorectal surgeon, of “a massive drop” in colonoscopies, with multiple important implications for not only the diagnosis, but the prevention and treatment of cancer. He says his colleagues working in colorectal surgery, a specialty in which more than 80% of the patient load related to cancer, all report a drop in their workload of one-third to one-half of normal levels.

Also revealed by the AFR’s coverage, Victoria Atkinson, the chief medical officer of Healthscope — an organisation which operates hospitals, medical centres, aged care homes, and pathology services =, “said its daily emergency department admissions were down about 20 percent,” reflecting a drastic reduction of the rate at which people are seeking treatment for issues like cancer, cardiovascular disease, strokes, and chronic illnesses like diabetes. Dr. Atkinson, who is a qualified cardiac surgeon added that, “we’ve just terrified people into believing that the only safe place is home, no matter what, so they’re ignoring chest pain and other symptoms.” It seems astounding to me that so few people are reaching — or at least voicing — so obvious and so basic a problem with our governmental response to — and public discourse around — COVID-19. I would also suggest that a corollary of Dr. Atkinsons observation is that we’ve bullied and brow-beaten people into believing that COVID-19 is not only the greatests health threat faced by our society, but even more credulously a greater health issue for our society than all others combined, and the greatest health threat to each of us individually[9].

Dr. Atkinson also pointed to “research by British health and actuarial officials who calculated that for every three COVID-19 deaths there was an extra two non-COVID deaths due to lockdown.” The AFR reports:

“Some 16,000 extra people died between March 23 and May 1 because they were reluctant to attend hospitals, had difficulty accessing medical help and were discharged early from hospital.”

This is possibly the most staggering report of all. The total death toll from COVID-19 in the UK is slightly above 50,000, those deaths spanning a period of four months; and here we read a report which states that in barely over a month of that same period as many as 16.000 people may have died in the UK from reduced access to healthcare and the effect of widespread hysteria on people deciding whether or not to seek medical attention. But it doesn’t end there, either.

“Separate British health research,” the same AFR article continues, probing ground suggested by Dr Atkinson, “has estimated that delays to cancer diagnosis and treatment because of the coronavirus could cause between 7,000 aand 35,000 extra cancer deaths per in the United Kingdom within a year[10].

And then there is the equally dire warning of Professor Jeff Dunn, CEO of the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia, who warned in a PCFA media release that “Australia’s healthcare system could be hit by a tidal wave of disease in the next 12 months if the diagnosis of prostate cancer and other chronic illness is held back because of COVID-19.[11]” The media release also notes an overall drop of 40% in routine testing across the pathology sector in general, amounting to an estimated “60,000 Australians missing out on potentially life-saving tests.”

Clearly what all of this amounts to is a parade of well-regarded, kind-hearted, and community-oriented doctors, researchers, scientists and advocates who have come to the conclusion which, to me, seems always more inescapable — the governments hasty actions in response to COVID-19 were a gamble at best, and as the smoke clears we are seeing — and will see ever more clearly — that it was an ill=advised, and profoundly costly gamble at that.

4.2.

The Scrips letter goes on to suggest that triage level yellow would be an appropriate designation for those — “tens of millions of Amerricans” — affected by the following:

“Liquor sales have increased 300–600%, cigarettes sales have increased also, rent has gone unpaid, family relationships have become frayed, and millions of well-child check-ups have been missed.”

—

And finally, they suggest that “hundreds of millions of people are at triage level green:

“These are the people who currently are solvent, but at risk should economic conditions worsen. Poverty and financial uncertainty are closely linked to poor health.”

[And] “a continued shutdown means hundreds of millions of Americans will downgrade a level.”

They go on to provide a number of real examples from their practices, which really bring the assembled facts into sharp focus as they are demonstrated in — or constitute the basic facts of — the lives of individual human beings. But we will return to this once we’ve run through our accounting of the costs in its entirety.

—

And as we continue with that task, we may pause again to acknowledge an important point raised by the authors of the open letter in their summary of the Americans who would be appropriately labelled triage level green; namely, that “poverty and financial uncertainty are closely linked to poor health,” or more broadly, that so-called economic considerations are not abstract or the concern only of wealthy plutocrats, but have consequences for the wellbeing and happiness of everybody, and especially economically disadvantaged groups[12]. While much of the link between the economy and the wellbeing of individuals is common sense, it has also been studied from time to time. Since we are face-to-face with an imminent economic downturn of proportions not seen since the second World War, we should at least briefly expand on the results of this subject of inquiry.

