The UK Government has finally begun to treat the Covid-19 pandemic with the seriousness it deserves. Schools and universities are closed, as are bars, cafés and restaurants, along with gyms and some other businesses. It now seems more stringent measures are to follow. Better late than never.

Prior to this, the UK’s response had been very different to that of its neighbours. As other countries shut down schools, banned public gatherings, advocated social distancing measures, the UK government had been remarkably sanguine about what is potentially the greatest crisis since the Second World War. In Ireland, we looked across the Irish Sea, (and across the British border in the north of the island) with increasing aghast; as we closed our schools and our bars, life in the UK continued uninterrupted. Most worryingly, several mass gatherings went ahead as planned. Thousands travelled from the pandemic-hit Madrid to Liverpool for a Champions League game. A particular concern here in Ireland was the Cheltenham horse racing festival, with thousands of revellers returning to Ireland from a festival and a country that seemed blind to its own impending doom. As economic activity across Europe ground to a halt, Britain ploughed a lone furrow and allowed life to continue as normal.

Mass gatherings, such as at Anfield, Liverpool were permitted despite the pandemic. Source:https://commons.wikimedia.org/

The explanation for such an approach was that the UK appeared to have opted for a radically different solution from the rest of Europe. According to a widely circulated article in The Spectator, the UK’s plan was one that sought to “allow the virus to pass through the entire population . . . [in order to] acquire herd immunity”.

Theories of herd immunity usually apply to vaccination programs, with the idea being that once a certain amount of people are immune to a disease its spread is stopped. With Covid-19 there is no vaccine and herd immunity in this scenario is therefore based upon allowing enough people to become infected, thus obtaining immunity. But herd immunity requires that a very high percentage of the population catches the virus, sometimes as high as 90%.

The UK appeared to accept this, and the government’s chief science adviser Patrick Vallance stated that for herd immunity to work the virus would need to infect around 60 percent of the population. Such a high level of infection would result in the inevitable deaths ofhundreds of thousands of people. Again, the UK government appeared ready to accept this outcome, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson publicly stating that people should be prepared to lose loved ones to the virus. And while they characterised the decision as being one based on scientific advice; the reality was that government scientists were in disagreement on the best course to follow. Indeed, the experience of countries in Asia appeared to offer irrefutable evidence that the pandemic could be stalled by implementing lockdowns.

Wilfully letting people die, as other nations followed an approach that sought to halt the spread, seemed callous beyond belief. Aside from what would be an unacceptable loss of life, there were indications the strategy was completely untenable in any case. For one, little is known about how contracting the virus affects future immunity. The former director of maternal, child, and adolescent health at the World Health Organization (WHO), Anthony Costello, pointed out that “researchers don’t even yet know if people become immune to the novel coronavirus after catching it”. And even in the event that people do become immune, there is no guarantee of how long this immunity would last. Professor Francois Balloux, Chair in Computational Biology at UCL, warned that immunity could be “relatively short-lived”, potentially only a few months, rendering useless any plan for herd immunity. Accordingly, the UK government faced severe criticism from experts for its inaction and the WHO rejected both the science and the morality behind the policy.

How do coronavirus measures vary across the world? Source: International Energy Agency

Given the doubts around policies of herd immunity, the last number of weeks have amounted to what has been referred to as the UK conducting “an experiment on its own people, and the crowds at Cheltenham and Anfield were among the guinea pigs”. To people in China, Italy or Spain this experiment must have seemed like the height of insanity. These countries (and they are being joined by others) have experienced first-hand the consequences of allowing the pandemic to go unchecked. Doctors in Italy now make decisions about which critically ill people get adequate treatment and which do not; a result of a health system that has become overwhelmed by sheer numbers of those infected. This is what lies in store for those who do not act to stem the tide of new infections before it is too late. That the Italian healthcare system was ranked second best in the world prior to the outbreak should serve as a dark warning of the dystopia that awaits those who allow the pandemic to spiral out of control.

The UK has now abandoned the notion of fostering herd immunity. Reports emerged in recent days that the realisation had dawned on those advocating the strategy that the idea was fundamentally unworkable and that the government needed to move to a strategy of suppression, as to do otherwise would mean a collapsing healthcare system and up to a quarter of a million dead. That the UK government pursued such folly, in the face of the overwhelming evidence of the cost of such inaction, tells us a lot about the character of those making the big decisions. The flirtation with herd immunity, the policy of allowing life to continue as if there is no public emergency, reveals a distinct lack of empathy among those governing the UK. It reveals a profound disregard for human life and an indifference to widespread suffering that perhaps could have been mitigated against, if not prevented.

This shouldn’t surprise us. After all, the Conservative Party in the UK has already overseen a cruel austerity program that has likely led to the premature deaths of 130,000 people. The ideology of neoliberalism must take a large portion of the blame for this, but this is perhaps not the full story and the personality traits of those making the decisions should not be ignored.

Some researchers believe that certain personality disorders or psychiatric conditions are to be found disproportionately amongst people holding leadership roles. For example, narcissists may prove to be particularly successful in the corporate sector and are therefore adept at attaining leadership roles. The idea that undesirable personality traits may be widespread amongst elites is a view held by several respected academics. One well known theory is that psychopathy, a personality disorder characterised by a lack of empathy, a tendency toward manipulation, the possession of superficial charm and an inflated sense of self-worth, is particularly prevalent amongst leaders in the corporate sector. Research would appear to back this up. It is not a huge leap to suggest that if CEO’s are more likely to possess psychopathic traits, the same may very well hold true for our political leaders. After all, the same traits (manipulativeness, ruthlessness, grandiose self-belief) that allow for a successful career in the boardroom are also likely to facilitate a successful political career.

