← Return to search results
Back to Prindle Institute

Month: April 2020

Posted on

Anti-Lockdown Protests: Private Liberty v. Common Good

photograph of family at Open Ohio protest

Thousands of Americans across various states have decided to take a stand against the lockdown measures imposed on them as the COVID-19 pandemic sweeps across the nation. In a particularly large protest in Washington state’s capital of Olympia, over 2,000 people gathered to fight for relaxed rules for the economy. Others have been much smaller—such as the 200 people who gathered outside of Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb’s residents to show their disapproval of the strict stay-at-home orders. Protesters carry signs with slogans ranging from “Land of the Free” to “The cure is worse than the virus” to “Let me work.” They often are advocating for an ease in lockdown measures, a reopening of the economy, and the opportunity to return to their jobs. They feel as if the government has restricted their freedoms too much, and are fighting for their rights. Protesters are using their right to freedom of expression to fight for their right to assemble, as well as the ability to work to earn money for their families. However, many protesters do not follow social distancing restrictions or wear masks, per Dr. Fauci and the National Institute for Health’s recommendations. Some experts worry that their protesting could lead to an increase in COVID-19 cases, more deaths, and possibly a prolonged quarantine period. This issue has sparked debate and controversy across the country. Technically, protesters are exercising their constitutional and basic human rights. Yet, is it ethically correct for them to do so, if it could make others sick—possibly killing some?

There is no easy or straightforward way to answer that question. To grasp the moral conflict at play, one must understand the idea of collective action. Managing the risks of the current crisis will require a concerted group effort. Unfortunately, what individuals perceive as their best interest is sometimes at odds with what is in the best interest of the group. Achieving the best public health outcomes for everyone involved may require individuals to forgo some of their rights, their jobs, and social lives. For example, it may be in the individual’s best interest to buy as many masks as possible to protect himself from the virus, but hoarding masks will cause a shortage for others, especially those that need them (such as healthcare workers). This situation gives each person the opportunity to benefit themselves, while spreading the negative consequences of their actions across the larger population.

This tension between the need for collective action and the exercise of individual rights is at the heart of the recent protests in America. Protesters are looking for what is in their best interest—exercising their constitutional freedoms, returning to their places of business, and seeing their friends and family—while the entire community will share any negative outcomes of their protesting. We can examine this problem by looking at both sides of the argument.

Let’s start with the protester’s point of view. There have been signs that America is reaching “the top of the curve,” and infection rates have decreased in some states. Yet, there is no sign that the strict lockdown measures that Americans have lived under for weeks will be loosened anytime soon. The protesters are people fighting for their freedom—and they have valid reasons to do so. All citizens of the United States have had some of their basic freedoms restricted in the hope of slowing the spread of the virus. There are curfews, business closures, and church gathering bans. They have no right to freedom of assembly, and have been heavily encouraged to wear masks. Many have lost their jobs because of lockdown measures—over 6.65 million Americans filed for unemployment at the start of April. Protesters want their normal lives and freedoms back. They want to be able to work to earn money for their families.

Many protesters don’t believe that their rights should be taken just because the government says so. And they have taken a stand to show their disapproval. For example, a protester in California stated that “We need our freedom back, we need to be able to work, we need to be able to socialize, as soon as we can.”

Many protesters share the opinion that the government has been too controlling over their lives and decisions—some have stated that the prolonged lockdown is “basically slavery.” They feel as if the government is being too intrusive without giving them a say in the matter. One protester went as far to say that the California governor Gavin Newsom is a “dictator” for promoting strict lockdown measures. California residents have experienced one of the strictest stay-at-home orders in the country—receiving countless alerts on their phones from the government promoting social distancing, staying at home, and closing businesses. They are only allowed to leave their house for “essential needs/work,” and their governor shows no sign of easing restrictions anytime soon. This can be seen as an invasion of privacy and a violation of their rights.

Some other protesters feel that it is the obligation of the government to try to “fix” the problems that the lockdown has caused. The quarantine that the government issued has negatively impacted private and small businesses, as well as citizens’ livelihoods. This means that the government may have to be the one to fix or mitigate the damages that their lockdown caused. However, many citizens have had economic troubles because the relief bill assistance has been slow to arrive. And it is not only citizens marshaling these arguments, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley has stated that the government is responsible for offsetting what lockdown measures have cost the country.

Others simply feel that lots of the government requirements and action taken are unnecessary. The 2019 novel coronavirus is usually only fatal to those with compromised immune systems or those with old age. Protesters don’t feel as if they, as healthy individuals with strong immune systems, should be stuck at home, unable to work and live relatively normal lives. The signs they carry (“Quarantine the sick, not the healthy”) show this sentiment. Protesters in rural areas also feel as if the lockdown measures aren’t as necessary where they live, as their population is less condensed as it is in big cities, making it harder for the virus to spread.

And while many protesters gathered in large crowds without masks, ignoring safety recommendations, many others have not. There are protesters who wear masks, or who have been protesting in their cars instead of gathering with other people.

However, many people disagree with the protests. They believe that protesters are not taking proper precautions to protect against the disease, and they could cause an increase in cases, deaths, and possibly increase the quarantine period.

“Give me liberty or give me death” is a frequent slogan in protest. But as many have suggested, protesters could be “campaigning for both.” It is a fact that many protesters, especially in news footage, were not following social distancing precautions. They were gathered in crowds as large as 2,500 and most were not wearing masks to prevent spreading the virus. Experts worry that these anti-quarantine protests can cause a surge in COVID-19 cases. Rachel Revine, the Pennsylvania State Health Secretary, stated that “This is how COVID-19 spreads,” when talking about the protests. Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist and public health scientist at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, tweeted that he predicts a “new epidemic surge” with an incubation period of about 5-7 days before the onset of any symptoms and transmission, concluding that there will likely be “[an] increase in 2-4 weeks from now” of cases in America.

Some nurses who do not support the protests have also made their opinions known. A few (in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and in Denver, Colorado, to name a few) have stood in a counter-protest at crosswalks, blocking the cars of angry protesters. In Michigan, many healthcare workers have complained that the protests caused them to arrive late to work. Some ambulances have had a slight delay in reaching the hospital because of the gridlock protests.

Others simply don’t agree with the message of the protests. They feel as if strict lockdown measures should still be in place. America has been the center of the pandemic, with over 735,000 known cases and 40,000 known deaths nationwide. Many don’t feel that their country is ready to re-open. For example, Rachel Revine said that there needs to be a decrease in cases and an increase in the amount of tests produced, stating that “the idea that we can ease up is exactly the wrong answer.”

Yet one of the main reasons that people are not pleased with the recent protests is because they feel as if the protesters are not thinking about the common good. Protestors carry signs saying “My body, my choice.” But, is it really their choice? Their actions could lead to an increase of coronavirus cases, and possibly fatalities, in their community.

It all comes back to the idea of collective action. The individual protester sees it in their best interest to protest for their own rights, and for their own ability to work—they fully have this right to freedom of expression. But many protesters aren’t asking themselves what the possible costs of their actions could be. By gathering in large crowds without masks to protest for what is in their own short-term benefit, they could cause an increase in COVID-19 cases. This can risk the lives of everyone in the community, and undoes a lot of the “progress” made under the quarantine.

Could we outwit human nature’s phenomenon of collective action? It would involve us as individuals sacrificing some of our own wants for the good of the community. Protesters may have to use social media or other digital platforms to have their voices heard and make a stand without endangering the vulnerable people in their community.

This coronavirus pandemic is a difficult time for all of us. We’ve stayed inside for weeks, many without jobs or people to interact with, to help “flatten the curve.” And now, as people call for change through protests, we may run the risk of increasing COVID cases. In the midst of the uncertainty and the controversy, one thing is for certain: We need to ask ourselves what possible costs our actions have for others. We must consider the phenomenon of collective action—are we acting in the interest of our own individual short-term pleasure, only for the entire community to share the negative effects of our actions? In this case, only time will tell.