Studies have repeatedly shown that suicide rates rise significantly in proportion to notable increases in foreclosures, unemployment, and economic downturn in general, especially poverty rates. Some studies suggest that this trend is most pronounced amongst adults 45–64[13], but holds for ages 25–65[14], but not 15–24 or 65–74.

But the links between the economy and health go further than that. On the macro, or societal level, health performance and economic performance are strongly interlinked — wealthier countries have wealthier populations, where as poverty, “mainly through infant malnourishment and mortality, adversely affects life expectancy.” In addition, national income has a direct effect on the development of health systems through insurance coverage and public spending.” In the opposite direction, “countries with weak health and education conditions find it harder to achieve sustained growth.”

4.3.

It would be extremely negligent to conduct an examination like this without taking a long, careful look at the Inquiry into the Victorian Government’s Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic, currently being concluded by the the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee, a joint committee of the legislative assembly and the legislative council. I won’t pretend to have more comprehensive knowledge than I really do — and it is beyond the capacity of any one person to familiarize themselves with the produce of this Inquiry in total, even if it were their sole task — but I have at least skimmed all of the submissions made to the Inquiry, and at least skimmed the transcripts of all the hearings conducted by the Inquiry. I have read some of each in full. Regarding the hearings, I have read the presentations of every witness called before the hearing, though not always all of the question-and-answer session that followed; in most cases, I at least read the questions posed by David Limbrich, whose integrity I am personally sure of, and whose questions were consistently prescient, insightful, and close to my own concerns and values.

The most notable fact about the hearings, if not necessarily the most surprising, was the overwhelming tendency of witnesses and those making submissions to kiss up to the government, to offer rapturous praise of the government’s handling of the pandemic, many times from persons and institutions which it is difficult to believe sincerely meant it, and the utterly uncritical, limp-wristed approach of almost every person or institution to appear before the committee is clear evidence that they do not consider it a viable or perhaps necessary means of inquiry and accountability, but rather a lobbying opportunity. There was, however, one notable exception to this rule. The presentation of Professor Gig Foster to the inquiry[15][16][17] is important to note here for its significant contribution to the relevant facts and accounting of the costs and benefits of the policy of lockdown. But as a side note, the professor should be commended for her independent thought and her determination to speak truth to power, even in an atmosphere when that truth is almost universally regarded with fear (approaching hysteria) and hostility (approaching legal repression).

In summary form, Professor Foster employed recognized and reliable methodology from her own field, which is economics, to provide an broad and evidence-based overview of the costs and benefits of the government’s policy; attempting a tentative/preliminary estimate in concrete, numerical terms. Her conclusion, ultimately, was that the cost of lockdown laws per month is at least three times higher than the total benefit of those laws over an indefinite period. She reached this conclusion, furthermore, whilst being quite conservative in her estimates of the costs relative to the benefits. To wit:

For instance, when estimating the costs, she assumed that on the typical 1–10 scale, the average reduction in overall life-satisfaction of Australians would be only 0.5. Accepting the logic that the effect of wholesale lockdowns on the happiness of the population is at least on average a negative one, an attempt to reach a figure of overall costs couldn’t possibly account for this using a more conservative estimate. In proceeding to derive a clear meaning from this figure, Professor Foster utilizes measurements which are an accepted standard and widely employed in the field of economics, WELLBY’s and QALY’s. A QALY refers to a Quality-Adjusted Life Year, and is equal 6 WELLBY’s — for a more detailed explanation of these units of measurement see the endnotes. Accounting for the average age of COVID-19 mortalities, which is equivalent to a loss of 5 healthy life years (or QALY’s), the impact of that conservatively estimated reduction in the wellbeing of Australians, is by itself equal to 17,300 typical deaths due to COVID-19.