Boris Johnson: Lovable rogue, but is he a psychopath? Source:https://commons.wikimedia.org/

Anyone with even a slight familiarity of the character of Boris Johnson could well conclude that the man is a perfect example of this. Known in equal measure for his lying and for his charm, Johnson has a predilection for manipulation and the recent election in the UK bore witness to his apparent lack of empathy. Johnson’s former boss described him as being “unfit for national office, because it seems he cares for no interest save his own fame and gratification”. While many leaders would rightly balk at the notion of pursuing a policy of herd immunity during a deadly pandemic, a psychopath would not. When there are other viable options (as demonstrated by the many nations not pursuing the herd immunity strategy) only an individual with a severe deficit of empathy would allow the virus to spread unchecked in the manner in which the UK government has done.

It is likely that Boris Johnson is not the only psychopath whose hands grip the levers of power. Another such character could very well be his notorious and nefarious chief advisor, Dominic Cummings. Indeed, former Prime Minister David Cameron reportedly referred to Cummings as a “career psychopath”. It has been noted that, for Cummings, “emotions mostly figure as forms of irrational distraction” and that his “writing displays an alarming ability to focus on a goal to the exclusion of noticing, or caring about, any amount of collateral damage”. Famed for his role as the prime architect of the campaign to leave the EU, Cummings is a sinister figure. He has a disdain, bordering on contempt, for the vast majority of ordinary people. An article in the Guardian, described him as believing that “the world appears to be made up of an extremely small number of outstandingly clever individuals and a mass of mediocrities”.

Perhaps the most worrying thing about the man, given his close proximity to political power, are his views on genetics. He has previously stated that “a child’s performance has more to do with genetic makeup than the standard of his or her education” and he has blogged enthusiastically about the prospect of parents-to-be using new technologies enabling a picking and choosing of the genes of their children, and of rich people travelling the world seeking out jurisdictions that would allow for genetic selection of desirable traits for their children when undergoing IVF treatment.

In short, Dominic Cumming’s would appear to be a modern-day believer in the discredited pseudoscience of eugenics. Indeed, controversy recently erupted in the UK when Cumming’s hired Andrew Sabisky, a man who had previously advocated forced contraception for poor people and who wrote that black people are less intelligent than white people. That Boris Johnson did not immediately condemn these views lends credence to the idea that he might be a bit of a eugenicist himself. That such beliefs have now found themselves at the heart of the British establishment reveals the radical elitism and the outright contempt, even hatred, for ordinary people that now exists within the UK government. Is it surprising that a strategy of herd immunity was pursued, in contrast to the rest of Europe? I suspect that these people would not lose one wink of sleep over a quarter of a million deaths. The insane policy of herd immunity looks somewhat less baffling in this context. Even the term, “herd immunity”, is one that I imagine might appeal to those of Cumming’s ilk; it evokes a sub-human animalistic mass, a “herd” of people, many of whom are expendable according to such elitist ideologies. Over the weekend, Dominic Cummings was reported as outlining the government’s coronavirus strategy as “herd immunity, protect the economy, and if that means some pensioners die, too bad.”

Psychopaths and eugenicists; these are not the types of people you want running a country during a pandemic that could kill great multitudes of vulnerable people. But it gets worse. The ruling Conservative Party has a particular sub-section within it which will undoubtedly see in the current crisis a unique opportunity.

Naomi Klein, in her critically acclaimed book, The Shock Doctrine, wrote of how a capitalist elite has for years exploited traumatic events (wars, natural disasters, economic crises) to further agendas that would otherwise be difficult to implement. She described this as “disaster capitalism” and recently spoke about how the global elite will exploit the coronavirus pandemic for their own ends. Such disaster capitalists have long existed in the Conservative Party. One of them even wrote a book, Blood on the Streets, that detailed ways of making money in times of economic crisis

Source: Amazon.co.uk

The son of the author is the current Leader of the House of Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg; and he, along with the rest of the Conservative Party, has spent many years enthusiastically dismantling the various welfare state provisions that were left untouched by Margaret Thatcher’s initial neoliberal revolution. Much of the Brexit wing of the party undoubtedly hoped to use Brexit to further the free-market cause. Now they have a new opportunity and they will see the shock of the pandemic as an opportunity to further this agenda. Chaos in the health system will be used to justify further privatisation. The economic catastrophe that is only now just beginning will be used to transfer society’s wealth into the hands of the elite. Perhaps most significantly, a coming fiscal crisis will be used to justify more austerity and to further reduce government involvement in the economy in the long-term.

In a time of national emergency, it would be insane to pursue such destructive policies but, as noted, some of these individuals may very well be psychopaths. Whether such attempts will be successful remains to be seen. But as Naomi Klein demonstrated, the bigger the shock, the more radical the medicine and the more willing the patient. For now, the UK government appears to have abandoned neoliberalism somewhat and the extent of the economic catastrophe that is unfolding means that a statist economic policy is needed to prevent what could otherwise turn out to be the worst ever crisis in the history of capitalism. But there will be some within the Conservative Party that are deeply unhappy about the new-found activism of the state. I suspect that such people; the extreme free-marketeers and the disaster capitalists, may not have been the most vocal opponents of the herd immunity strategy.

The British establishment’s insane flirtation with herd immunity will bring a heavy price. We can only hope that it will not be as bad as many predict. It should not be forgotten that for weeks the UK government declined to implement measures they knew could save lives and instead threw caution to the wind with a psychopathic experiment that treated the lives of vulnerable people as unfortunate collateral damage.

The disregard for human life that Johnson’s government has displayed must serve as a reminder of the type of government the British people are dealing with: a government of psychopaths, eugenicists and disaster capitalists.

If you enjoyed this article, you might like my recent essay:

Covid-19: Infecting Democracy

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