Posted on

Time for a Paradigm Shift: COVID-19 and Human Consumption

photograph of pangolin lumbering toward camera in barren landscape

There is much that we still don’t know about COVID-19. To attain a more adequate understanding of the virus, we need to know where it originated and how it passes from one being to another. To control the outbreak and to reduce the likelihood that this will happen with great frequency in the future, it’s important that it’s not only scientists and medical professionals who have this knowledge. The general public needs to understand how human action contributes to tragedies of this magnitude. After all, this pandemic is just one plot line in a much longer and more complicated story about the human relationship with the natural world.

Conspiracy theories abound on the topic of the origin of the virus, some of which spread rapidly because their advocates have large megaphones. Some people believe that it was whipped up in a laboratory at the request of Bill Gates. In a 2015 Ted Talk, Gates warned that one of the most probable causes of future significant loss of life would be an epidemic. His remarks were offered, in part, in response to the Ebola outbreak in 2014, and, in particular, on what he took to be an inadequate response to that outbreak by the international community. He suggested that the Ebola outbreak should serve as a wakeup call, prompting us to prepare for the pandemic to come. He explained the conditions under which a new, faster virus might spread and offered suggestions for how we might be prepared. Conspiracy theorists used this as evidence that Gates had some prior knowledge of the outbreak—prior knowledge that he only could have had if he was responsible for the creation of the virus. Gates has advocated for digital markers to keep track of spread and testing status. Some have interpreted that as a call for human beings to be implanted with microchips so that they can be monitored and controlled by powerful people.

Other conspiracy theorists believe that COVID-19 is caused by 5G technology. In a textbook case of a false cause fallacy, people observed that 5G towers were constructed in hard hit areas shortly before the virus began to spread. They concluded that 5G towers emitted radiation that activated the coronavirus, and that this was all a plot by the Powers That Be to depopulate the earth.

What we believe about the origin of the virus matters. This pandemic has consequences that are so significant that they are likely to motivate action, even in the case of people who might not otherwise be motivated much to change their regular practices. For example, a person who genuinely believes that COVID-19 is activated by 5G networks is likely to do whatever is in their power not to live next to a 5G tower, and there is a good chance that they will publicly advocate against the technology. People who believe Bill Gates is using the technology to control the global population will be unlikely to participate in any form of digital monitoring, even if such monitoring looks nothing like an implanted microchip.

It’s vital that people understand that we are dealing with a zoonotic virus, which means that it originated in other animals and then spread to human beings. There is some scientific consensus that the virus originated in horseshoe bats. The evidence for this is the strong similarity between the genetic sequence of the bat coronavirus and the genetic sequence of the virus that causes COVID-19. More recently, evidence has suggested that pangolins served as an intermediary, transmitting the virus from bats to humans.

Many in the west have probably never heard of pangolins, but they are the world’s most trafficked animals. They live in the woodlands and savannas of Southern, Central, and Eastern Africa and in various locations in Asia. They are unique because they are the only mammals with scales. When a pangolin encounters a predator, it will roll up into a ball and its scales will provide a protective armor, rendering it virtually impenetrable to the lions, tigers, and leopards that might attempt to eat it.

The scales of the pangolin have historically been used for more than just armor against predators. For thousands of years, local tribes have used the animals for medicinal purposes. An article in a 1938 volume of Nature describes this practice:

“The animal itself is eaten, but a greater danger arises from the belief that the scales have medicinal value. Fresh scales are never used, but dried scales are roasted, washed, cooked in oil, butter, vinegar, boy’s urine, or roasted with earth or oyster-shells, to cure a variety of ills. Amongst these are excessive nervousness and hysterical crying in children, women possessed by devils and ogres, malarial fever and deafness.”

One might think that practices have changed since 1938, but they haven’t. Pangolin scales are still frequently used in traditional Chinese medicine. We aren’t dealing only with local trade; this practice frequently crosses continents. In fact, pangolins are sold so frequently that experts believe that they certainly would have been present at the Wuhan wet market at which the virus is originally believed to have transferred to humans.

Different creatures respond to different viruses differently. An animal living in its native habitat may carry a virus that doesn’t ultimately cause it or any other creature in its immediate ecosystem any real problems. When human beings enter that ecosystem and change the dynamic, there can be devastating consequences. Viruses can be transmitted to creatures, including humans, that don’t have immunities or have bodies that are poorly suited to cope well with the virus.

There are several moral lessons we can learn from these facts to help us usher in a safer, healthier future. First, we ought to form our beliefs about the origin of disease on the basis of the evidence provided by those that study the disease, rather than on the basis of fear or confirmation bias. Coronaviruses come from animals, not from cell phone towers. This may seem like a fairly straightforward point, but the resolution of this problem, if there is one, is not as obvious as it may seem. It may be the case that, at least sometimes, people don’t choose their beliefs. Instead, at least some beliefs might be the kinds of things with which people just find themselves. A person’s belief formation practices are likely to be, at least in part, a product of environment and habituation. This means that creating a citizenry that knows how to evaluate these global problems is a social project rather than purely an individual exercise.

Second, we need to recognize COVID-19 as part of a larger environmental catastrophe caused, in part, by anthropocentrism. We treat the natural world and the living beings that call it home as mere things to be consumed. We’re prepared to commodify just about anything. To say that this tendency has come at the cost of the well-being of other creatures and the resilience and sustainability of global ecosystems would be an understatement.

Finding solutions to problems of this magnitude is difficult and complex, but one step in the right direction may be to recognize that beings other than humans can value things and beings other than humans are valuable. Humans don’t stand outside of or above the kingdom of living things, they are part of that kingdom. The fact that they have the capacity to dominate and destroy doesn’t mean that they should dominate and destroy. To do so is to fail to recognize important goods in the world.

Some might object and say that no one could have foreseen this. Traditional cultural practices are valuable and, all things being equal, they ought to be preserved. Those who practice traditional Chinese medicine and people who sell pangolins in wet markets are acting in ways that are respectful of their cultural values and necessary for preserving their way of life. The fact that a virus spread is just something that happens sometimes, for which no one is really responsible. In this way, it is much like a natural disaster, like an earthquake or a hurricane.

The problem is, the spread of a disease like this is something that we can reasonably foresee. We know that zoonotic viruses exist—we’ve encountered plenty of them. We know that we can limit the spread by leaving animals unmolested in their natural ecosystems. The spread of this kind of virus isn’t analogous to a natural disaster because we actually bear significant causal responsibility for the consequences of removing animals from those ecosystems.

These problems are also social problems with deep roots. The spread of the virus is an indictment of all kinds of social and political systems. If people feel forced into poaching animals so that they can make money to survive, that says something about the way that wealth on this planet is distributed. If people feel that they must purchase pangolin scales on a black market to cure disease, that says something about access to health care and to education. If people feel that animals must be slaughtered in wet markets to provide food for local populations, that says something about our lack of effort to implement sustainable, humane sources of food for a growing global population.

This isn’t just about this pandemic. More pandemics are inevitable if we don’t change our practices. What’s more, the problems described here are the same problems that give rise to species extinction, forest depletion, soil degradation, ocean acidification, and global warming. It’s time for a paradigm shift.

Posted on

Is Now the Time for an Economics Code of Conduct?

photograph of various banknotes from around the world

One complication of the coronavirus crisis is that it requires that policy decisions weigh public health issues against economic concerns. Economic advisors should be conscious of their own uncertainty as well as the significant and long-term consequences for those acting on their advice. A recent problematic example includes economic advisor Peter Navarro attempting to influence decision making over the use of hydroxychloroquine as a “cure” by claiming his background in statistics made him qualified to address public health matters. While I suspect few would agree with this kind of policy advising, economist advisors still have a vital role to play in conversations regarding the reopening of the economy. Now that the projected infection rates and fatalities of COVID-19 have been revised downward in many regions, concern has shifted to how and when the economy should be restarted. Economic advisors will give advice (and have now given) that could have significant public health consequences. This raises the following question: Given that other professions who work for the public good must adhere to codes of professional ethics, is it time for economists to do the same?