This gives you a feeling of the Professors full accounting, but I feel it is prudent to briefly run through the costs she took into account:

• An average reduction of 0.5, on a 1–10 scale, in the life-satisfaction of Australians.
• Economic downturn — calculated according to the conservative assumption that half of the unexpected economic downturn is due to lockdowns per se, and the further conservative assumption that the consequences of this are limited to the reduction of public spending, not private spending or private income. Conclusion: a minimum cost per month of wholesale lockdown amounting to 25,812 QALY’s, or 5,162 average mortalities attributable to COVID-19, and …
• Suicide. The increase in stress resulting from the isolation and social/community-dislocation, job loss, income loss, and general economic uncertainty, and other direct consequences of wholesale lockdown are also known to produce, as a second-order consequence, increases in the rate of suicide and domestic violence. “Professor Ian Hickie, director of the Brain and Mind Centre at the University of Sydney, says suicides are expected to rise 25% over the next five years,” from a baseline average of 8 a day.Conservatively assuming only a 10% rise is attributable to lockdowns, this is still equivalent to an increase of 24 suicides per month. Accounting for the significantly lower average age of suicide victims compared to COVID-19 mortalities, each of these deaths is equivalent to an average of 25 healthy life years, a fivefold increase over the average death attributable to COVID-19.

Conservatively assuming only a 10% rise is attributable to lockdowns, this is still equivalent to an increase of 24 suicides per month. Accounting for the significantly lower average age of suicide victims compared to COVID-19 mortalities, each of these deaths is equivalent to an average of 25 healthy life years, a fivefold increase over the average death attributable to COVID-19.

• Disruptions to schooling. Conservatively deriving her estimate by looking exclusively at the lost productivity of moving to online rather than face-to-face learning, and ignoring a host of associated problems, Professor Foster estimates the cost attributable to foregone future wages to be equal to 150 — to use the Professors phrase — “lives lost of the type typically lost to Covid.”

Finally, she suggests a number of other probable or definite costs not explicitly tabulated in her report but which any final analysis should take account of; to wit: increased non-lethal self-harm during lockdowns; increased lethal and non-lethal domestic violence during lockdowns; decreased worker productivity; crowded-out healthcare of the kind already suggested above; IVF babies not born due to the inability to attend fertility treatments for the duration of lockdowns; the long-range effects of bad habits inculcated during lockdown, such as — in children — decreased socialization in their formative years, less time outside and therefore a deference of energy and habit-forming associations towards indoor activities, not to mention heightened fear, anxiety, pessimism introduced to their worldview, all inevitable results of our hysteria and vast over-reaction to this crisis; in adults, reduced motivation, lost experience, long-range pessimism and hopelessness; a dramatic increase — which we’re already seeing — in stress, self-harm, violence, suicidality, depression, anxiety, exacerbated symptoms of existing mental illnesses resulting from the greatly reduced coverage of the mental health system throughout this period.

5. The Problem of Knowledge in Society; the Problem of Courage in Crisis — Two Conclusions and an Economics Lesson from Friedrich A. Hayek

One of the broader trends feeding the growing authoritarianism of our country, is a growing faith in the ability of governments and bureaucracies to impose order from the top down. Related to this is the notion that one size fits all — that certain people or groups of people who are thought to be smarter or more scientifically grounded can decide on a course of action that is intrinsically correct, rather than correct under certain conditions, or for some people but not others. This is by no means new, of course, it’s merely that this particular brand of charlatanism is enjoying a strong resurgence right now. This is a profound danger which we must address. It is dogmatic, elitist, pseudoscientific, and it is anathema to individualism, and what’s more, it is intellectually bankrupt.

We would do well to remember the efforts of our forerunners to debunk this quackery. F. A. Hayek famously dismantled the logic of central planning in his seminal essay, ‘The Use of Knowledge in Society’, published in the American Economic Review[18]. The lessons contained therein are as relevant and as vital today as ever before. …

—

Hayek’s magnum opus elaborates what is now known as the economic calculation problem: that is, the problem of how best to use the “resources known to any of the members of a society, for ends whose relative importance only these individuals know.”

“The problem of a rational economic order,” Hayek explains, “…is a problem of how to secure the best use of resources known to any of the members of society, for ends whose relative importance only these individuals know;” or, “a problem of the utilization of knowledge which is not given to anyone in its totality.”