First, we need to consider in general terms why this issue is so pertinent now. With mounting job losses and a prolonged period without production, some of the economic forecasts are grim. The risks are so great the economic downturn could mirror the Great Depression. The hope is that once restrictions are rescinded, we will be facing a “V-shaped” recession where a sudden downturn is followed by a sudden upswing. But the longer the restrictions are in place, the greater risk there is that the economy will take longer to recover. Alternatively, there is the risk that if restrictions are lifted too soon, there will be a second wave of infections without a vaccine. This appears to pit economic concerns against public health concerns, however, the problem is complicated by the fact that a recurring public health crisis would be even more costly to the economy than the current downturn. According to economist Andrew Atkeson, if the epidemic continues to grow the economy will grind to a halt anyways. Even if reopening the economy is warranted, such efforts will be problematic for economic and public health if it is done haphazardly. Economic advising always involves ethical issues, but it is this current question that highlights the ethical significance that policy advice can have.

One might expect that economists, given their potential to bring about significant ethically salient consequences, would have an ethical code to turn to. Such codes are common in other professions which are relevant to the public good. For example, engineering students in Canada and in the United States graduate with a ceremony where they recognize their ethical obligations to the discipline and to the public good, and they wear a ring as a symbol of their commitment to those obligations. Other fields (accountants, lawyers, journalists, and more) are bound by professional codes of conduct. In Western medicine, it is common for students to affirm the Hippocratic Oath. Many of these professional codes stress the importance of nonmaleficence, professional integrity, transparency, and accountability. Economists have no such oaths which they are expected to affirm or swear by.

Of course, one may ask why any kind of professional code of ethics, particularly when it comes to policy advice, is necessary? According to a value-free ideal of science, the conduct of research and the application of research are two different things. In order to keep the study of economics as non-political and value-free as possible, economists must only consider the accuracy of their findings and report those findings accurately to policy makers; after that, the political and ethical concerns belong to policy makers alone. For example, in his 1956 paper “Valuation and Acceptance of Scientific Hypotheses” Richard C. Jeffrey argues that scientists are only supposed to assign probabilities to hypotheses and then allow the acceptance of these hypotheses to be a matter of public acceptance. So, economists should be isolated from policy making and concerns about the public good as their only function is merely to analyze the data.

This argument became prominent in many different forms in the 20th century. Robert Nelson, an economist who formerly worked in the Office of Policy Analysis in the Office of the Secretary of the Interior for almost 20 years, notes in his own working experiences the force that this thinking had. Identifying the desire to clearly separate science from politics as a matter of progressive-era thinking, he notes that while this was the expectation, it was never a matter of practice. He explains:

“Economy policy analysts in government, as I was discovering, were not simply told to study the technical means of implementing a given policy and to report the scientific results back to their superiors. Rather economy policy analysis often functioned themselves as strong advocates for particular policy positions.”

Part of the problem, as Nelson explains it, is that there is a gap between democratic institutions and the degree of expertise required to make complex choices. An expert-policy advisor cannot simply analyze the data and relay their findings because neither the public nor many of these decision makers have the expertise to know what to do with that information. This creates a practical obstacle to the value-free ideal.

In addition, the mere use of certain data or certain statistical indicators can have political salience. As Susan Offutt notes, measurements like unemployment can have political consequences. But so does a lack of agreement on how to measure poverty or a “green” GDP. Deciding what is measured and how is a matter for economists to determine. The analyses found in policy advising are already politically influential even if it is the policy makers who ultimately decide what to do with that information.

Economic advisors right now need to balance a number of concerns. Should the focus be on securing public health? Should the focus be on economic growth? Should personal liberty be a factor? Some of the arguments for establishing an ethical code for economists draw analogies between fields like medicine and environmental policymaking. For example, like the field of medicine there is a distinction between experts and those who are the target of that expertise. This creates asymmetries in power, status, and knowledge. In a doctor-patient relationship this asymmetrical relationship creates ethical responsibilities for the physician to do no harm to a patient. This means that they recognize the degree of uncertainty before advising and recommending treatments, and do not arbitrarily violate the patient’s expressed wishes.

In contrast, economist George DeMartino has argued that economists working for institutions like the IMF, the World Bank, and others have pursued policies on the basis of optimal anticipated outcome rather than risk of failure. He describes how for decades inhabitants of developing countries have been subject to policies based on this thinking and have suffered for it. He explains:

“The 1980s inaugurated an extraordinary, sustained period of avoidable human suffering in the South, a chief cause of which was the failed neoliberal experiment. I use the word ‘experiment’ purposefully, since it seemed clear then and certainly does now that this was an instance in which economists took advantage of an extraordinary, historically unprecedented opportunity to design and test-drive a shiny new economic model over the objections of what were essentially unwilling subjects across the South.”

Would it be ethical for a doctor to advise risky treatments and then to have them carried out against a patient’s wishes? No. So, why should economists be treated differently if they are capable of causing harm on a large scale? Even if medical codes of ethics are not suited to economics, the relevant differences between medicine and economics do not lead to the conclusion that ethics should be of no concern to the economist.

Returning to our current crisis, stop and think about the potential for death, poverty, unemployment, misery, and suffering that is riding on the decisions which are being influenced by policy advisors right now. Should these people be held accountable to an ethical code of conduct?

In his 2005 paper DeMartino notes that despite the power and responsibilities that economic advisors can wield, there is no professional ethics body within the field of economics. Even today, prestigious economics programs at MIT and Princeton do not require economic ethical training. At the end of his paper, DeMartino’s prospective “Economist’s Oath” makes reference to using one’s power for the community good, it specifies that communities are not mere means to ends, and it declares that economics is an imperfect science that carries risks and dangers. Much of what this means in practice would need to be clarified over time, but as a resource to turn to, it could be a promising start. Given that many of these dangers and risks are now present in the COVID-19 crisis, the time may have come when the public should not only expect that economic advisors follow an economics ethical code, they should demand it.

Posted on

Pseudoscience, Antiscience, and Bad Coronavirus Advice

photograph of Trump at podium with Dr. Fauci and Dr. Bix behind him.

First, it was hydroxychloroquine, which Trump touted as the supposedly miracle cure for the coronavirus. In the weeks since, however, research has suggested that there is little reason to think that the antimalarial drug has any effect on the coronavirus whatsoever, and may in fact be actively harmful instead. Not deterred by a lack of any kind of expertise, knowledge, or common sense, Trump has most recently suggested that ultraviolet light or disinfectants may be a fruitful area of research in combatting the pandemic. With regards to the potential for ultraviolet light, Trump stated:

“And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside of the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you’re going to test that too. Sounds interesting.”

And with regards to disinfectants:

“And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning?”

As many news outlets, scientists, and people who have thought about the implications of Trump’s proposals for more than one second have reported, injecting disinfectant is a terrible idea, and while it may cure you of coronavirus, it will only do so by way of having killed you.

Presuming that Trump’s motivations are not, in fact, to recommend to Americans that they commit involuntary suicide, why on earth would he suggest treatment options that are so obviously and blatantly harmful?

If advice to consume something potentially harmful as a miracle cure sounds familiar, it is because it has been a staple in various pseudoscientific communities for a long time. As a rough characterization, we can call a set of beliefs or a practice pseudoscientific if they purport to be scientific, but are not, in fact, supported by any kind of scientific justification or evidence. You have no doubt come across pseudoscience in various forms: homeopathy, for example, is considered by a considerable number of people to be “good science,” despite there being overwhelming evidence that it is a potentially dangerous approach to illness that has zero empirical support.

While pseudoscience at least purports to be scientific, other recent proposed miracle cures for coronavirus would be better categorized as antiscience. Antiscience has been defined as “the outright rejection of the time-tested methods of science as a means of producing valid and useful knowledge,” and can be found in many different approaches to treatments of mental or physical conditions. For example, consuming some quantity of bleach has been proposed by some groups as a treatment for conditions ranging from autism, cancer, HIV/Aids, and malaria. Described as a “miracle mineral solution” or “MMS,” it has also been proposed by these groups as a cure for coronavirus.

That such views are not simply pseudoscientific but distinctly antiscientific is evidenced by the justification that those who are proposing such views provide for them. For instance, when asked to defend their claims that consuming MMS would cure coronavirus despite lacking even a tangential relationship with science, the head of one the group proposing the treatment stated that “the FDA has a financial interest in this problem because it’s run by people in the pharmaceutical industry.” The basis for the claims, then, is not that they are supported by science, but rather that science itself is not to be trusted, and so we need to look elsewhere.

Should we classify Trump’s remarks as pseudoscience, or antiscience? While he has a lengthy track record of ignoring, attacking, or contradicting scientific experts, Trump’s suggestion that scientists look into the possibility of injecting disinfectant for treatment would appear not to necessarily be a rejection of science as a trustworthy enterprise, but rather an amateurish attempt at science itself. The reasoning is perhaps something like the following: if there is evidence that UV light and disinfectants will kill the coronavirus on an external surface, it stands to reason that it will work internally, as well.

Part of what makes these remarks so dangerous is not only that it is coming from a source that many find trustworthy, but that its similarity to the kind of treatments proposed by antiscientific groups will no doubt make it appealing to members of those groups, as well. Bad, pseudoscientific reasoning that also appeals to those who are skeptical of science generally is likely a recipe for disaster.

Although a federal court has recently issued an injunction against the group most prominently marketing MMS, it is much more difficult to stem the tide of misinformation when it is pouring, unfiltered, out of the mouth of the president. Indeed, those who adhere to antiscientific views will no doubt fail to be convinced by good scientific evidence that their views are incorrect. After all, if one takes the scientific enterprise to be corrupt, then there is little reason to change your view on the basis of the word of scientific experts.

That Trump has been, and continues to be, an active cause of the spread of disinformation is well-documented, and so it is hardly surprising that he is a detriment in the battle against coronavirus. And while in an ideal world his views on scientific issues would be completely ignored, that his views are both pseudoscientific and appeal to the antiscientific community means that it is undoubtedly only a matter of time until someone is seriously hurt because of Trump’s advice.

Posted on

US Exceptionalism, Foreign and Domestic

photograph of American flag painted on side of brick wall with barb wire strung on top

The Trump administration continues to reduce the US’s participation in cooperation and coordination schemes at home and abroad. Pursuing collective interests often satisfies private interests, especially in cases where what happens to someone else will have an impact on the interests of all individuals in the collective. That is the case with highly contagious and dangerous viruses like COVID-19. But coordinated action by the federal government has been in line with the American exceptionalism that has defined Trump’s presidency. During this crisis, however, it has been directed inward rather than outward.

During his tenure, Trump has removed human rights oversight from the UN despite clearly voiced concerns over the treatment of many groups of people under government care and jurisdiction. His administration has removed the country from treaties aimed to avoid military escalation with nations like Iran that we have historically tense relations with, and imposed sanctions that, during the current health crisis, have clearly caused more unnecessary suffering. He has also removed the US from agreements that represent the best chance of saving our planet from devastating environmental collapse.

The United States has now cut funding to the WHO during a global pandemic. Many analysts are attributing this move as a strategy for redirecting blame for horrible outcomes after months of federal inaction.

There are times that collaboration is necessary to improve individual well-being, but this fact is lost on the Trump administration. By having treaties, agreements, and collective procedures that may restrict individual latitude in decision-making for particular areas of life and government, this not only raises the welfare of the worst off, but ensures the welfare of the best off as well. In other words, collective bargaining is not charity. It is not supported merely by liberal principles of justice. We can see that it is in the best interest of all, as the suffering of the pandemic and the stakes of these other exceptionalist policies brings out.

Consider arms treaties. The US can consider it in our own best interests to pursue dangerous weaponry and balk at the constraints of collective treaties that curtail our production and economic interests that result. However, our interests are in fact undermined by avoiding such treaties because now we have created an arms race where everyone is put in more danger.

Further, we may balk at restrictions like international agreements that limit behavior causing damage to the environment. However, in pursuing our conception of our private interests, we actually are undermining the good that comes from the collective action – by having a common agreement, we recognize that the actions of all individuals do, in fact, affect each other: we are all jointly affected by the environment on earth. The air in Morocco doesn’t stay in Morocco. The water in the North Atlantic doesn’t stay in the North Atlantic. All of our interests are served by joint commitments to restrictions.

A final example is space exploration. An individual country may consider their best interests to go it alone and take advantage of the private or corporate pursuit of gathering resources or claiming land. Trump in fact issued an executive order to this effect on April 7th: “Americans should have the right to engage in commercial exploration, recovery, and use of resources in outer space.” However, conceiving of space exploration in single-country terms is impractical and undermines the individual state’s interests. The Center for Strategic and International Studies and NASA both argue that international cooperation is crucial for pursuing space exploration. As one expert states, “When there’s a hurricane, earthquake or other disaster, […] multiple countries with remote-sensing satellites — including the U.S., Japan, South Africa, Russia and the European Union — are part of a disaster charter. Whomever had a satellite passing over the disaster-ridden region before, after and during the event has agreed to share data to mitigate damage, saving lives and property.” Thus it is in the interest of each individual state to cooperate with the many.

In the last few years, Trump has removed federal regulations in a variety of domains that have effects in social welfare such as the EPA, education, and civil rights protections.

By distancing the federal government from regulating standards for environmental protection, this allows varying interventions depending on more local government interests and resources. The same goes for states. This results in public goods such as health and education—cornerstones of a democratic country that lead to democratic legitimacy—being denied to some and ensured to others. Democracy is served by a healthy and educated electorate. Social mobility is possible when residents are educated and healthy, and this promotes the welfare of everyone, not just the underserved. Trump’s removal of these different restrictions has made it unclear how we are distributing public resources, an ominous forecast of the mishandling of the pandemic now.

There are now three consortiums of states that are coordinating the pursuit of medical supplies and their strategies for policies regarding isolation and lifting of isolation policies. These groups make up about half of the population of the country, with one comprising the three West Coast states, one in the Northeast, and one in the Midwest. The impetus for these groups of states being formed was the obstruction that the federal government introduced to the “free market” for necessary lifesaving medical supplies. Governors found themselves bidding against each other, effectively driving up the price during a period when time and money were at a premium with lives at stake. The groups have coordinated to various degrees regarding developing criteria for when and how to lift isolation measures, given the lack of leadership from the federal government. Having consistent measures in place under the conditions of a medical crisis that is contagious has clear benefits. If, in one state, movement is unrestricted and businesses are widely open, the next state over is impacted.

Trump has actively promoted “liberating” the states with stay-at-home policies, despite all medical and expert advice. Actually, to the point of possibly inciting insurrections in some cases.  We could interpret this as a lack of value for human life because of the complacency being shown to the dire situations the states find themselves in. The administration has been willing to sacrifice millions of people for the nebulous “economic” value of folks returning to work (without acknowledging the impact on the economy of the millions of people impacted by the spread of disease). The brute neglect or rejection of the estimates of death and severe illness by medical experts will have lasting effects on the public health and faith in government long after the isolation policies are lifted.

Posted on

Homesickness in a Time of Global Sickness

photograph of woman staring off out window

During the height of the coronavirus pandemic I have received three emails from my apartment building in Toronto telling me that something was broken. First, there was a problem with the “electrical conduits.” Then, a follow-up email reported that while fixing said conduits, a technician noticed that the “step down transformer (low voltage)” was overheating (this is presumably a bad thing). Finally, a week later a section of pipes had to be replaced, and there would be no hot or cold water for the day, possibly longer. Please prepare yourselves by storing additional water in buckets or bathtub, the email read. After service has returned, water may show discoloration.

Thankfully I haven’t had to drink any brown bathtub water, as six months ago I moved to Denmark. In many ways, this is an ideal place to ride out the storm: Denmark has generally been recognized as being proactive and responsible in response to the pandemic, and people here seem to be taking social distancing seriously (for the most part). Like most people though, staying at home so much has started to take a bit of a mental toll, and recently I’ve found myself missing that tiny, broken apartment.

Of course, what I’m really feeling is a kind of homesickness. I’m certainly not alone in feeling this way: coronavirus is keeping people apart from each other, and away from home. As we all know, keeping our distance at a time like this is, ultimately, a good thing. And it’s not like I haven’t been homesick before. But homesickness in a time of global sickness feels different, somehow.