In the formation of public policy, this problem is rarely recognized and, thus, never addressed. To the extent the problem can be addressed by public policy, solutions revolve around (i) who is to make decisions about the distribution of scarce resources and, (ii) assuming a limited number of people can be delegated this authority, how the person or institution so delegated can be given the greatest access to information dispersed among millions of isolated actors.

Another important consideration is the kinds of knowledge which may be useful for distributing scarce resources or formulating public policy, and here Hayek strikes another individualist and libertarian note. Whereas elitist notions of formulating policy for the benefit of the lay masses using the superior scientific knowledge of experts, Hayek points out the existence of “a body of very important but unorganized knowledge which cannot possibly be called scientific in the sense of knowledge of general rules: the knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place.” …

“… To know of and put to use a machine not fully employed, or somebody’s skill which could be better utilized, or to be aware of a surplus stock which can be drawn upon during an interruption of supplies, is socially quite as useful as the knowledge of better alternative techniques. And the shipper who earns his living from using otherwise empty or half-filled journeys of tramp-steamers, or the estate agent whose whole knowledge is almost exclusively one of temporary opportunities, or the arbitrageur who gains from local differences of commodity prices, are all performing eminently useful functions based on special knowledge of circumstances of the fleeting moment not known to others.”

As we proceed, it is worth bearing in mind the definition (or description) of anarchism put forth by Noam Chomsky. According to Chomsy, anarchism is sceptical of hierarchy and authority, and subjects hierarchical and authoritarian institutions to interrogation, demanding they justify themselves or be dismantled. In view of this, it isn’t hard to see how Hayek and his contemporaries were heirs to the liberal tradition, and an important influence on the evolving economic and sociological ideas of American anarchism. The critique put forth by Hayek is not only economically and politically decentralist in terms of concrete, systemic change; it also a defense of the great unwashed masses who the central planners and their schemes treat with such untrammelled contempt. It is a refutation of the scientific-dictatorial justification of power and control, the elitism of privileged, overeducated ignoramuses who believe they know better than others how they ought to live their own lives. Hayek’s mentor, Ludwig von Mises, wrote eloquently and lengthyly about this elitist mindset, the deification of science, the obsessive bureaucratization and accreditation. But we will return to this another day.

—

One of the most important lessons to be gleaned from the theories of Hayek and others is to be humble in the face of the infinite and inscrutable complexity of human societies, and the order which arises spontaneously from billions of human beings acting, cooperating, choosing, communicating, in myriad ways every day. In part this is due to the sheer magnitude of what is going on; the lives and circumstances and subjective valuations and judgements of billions of people, many of whom form themselves into groups and clubs and organizations and congresses with a life of their own and information peculiar to the group which did not exist until the individuals who constitute the group came together. In part, this is because the kinds of information which animate our society are mostly of a sort that cannot be collected or conveyed to others, and must therefore remain unknown even whilst we intuit its existence in the abstract and grasp its significance. And in part it is because this information is so widely dispersed.

These are realities which can be difficult to come to terms with, I understand this. But it is a hallmark of the authoritarian mindset to react to such profound complexity and the impossibility of exerting control over it with fear, with arrogance, with outright denial, and with elitist contempt for the “unwashed masses” and democracy.

—

To offer an alternative vision of how we ought to conduct ourselves, I will leave you with the thoughts of two more individuals I am proud to call my friends.

Firstly, I submit for your consideration, my friend Vladimir Vinokurov’s exemplary essay in which he argued that “we need to have the courage to reopen.” He acknowledges — as we all do — that it “[is] human to feel afraid,” but insists that although “lockdowns and border closures may calm our fears,” they will “kill far more people than a virus ever could …“

“Our fears are playing havoc with our health as well as our wellbeing, and making this pandemic. Instead of letting our fear control us, we need courage to move forward sensibly and reconnect with each other. Doing so won’t just save lives — it gives life meaning.

He also speaks to the corrosive effects which political repression is having on social cohesion, our civility, and our sense of belonging to a shared community:

“Fear is dividing us. Rule breakers are condemned and scorned. Police have choked someone for not wearing a mask and shot at someone’s car for breaking curfew. Protesters are being arrested for gathering in groups. Ethnic minorities are blamed for “spreading the virus.” We should be living together in peace as part of a humane, vibrant, and tolerant community, but fear is tearing us apart.