I always find that when feeling lonely and confused there’s nothing quite like a dose of good old philosophical conceptual analysis. Unfortunately, there are not many philosophical treatises on the concept of homesickness, let alone any discussion of the concept at all. In my research I expected to find vigorous debates about the necessary and sufficient conditions for being homesick, but the most I could find was that Heidegger liked to quote the 18th century poet Novalis, who said that “All philosophy is a form of homesickness.” While that sounds profound, I don’t really know what it’s supposed to mean, and I never liked Heidegger anyway.

So maybe there are better places to look for guidance. Psychologists who study homesickness tend to get right to the point. For example:

“Homesickness refers to the commonly experienced state of distress among those who have left their house and home and find themselves in a new and unfamiliar environment.”

While that seems right, it’s not terribly insightful. And while this definition will probably not help you understand your experience any better, at least the potential health risks of homesickness psychologists describe will make you feel a lot worse:

“For example, there are data indicating that [homesickness] is associated with the onset of depression, deficiencies in the immune system, diabetes mellitus, and leukaemia.”

From the point of view of the psychologist, homesickness is one malady among many, one that can be studied empirically, rife with comorbidities. And while the relevant experiments may be well-designed with their p-values significant, the psychologist’s description doesn’t really speak to my personal experience.

Perhaps it might be best to turn to the literary world, instead. One of my favorite descriptions of homesickness comes from Roald Dahl’s memoir Boy, in which he describes his feelings while off at boarding school:

“I was homesick during the whole of my first term at St Peter’s. Homesickness is a bit like seasickness. You don’t know how awful it is till you get it, and when you do, it hits you right in the top of the stomach and you want to die.”

For Dahl, home was still there, the problem just was that he wasn’t. So what’s the solution?

“The only comfort is that both homesickness and seasickness are instantly curable. The first goes away the moment you walk out of the school grounds and the second is forgotten as soon as the ship enters port.”

While Dahl’s feelings are brought about by being far away from something he could, in theory, return to, there’s another sense of homesickness where the home one misses is completely out of reach. For instance, you might feel homesick for your childhood home that is no longer yours or no longer exists, or for a place that you know has changed so significantly in your absence that returning wouldn’t really be the same. Thomas Wolfe, in the aptly titled You Can’t Go Home Again, describes the feeling in the following way:

“You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood … back home to a young man’s dreams of glory and of fame … back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time – back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.”

Of course, while Wolfe’s character could never go home again, Dahl could (and indeed he did, by faking an appendicitis so he would be sent home to recover). But neither of these descriptions is quite right for the specific kind of homesickness people like me are feeling now. Those who are homesick during the current pandemic aren’t missing a place that no longer exists, but at the same time they also can’t get some temporary relief by getting the next ship back to their home port.

Instead, homesickness at this current moment in time seems to be distinguished by a special kind of anxiety, one that involves knowing what the cure is, but without the knowledge of how long you’ll have to wait to get it. While a lot of discussions of homesickness seem to focus on a feeling of longing, this kind seems to revolve much more around worry.

Does working through the concepts make me feel any better? Hard to say. There is, of course, no shortage of self-care advice available online that might help if you’re in the same position as me, and a lot of it isn’t bad: try to stay connected with friends and family via Skype/Zoom/Whatever, cut yourself some slack if you’re not being super productive at all times, take a stab at making your own bread, etc. And while I’ve tried all of those things, and while they certainly do help, I still can’t help but worry about my little apartment, and think about how nice it will be to set foot inside it again; assuming, of course, that it’s not full of brown water when I get there.

Posted on

Solitary Confinement and COVID-19

photograph of empty prison cell

On March 28th, 2020, Patrick Jones became the first person incarcerated in federal prison to die of coronavirus. At the time of his death, Jones had served 12 years of his 27-year sentence for a non-violent drug charge. He was working hard on appeals, hoping to get out early to live a different kind of life with his children. The spread of coronavirus in prison made that dream an impossibility. Since Jones’s death, four other inmates died of COVID-19 at the institution in Louisiana at which he was being held.

In response to the deaths and to the continued spread of the virus in the facility, six immunocompromised incarcerated individuals at the prison have sued for early release, claiming that the response to the situation has been too slow and that their lives are in serious danger. They don’t want their sentences to turn out to be death sentences, as Jones’ did. Their suit was filed by the ACLU last week.

Concerns about the spread of coronavirus in detention facilities has motivated both state and federal detention facilities to release some prisoners, as I have written about here. Other approaches to dealing with the outbreak are more disturbing. The Federal Bureau of Prisons announced that, for the next two weeks, inmates will be confined to their cells for 14 days—a move that strongly resembles implementation of solitary confinement for the entire prison population. At the end of the 14-day period, the action will be reassessed and may be extended if necessary.

There is good evidence to support the conclusion that solitary confinement takes a significant mental toll on those who are subjected to it. Former Harvard psychologist Stuart Grassian conducted a study that indicated that roughly a third of people in solitary confinement were “actively psychotic and/or acutely suicidal.” In addition to those conditions, those held in solitary confinement experienced conditions such as “hallucinations; panic attacks; overt paranoia; diminished impulse control; hypersensitivity to external stimuli; and difficulties with thinking, concentration and memory.”

Under ordinary conditions, solitary confinement is used by prison employees for a range of reasons. Inmates are sent to solitary confinement for disciplinary reasons. They also may end up there for their own protection when there is reason to believe that a threat exists to life or well-being. Many argue that there are no legitimate reasons to relegate a person to solitary confinement and that the practice constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. In keeping with this judgment, a handful of states have passed laws limiting or banning the practice.

Lack of access to consistent, quality mental health services exacerbates this problem. There is evidence to suggest that, at least when it comes to federal institutions, mental health issues frequently go unresolved. Given the known link between solitary confinement and mental illness, at a very minimum, funding and staff should be provided to adequately and humanely address the predictable mental illness this policy is likely to cause.

In response to these general concerns about solitary confinement, some argue that desperate times call for desperate measures. This situation lends itself to no ideal solutions. Confining incarcerated people to their cells is the lesser of two evils. It may be the case that solitary confinement leads to mental illness, but mental illness is better than dying of coronavirus. They argue that there is simply nothing else to do.

Others argue that the rapid spread of infectious disease is a predictable part of an incarcerated experience. When the offender chose to commit a crime, they knew that they might be caught and that the prison experience wouldn’t be pleasant. There is a reason why the possibility of prison is supposed to serve as a deterrent to crime. We have to punish people who commit crimes, or the law will become meaningless. Prison officials must do their best under difficult circumstances, and solitary confinement in these cases may be the best they can do given their obligation to keep those who have committed crimes incarcerated.

In response, one might challenge such a strenuous commitment to the idea that it is morally necessary to keep individuals who have committed crimes incarcerated come what may, even when doing so means they will live weeks in solitary confinement. The right approach might be to let many more inmates out of prison than we have so far (but only under the conditions that their situation isn’t more compromised outside of prison than it is inside). There may be no ready humane strategies for dealing with this pandemic, but with any luck this will cause our culture to radically rethink how we understand criminality and the proper role of punishment.

One significant challenge to bringing about real change is that individuals who have committed and/or have been convicted of crimes are politically marginalized. They have limited platforms for speech, and, in many cases, they can’t vote. Many people adopt a retributivist attitude toward criminal punishment, which results in a state of affairs in which no one is paying attention to the way incarcerated people are treated.

If, indeed, inmates must be held in solitary confinement for their own good, steps should be taken to ensure that this is done as humanely as possible. They should be treated with respect and regard, their desires to communicate with friends and family should be honored to the greatest extent possible, and their need for exercise and recreation should be accommodated.

Now that we’ve seen the problems that a pandemic of this magnitude can pose for detention facilities, we are morally obligated to see to it that we don’t return to business as usual after the it is over. What changes can we make to institutions to make it less likely that we’ll have to resort to solitary confinement in the future? What steps can we take to limit the number of incarcerated people in the United States? More theoretically, we should ask if all crimes should be viewed through the lens of retributivism. In some cases, a broad range of rehabilitative efforts might be more appropriate. An even more holistic approach would focus time and resources on the root social causes of crime so that we’re preventing it from occurring in the first place rather than punishing it in inhumane ways after it has taken place.

Posted on

COVID-19 and the Ethics of Belief

photograph of scientist with mask and gloves looking through microscope

The current COVID-19 pandemic will likely have long-term effects that will be difficult to predict. This has certainly been the case with past pandemics. For example, the Black Death may have left a lasting mark on the human genome. Because of variations in human genetics, some people have genes which provide an immunological advantage to certain kinds of diseases. During the Black Death, those who had such genes were more likely to live and those without were more likely to do die. For example, a study of Rroma people, whose ancestors migrated to Europe from India one thousand years ago, revealed that those who migrated to Europe possessed genetic differences from their Indian ancestors that were relevant to the immune system response to Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes the Black Death. It’s possible that COVID-19 could lead to similar kinds of long-term effects. Are there moral conclusions that we can draw from this?

By itself, not really. Despite this being an example of natural selection at work, the fact that certain people are more likely to survive certain selection pressures than others does not indicate any kind of moral superiority. However, one moral lesson that we could take away is a willingness to make sure that our beliefs are well adapted to our environment. For example, a certain gene is neither good or bad in itself but becomes good or bad through the biochemical interactions within the organism in its environment. Genes that promote survival demonstrate their value to us by being put to (or being capable of being put to) the test of environmental conditions. In the time of COVID-19 one moral lesson the public at large should learn is to avoid wishful thinking and to demonstrate the fitness of our beliefs by putting them to empirical testing. The beliefs that are empirically successful are the beliefs that should carry on and be adopted.

For example, despite the complaints and resistance to social distancing, the idea has begun to demonstrate its value by being put to the test. This week the U.S. revised its model of projected deaths down from a minimum of 100,000 to 60,000 with the changes being credited to social distancing. In Canada, similar signs suggest that social distancing is “flattening the curve” and reducing the number of infections and thus reducing the strain on the healthcare system. On the other hand, stress, fear, and panic may lead us to accept ideas that are encouraging but not tested.

This is why it isn’t a good idea to look to “easy” solutions like hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19. As Dr. Fauci has noted, there is no empirical evidence that the drug is effective at treating it. While there are reports of some success, these are merely anecdotal. He notes, “There have been cases that show there may be an effect and there are others to show there’s no effect.” Any benefits the drug may possess are mitigated by a number of factors that are not known. Variations among the population may exist and so need to be controlled for in a clinical study. Just as certain genes may only be beneficial under certain environing conditions, the same may be true of beliefs. An idea may seem positive or beneficial, but that may only be under certain conditions. Ideas and beliefs need to be tested under different conditions to see whether they hold up. While studies are being conducted on hydroxychloroquine, they are not finished.

Relying on wishful thinking instead can be dangerous. The president has claimed that he downplayed the virus at first because he wanted to be “America’s cheerleader,” but being optimistic or hopeful without seriously considering what one is up against, or by ignoring the warning signs, is a recipe for failure. The optimism that an outbreak wouldn’t occur delayed government action to engage in social distancing measures in Italy and in the U.S. and as a result thousands may die who may not have had the matter been treated more seriously sooner.

As a corollary from the last point, we need to get better at relying on experts. But we need to be clear about who has expertise and why? These are people who possess years of experience studying, researching, and investigating ideas in their field to determine which ones hold up to scrutiny and which ones fail. They may not always agree, but this is often owing to disagreements over assumptions that go into the model or because different models may not be measuring exactly the same thing. This kind of disagreement is okay, however, because anyone is theoretically capable of examining their assumptions and holding them up to critical scrutiny.

But why do the projections keep changing? Haven’t they been wrong? How can we rely on them? The answer is that the projections change as we learn more data. But this far preferable to believing the same thing regardless of changing findings. It may not be as comforting getting a single specific unchanging answer, but these are still the only ideas that have been informed by empirical testing. Even if an expert is proven wrong, the field can still learn from those mistakes and improve their conclusions.

But it is also important to recognize that non-medical experts cannot give expert medical advice. Even having a Ph.D. in economics does not qualify Peter Navarro to give advice relating to medicine, biochemistry, virology, epidemiology, or public health policy. Only having years of experience in that field will allow you to consider the relevant information necessary for solving technical problems and putting forward solutions best suited to survive the empirical test.

Perhaps we have seen evidence that a broad shift in thinking has already occurred. There are estimates that a vaccine could be six months to a year away. Polling has shown a decrease in the number of people who would question the safety of vaccines. So perhaps the relative success of ending the pandemic will inspire new trust in expert opinion. Or, maybe people are just scared and will later rationalize it.

Adopting the habit of putting our beliefs to the empirical test, the moral consequences of which are very serious right now, is going to be needed sooner rather than later. If and when a vaccine comes along for COVID-19, the anti-vaccination debate may magnify. And, once the COVID-19 situation settles, climate change is still an ongoing issue that could cause future pandemics. Trusting empirically-tested theories and expert testimony more, and relying less on hearsay, rumor, and fake news could be one of the most important moral decisions we make moving forward.

Posted on

Pandemic Sacrifices: It Matters Who Dies and Why

photograph of small liferaft at sea

Political leaders, faux medical experts, and pundits are advocating for a stop to isolation policies despite the real loss of life that would result from doing so.

They are weighing the impact that isolation is having on the economy. The longer we isolate, the more businesses will suffer, and the more corporations will not be able to benefit from the labor that previously was performed. Further, we are facing a catastrophic rise in unemployment—22 million due to the pandemic. Instead of looking towards social benefits and supporting those most affected from losing their jobs and health, these leaders are suggesting ending isolation and further exposing the workforce in the name of an economy that, experts warn, will just need to be shut down again—next time with further dead, made up of those apparently expendable and worth sacrificing for the economy.

These calculations stand in for rhetorical frameworks for moral analysis. We do have approaches for dealing with massive losses when they are the result of, say, natural disasters. These can be blunt instruments that weigh the impact of saving each individual human life against the resources that could otherwise be spent on the good of “society.”

Imagine you were on a lifeboat in a stormy sea. There is no way for everyone to survive, and the experts estimate that a certain percentage must be sacrificed for the survival of the majority. What is the ethical method for making this decision?

The stipulations here force us into “consequentialist” thinking—we would like to maximize the number of people alive at the end of the hellish scenario. However, most would find the “pure” consequentialist reasoning abhorrent. In other words, maximizing the number of people alive at the end is not where our ethical duties end. When stuck on a lifeboat and in a position where 20% of those on board will die, there is a moral difference in this 20% being determined randomly or at the will of a corrupt captain. (Or as a result of the previous decisions of the corrupt captain.)

Our current situation is, and isn’t, parallel to the lifeboat analogy. There isn’t an inevitable number of people that must be sacrificed. There isn’t a storm forcing us to weigh human life against a “greater good”—in this case, the economy. We could, in fact, stay on our boat and take the measures that experts are suggesting at avoiding the sacrifice the leaders are saying are “necessary.”

However, when there is inevitable harm, the procedure for allocating that harm matters morally. Say we do face a scenario where there is a percentage of human lives that will be lost given the pandemic, and a need to end isolation for the greater good of the economy. COVID-19 is the great equalizer we must endure, and while we will lose some, our country/lifeboat will endure.

It’s important to note that even with that stipulation, the metaphor breaks down. That isn’t even the position we are in, either. The actions of the leadership of our lifeboat continue to ensure that the amount of harm increases, and becomes more unavoidable, more inevitable. By defunding the WHO and pandemic response teams, but counteracting state efforts and absolving the federal government from its responsibility for action, the situation continues to be made worse.

Further, they’re able to do this by invoking the notion that it is just like the inevitability of a natural disaster while asking people to unequally bear the burdens of the harm. They’re banking on the support from those they don’t think will accrue the harm. As in the lifeboat analogy, the ones who survive will likely be grateful. But the decision-making for who will be sacrificed is not morally neutral.

Treating these losses as distant and abstract statistics is a strategy. There is force in calling the impact of the coronavirus the great equalizer, as celebrities and politicians alike have claimed. It evokes the frameworks of natural disasters or warfare where there is a limit to what we can do to intervene—lives will “just be lost.” Trump’s message has shifted from denial and buck-passing to attempts to frame casualties under 100,000 as a victory.