… “We need the courage to reconnect with family and friends because that is what gives our lives meaning. We deserve the chance to farewell our loved ones at funerals, to celebrate weddings, births and birthdays, to see children left stranded overseas or interstate. The courage to build our relationships with parents and children, friends and family. These relationships give us strength.”

… “We need the courage to let people go back to work. Work doesn’t just let people pay for food, medical care and housing for themselves and their families. It helps people form friendships and relationships, feel valued and help others. It’s vital for our health and well-being, both emotionally and financially. We need to return to the communities of work, family and friends that help keep us all going.”

“We need the courage to let people live their lives and move forward in an uncertain world. We must stand up for the unemployed, elderly and sick. They deserve to reconnect with their families, find secure work and get the medical care they need. We can end the lockdowns and border closures while still being sensible and protecting each other. Being brave will save lives and give us more to live for.”

—

A second public declaration which has greatly heartened me, in the midst of the most profound disaffection of my life, was the ‘Statement of the Australian Covid Medical Network’, which includes among its lead signatories my dear friend Dr Liam Tjia. The statement itself is boldly, assertively principled, and stands as a beacon of integrity and sanity in an era almost entirely barren of either. It reads, in part:

“We must re-establish the importance of our basic rights and freedoms and reflect deeply on what kind of society we wish to live in.

We believe there is a better way forward for Victorians and all Australians. A path founded on the principles of good medical practice, including:

Openness and Honesty

Humility and Consultation

Collaboration and Respect for Autonomy

To always encourage with Care, Hope and Reassurance;

Never to provoke Fear, Panic or Terror.

In light of these concerns we respectfully call for the following seven actions:

- An open, honest and transparent discussion with the general public, with easily accessible information made available about the evidence and underlying assumptions used to inform decisions about the management of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak. This should include, in particular, the evidence to justify the grave impacts on children and adolescents as well as clear estimates of the broader health and socio-economic costs and impacts

- More collaboration and engagement with a broader range of medical specialists, other healthcare professionals and a diverse group of interdisciplinary leaders who can inform and assist in responding to the growing public health and socio-economic crisis we are witnessing, especially among the young, the disadvantaged and the vulnerable in our community.

- An urgent review of the role of State of Emergency and State of Disaster powers in the management of public health issues and crises, with consideration given to how other more democratic approaches could be utilised in the future

- An urgent review of the general management of pandemics in Australia, including an examination of the need for better communication, coordination and collaboration between State and Federal Governments. There is also an urgent need to establish clear and well-defined ‘stand-down’ parameters, in case of ‘false alarms’ or when it becomes foreseeable or evidential that the harms of the controlling policies are greater than the direct health impacts, or fatal potential, of the disease under consideration.

= Consideration of the Commonwealth Government taking on greater responsibility and a more central role in organising and implementing a coherent and effective nationwide response in the management of future pandemics and national public health crises.

- Consideration of an international initiative to create reliable and effective ‘early warning systems’ which would deliver accurate assessments of the dangers and realities of emerging pandemics, and would assist in more considered and proportionate responses to bio-security threats in the future.

- Finally, we implore the governments mindful of the balance between loss of freedoms and basic rights and the promotion of public health, never losing sight of the potential for collateral harms to exceed the effects of the disease being managed.

I will leave it there, for now.

Notes and References

[1] ‘Disease Mitigation Measures in the Control of Pandemic Influenza’, Donald A. Henderson et al, Biosecurity and Bioterrorism: Biodefense Strategy, Practice, and Science, Volume 4, Number 4, 2006

[1A] Quoted in above source; ‘Nonpharmaceutical public health interventions for pandemic influenza, national and community measures’, World Health Organization Writing Group, Emerging Infectious Diseases, 2006; 12:88–94.

[2] ‘Submission No, 7’, Name Withheld, Inquiry into the Victorian Governments Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic, Public Accounts and Estimates Committee of the Victorian Parliament.

[3] Sorry, that one just slipped out.

[4] The Revolt of the Masses, Jose Ortega y Gasset, 1930 (reprinted 1985), University of Notre Dame Press.

[5] ‘Anthony Fauci, the “Learned Ignoramus”’, Zachary Yost, Mises Wire, April 17, 2020 `

[6] ‘A Doctor A Day’ — Open Letter to Donald Trump, Simone Gold et al., published on Scribd (http://scribd.com/document/462319362/A-Doctor-a-Day-Letter-Signed#from_embed)

[7] ’Exclusive: More cancer deaths from COVID-19 lockdown’, John Kehoe, Australian Financial Review, August 12, 2020.

[8] ‘The hidden wave: what happens when everything else is put on hold’, Jill Margo, Australian Financial Review, May 15. 2020.

[9] For clarity (if clarity be needed): For a majority of people aged 45=55, and an overwhelming majority of people under 45, COVID-19 ranks fairly low on the list of health-related risks.

[10] I want to be clear on this point: the estimate of between 7,000 and 35,000 cancer deaths in the UK in the next year as a result of reduced medical coverage is not, nor do I wish to suggest so, the direct and sole consequence of lockdowns. It is entirely possible that a portion of those predicted deaths, I couldn’t say of what size, was the unavoidable consequence of the pandemic itself. What I do mean to suggest, in relation to this report, is that there is a wealth of expert opinion to suggest that the severe responses taken by world governments have contributed greatly to reduced medical coverage, and that these governments have generally acted on a significantly inflated estimate of the consequences which would follow directly from the pandemic. It would be prudent, in light of this, to take a proper accounting of the relative importance of these causes, and there is good reason to believe such accounting would reveal yet more dire indictments of the governmental response worldwide.

[11] ‘Media Release — Men at risk of deadly diagnosis: Prostate cancer testing falls 60%’, Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia, Media Release — 05 May 2020.

[12]It is one of the most astounding fallacies of our time to believe that the economy can be separated from the society or any particular aspects of the society, like mental wellness, unity, education, etc., etc. On the basis of this fallacy, commentators will sanctimoniously whine that their ideological opposites “are more concerned with the economy than the Australian people,” or repeat profoundly inane exhortations to the effect that economists, and anyone else concerned with the economic impact of a given thing, only care about dollars and cents, or the bottom line, and not with human beings.

Two of the factors highlighted in the Open Letter have been shown to be a predictable consequence of economic recession and associated phenomena like mass unemployment: those two factors are suicide and alcohol use. We should consider, at the same time, that the drastic increases in these two figures at the present time might not be solely attributable to the economic downturn — we know that a downturn sufficient to spike these statistics is being caused, and can therefore expect these statistics to be inflated — as in fact they are, but we also know the disruption to daily and community life being enforced by our governments is significantly more impactful than previous recessisions whose first-order effects were almost exclusively economic.

[13]’Economic Recession, Alcohol, and Suicide Rates: Comparative Effects of Poverty, Foreclosure, and Job Loss’, William C. Kerr et al, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, April 2017; 52(4): pp. 469–475.

[14] ‘Impact of business cycles on US suicide rates, 1928–2007’, Feijun Luo, et al., American Journal of Public Health, June 2011; 101(6): pp. 1,139=46.

[15] Tabled Document: ‘Cost Benefit Analysis Executive Summary’, Professor Gigi Foster, Inquiry into the Victorian Governments Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic, Public Accounts and Estimates Committee of the Victorian Parliament, August 12, 2020.

[16] Tabled Document: ‘Material that further addresses themes of questions at Professor Gigi Foster’s PAEC testimony on Covid-19’, Professor Gigi Foster, Inquiry into the Victorian Governments Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic, Public Accounts and Estimates Committee of the Victorian Parliament, August 12 2020.

[17] Transcript: Appearance before the Inquiry via video conference, Professor Gigi Foster, Inquiry into the Victorian Governments Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic, Public Accounts and Estimates Committee of the Victorian Parliament, August 12 2020.

[18] ‘The Use of Knowledge in Society’, F. A. Hayek, The American Economic Review, Vol. 35, №4, September 1945; pp. 519–530.
[19] ‘We need the courage to reopen, Vladimir Vinokurov, On Line Opinion, September 4, 2020.
[20] Statement of the Australian Covid Medical Network, ACNM, Monday 5th October 2020.

[Please note: this article was first published on my personal blog at http://leekavanagh.wordpress.com in October 2020.]