This is not an equalizer and is structurally and reliably affecting some groups of people more than others. Black Americans are dying at a much higher rate than non-Black Americans—33%, while only making up 14% of the areas analyzed. Thirty percent of COVID-19 patients are black despite representing only 13% of the population (the different data is the result of varying availability of data). These stark differences become more dire in some cities: In Wisconsin, for example, African Americans represent 6 percent of the population, but nearly 40 percent of COVID-19 fatalities.

Other over-represented vulnerable populations include those living in care facilities, such as disabled people and the elderly, and the incarcerated. Meanwhile, the rich are much safer than others.

This makes a moral difference. Just like on a lifeboat, the captain is not absolved of making every attempt to avoid circumstances where sacrifices must be made, and is responsible for ensuring that just burden-sharing is in place. Sacrifices cannot be justified for false reasons—saving the economy isn’t even a true reason in the sense that sacrificing people may not actually achieve the intended aim.

Anyone suggesting sacrificing 2-3% of the population needs to name family members and loved ones they are willing to sacrifice. They then need to indicate a further segment of their loved ones to live with the effects of a serious illness and extended ICU stay. Because if this is an inevitable sacrifice we all must make, treat it as the great equalizer they claim it is. This will affect us all.

Posted on

Racial Health Disparities and Social Predispositions

photograph of Surgeon General Adams at podium during coronavirus briefing

Remarks made by U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams at last week’s coronavirus press briefing have sparked a heated debate. Most of the commentary surrounding those remarks has focused on accusations of patronizing language or, alternatively, the ever-expanding grip of PC culture. But the real controversy lies elsewhere. The true significance of the Surgeon General’s words rests in parsing ambiguous language; we need to know what is meant by the observation that people of color are “socially predisposed” to COVID-19 exposure, infection, and death.

The Surgeon General’s comments were aimed at addressing a troubling trend. Statistics continue to pour in underscoring racial health disparities: The population of Chicago is 30% Black, but Black people make up 70% of the city’s coronavirus deaths. Similarly, in Wisconsin’s Milwaukee County, African Americans make up 25 percent of the population, but 75 percent of the confirmed deaths. In Louisiana, Black people make up 33 percent of the population, but account for 70 percent of deaths.

What could explain these figures? Adams highlighted several of the underlying factors placing Black Americans at greater risk: they are more likely to have complicating conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease, as well as being more likely to lack access to health care. All of these factors mean that Black Americans are “less resilient to the ravages of COVID-19.”

What is more, people of color, generally, are also more likely to be exposed to infection in the first place. They are more likely to live in multi-generational homes, reside in high-density housing, and make up “a disproportionate share of the front-line workers still going to their jobs.” As Jamelle Bouie explains,

“Race […] still answers the question of ‘who.’ Who will live in crowded, segregated neighborhoods? Who will be exposed to lead-poisoned pipes and toxic waste? Who will live with polluted air and suffer disproportionately from maladies like asthma and heart disease? And when disease comes, who will be the first to succumb in large numbers?”

Skeptics continue to contend that it is reductionist to blame racism for these inequities, and offer in its stead the familiar trope of private behavior and individual choice. But casting the problem as one of personal responsibility not only overlooks the history of systemic racism and structural socioeconomic oppression — that define things like one’s housing and job opportunities which in turn determine one’s relation to this disease — it perpetuates the false narrative that the sufferer is responsible for her suffering.

And that is the problem of the language of “social predisposition,” and the subtle claim that word choice makes in regards to responsibility for racial health disparities. (If you were biologically or genetically predisposed to infection how much responsibility would you bear for contracting it? How much responsibility do you bear by being “socially predisposed”?)

One the one hand, “social predisposition” can be read as vaguely acknowledging the history of institutional racism and the consequences it has wrought (and continues to work). Structural forces have conspired (consciously and unconsciously) to disadvantage minorities and enshrine differential access to goods and opportunities on the basis of skin color. On the other hand, “social predisposition” can just as easily be understood as gesturing at social habits, predilections, and weaknesses.

Does such fine analysis of the Surgeon General’s comments make a mountain of a molehill? John McWhorter of The Atlantic, for example, describes this type of criticism of Adams’ remarks as overblown. It is inappropriate and impractical, McWhorter argues, to insist that every talking head reference the prescribed origin story whenever a racial disparity arises. “Members of a certain highly educated cohort,” McWhorter writes, “consider it sacrosanct that those speaking for or to black people always and eternally stress structural flaws in America’s sociopolitical fabric past and present as the cause of black ills.” What’s worse, “writers and thinkers give an impression that their take is simple truth, when it has actually devolved into a reflexive, menacing brand of language policing.”

But the Surgeon General’s remarks cannot themselves be regarded as neutral. The message behind “social predisposition” is ambiguous without context. But when it gets coupled with a plea aimed directly at people of color to change their habits concerning drugs and alcohol because “we need you to step up,” it starts to sound a lot less ambiguous. It threatens to transform the claim about “social predisposition” from a statement about constraining factors to a question of volition. It moves from the language of preexisting conditions to elective tendencies. It reduces structural injustice to a matter of choice.

It also changes our conversation about the link between race and health outcomes from one of correlation to one of causation. Thus, it seems only fair that other potential “causes” should get a hearing. It may not be within the Surgeon General’s purview as a public servant for national health to comment on the root cause of social injustices, but then it can’t be within his purview to subvert that project either. Even if his intention was merely to offer “wise counsel in hard times,” it matters how that advice gets heard and who all hears it.

Posted on

The Value of Socialization in College

photograph of college students in class

What initiatives enacted as an emergency response to the pandemic will be permanent and become the new norm? Among the many possible legacies is a change in the perceived value of traditional college learning. Colleges and universities whose campuses are now closed will have a responsibility to execute the transition to distance learning effectively so that they can ensure there is not a substantial dip in the quality of education. But by doing so, will they inadvertently degrade the value of in-person learning?

If these colleges fail to execute the transition online well–and some teachers from the even most prestigious schools are ill-equipped for distance learning—they may reveal the value of face-to-face learning. They may show what is lost when students and professors are not interacting together in a classroom and on a campus. But if the colleges do execute the transition well, they reveal that the value of face-to-face learning may be overrated. Some college students have begun asking themselves, if what is accomplished in the classroom can be accomplished online, why incur high tuition and housing costs to go to school?

A 2015 survey found that nearly half of online college students cited affordability as the reason for enrolling in their program. A surprising 78% of respondents indicated that the academic quality of their online learning experiences were comparable to or better than their classroom experiences. Suppose that the quality of education is comparable—even though there are innumerable benefits to in-person learning—, what then can traditional colleges offer that learning from one’s laptop cannot?

Colleges are currently struggling to answer that question. Beyond the growing challenge of the online alternative, many “brick and mortar” institutions were already facing severe financial concerns before the pandemic caused them to close their campuses. An analysis by Forbes last Fall found that the financial well-being of private not-for-profit colleges “has deteriorated and many are in danger of closing or merging.” The pandemic and the resulting transition to distance learning has only made the threat more pronounced and immediate, and less dismissable and abstract.

The transition is a threat to the existence of small liberal arts colleges in particular. “Schools are facing unexpected costs as they try to switch their entire classroom instruction apparatus to online-only,” David Jesse reports in USA Today. “That’s a particular challenge for small liberal arts colleges, whose calling cards are face-to-face relationships between faculty and students.”

To stay afloat, institutions without the luxury of deep pockets and long-standing reputations may need to stress the value of the social component of going to school and living on a campus, i.e. experiences that cannot be had through online learning. Indeed, the challenge for residential and liberal arts colleges will be to quantify the rather intangible and ineffable value of socialization in education.

K-12 education is a primary vehicle of socialization. According to the Department of Education, children in the U.S. spend approximately seven hours a day, 180 days a year in the classroom. There students learn socially-desirable behaviors such as teamwork, following schedules, and engaging with others in a respectful manner. They learn how to participate in society.

The same could be said of the college experience, which typically occurs at a formative time in a student’s life. Young people go to college, where they live in a community of similarly-aged individuals and participate in Greek life, sports, student government, and many other social groups. Some extra- and co-curricular activities, such as Ethics Bowl, provide intellectual stimulation alongside opportunities to socialize.

In the unique setting of a college campus, students are exposed to, live with, and befriend people from different regions, with different customs and worldviews. Ideally, this experience teaches them how to interact with other members of society after graduation. Former Ivy League professor Louis Menand argues that college “takes people with disparate backgrounds and beliefs and brings them into line with mainstream norms of reason and taste.” In short, it transforms these very different individuals into a unique class.

Going to college also thrusts most students into a new world of independence, characterized by a constant flurry of adult decisions and responsibilities. For the first time in many of their lives, students must set their own schedules, manage their own finances, and learn how to navigate relationships without the comfort of being under their parents’ roof. They are given a test run of their adult life. As Anne Rondeau, president of College of DuPage, writes, “students are in an environment that challenges them to make important decisions every day.” And those decisions and challenges are not confined solely to their academic pursuits.

Residential and liberal arts colleges are as much an academic experience as they are a social one. While the process of socialization could be achieved elsewhere—in one’s job or active participation in one’s community—it certainly could not occur via distance learning. The nature of distance learning hampers the students’ ability to socialize, limiting everything from spontaneous, casual conversation with professors to opportunities to forge lasting relationships with other students. And in order to succeed, those struggling traditional institutions may need to highlight just that. They need to be equipped to answer the questions that many prospective students and their parents are asking right now: What is the value of your institution’s social experience? And is it worth the cost you are asking?

If those institutions fail to effectively convince families of the value of their social experience and justify the tuition and housing cost, their end may be near. Without residential colleges, prospective students lose one of the most important and successful means of learning how to be members of society.  Of course, that assumes those students will still feel comfortable sharing close spaces on a campus after months of social distancing.

Posted on

Moral Luck, Universalization, and COVID-19

photograph of toast and swank gathering

This article has a set of discussion questions tailored for classroom use. Click here to download them. To see a full list of articles with discussion questions and other resources, visit our “Educational Resources” page.

All over the country, people are making headlines for violating shelter-in-place and stay-at-home orders. Motivations for this behavior are diverse; some fail to recognize the gravity of the situation, some acknowledge that COVID-19 is bad, but doubt that it is a threat to them personally; others, despite a lack of expertise in infectious disease, trust their gut instincts more than they trust the opinions of experts. Some people who defiantly resist orders insist that they are doing so to protect their constitutional rights. People are hosting parties, attending church services, and engaging in life-as-usual activity. Those who have been sheltering in place for over a month look on with incredulity and, often, anger. Why do these people behave as if rules, created in emergency circumstances for the health and safety of the community at large, don’t apply to them?

Some people who choose to go out and spend time near others live in states in which doing so is currently against the law. Others live in Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, or Wyoming — states in which staying at home has been recommended, but not required by their respective governors. An answer to the question of whether going out in these conditions is legal doesn’t settle the question of whether it is ethical.

Plenty of people appear to be comfortable gambling with general health and well-being. In one case that made headlines, notorious libertarian Ammon Bundy defied Idaho’s stay-at-home order, routinely hosting in-person meetings on the topic of the order as a restriction of civil liberties. Bundy announced his intention to host a massive Easter get together of 1,000 people or more. In reality, 60 people attended the event, none of which took any social distancing precautions. They did so in defiance of what they viewed as a governmental infringement on their right to choose.

What is it to make a choice? One plausible way of looking at it is that a choice is an endorsement—it is a recommendation. When I choose a course of action, I affirm that the action is, on some description, valuable. I affirm that it would be acceptable for another person to make the choice that I make under similar circumstances. In performing an action, I express that I view the action not only as an action that can be performed, but as an action that ought to be performed. After all, if I didn’t think it ought to be performed, what on earth possessed me to perform it? If that is the implication of choice, then we should be very selective in our choices. In his 1946 lecture Existentialism is a Humanism, philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre emphasizes the responsibility each person bears for their own choice. He said,

“When a man commits himself to anything, fully realizing that he is not only choosing what he will be, but is thereby at the same time a legislator deciding for the whole of mankind – in such a moment a man cannot escape from the sense of complete and profound responsibility.”

Our choices then, even when they seem to us to be somewhat narrow in scope, are not entirely private or personal matters.

A number of things follow from the idea that our choices are endorsements. First, our choices are no small matter because they define who we are as people. People may want to conceive of themselves as kind, empathetic, and caring, but the question of whether a person has those traits is determined by what they actually do, rather than by what they claim to value. In pandemic conditions, a choice to attend a party or to go into a crowded place when doing so is not necessary may seem to be of little consequence if, ultimately, no one gets hurt. On the other hand, those choices say something about the kinds of risks a person is willing to take on and the kind of danger to which that person is willing to expose others.

Second, if choices are recommendations, then there is a good chance that people will follow them—that’s what happens with recommendations. If, for instance, college students observe that some of their peers are gathering together with no apparent consequences, there is some chance that they might conclude that doing so is, after all, no big deal. Others their age are making themselves exceptions to shelter-in-place rules, why can’t they do so as well?

Many philosophers have had much to say about the morality of making an exception of oneself. Eighteenth century philosopher Immanuel Kant urges us to think about whether our actions can be universalized—roughly, would it be acceptable if everyone performed the action we are considering performing? If not, then we are treating a principle, morally binding on everyone else, as if it doesn’t apply to us.

Decision-making in a pandemic demonstrates the moral importance of universalization powerfully. People who violate stay-at-home and shelter-in place-orders are counting on the fact that they are behaving as exceptions to the rules. If everyone followed the recommendations suggested by their actions, the disease would spread like wildfire, even faster than the rate at which it is now spreading. “But,” they might argue, “what is the real harm? If I don’t get sick, and if I don’t spread the disease, does it really matter if I saw some friends one Friday night in April?”

A person who makes this argument fails to recognize themselves as the recipient of what philosophers often refer to as moral luck. In his 1877 essay The Ethics of Belief, philosopher W.K. Clifford describes a ship owner who sends his ship out to sea despite the fact that he had reason to believe it might not be seaworthy. The ship sinks and the passengers die. What if, instead, the ship didn’t sink? What if all of the passengers survived? Would this diminish the guilt of the ship owner? Clifford answers, “Not one jot. When an action is once done, it is right or wrong forever; no accidental failure of its good or evil fruits can possibly alter that. The man would not have been innocent, he would only have been not found out.” The shipowner got lucky in this case—no one discovered that he did something irresponsible. This doesn’t change how we should view his decision to send the ship off to sea; whatever the consequences turned out to be, his action was reckless.

Consider the following two cases. Tom and Mary both go out to a bar and become equally intoxicated. They both make the decision to drive their respective cars home while too impaired to operate a vehicle safely. They both live roughly the same distance from the bar. On the way home, Tom encounters a pedestrian whom he hits and kills. A pedestrian does not cross Mary’s path, and she arrives home safely. The fact that a pedestrian was present in one case but not the other was a matter of moral luck—neither Tom nor Mary had any control over that. That said, they both behaved equally recklessly and that is the decision for which they are morally responsible.

The same thing can be said about the decision to ignore critical recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Such actions are reckless. Some people who disregard orders may not get the virus and they may not spread it to others. Nevertheless, their actions are not universalizable. They can’t be reasonably recommended to others. When these people take themselves to be defending their own liberties, they are really behaving selfishly and diminishing the liberty and well-being of others.

Posted on

States of Exception

photograph of Chechpoint Charlie memorial site today

Now, many weeks into the rolling global coronavirus outbreaks, large-scale community lockdowns, and broad economic shutdowns; through a plethora of views on what the longer-term outcomes of this situation may be, it is clear that we are living through exceptional times.

Globally, as governments scramble with varying degrees of success to get a hold of the crisis, many countries have declared states of emergency.

Emergency decrees involve assuming certain types of exceptional powers by a government for the duration of a national emergency. Certain rights and civil liberties are curtailed and the protection of certain basic rights is suspended in order to ameliorate the threat.

Currently, in response to the global coronavirus pandemic, roughly one third of the world’s 7.5 billion people are in lockdown or under some form of ‘physical distancing’ restriction on free movement and association. In many areas authorities are enforcing curtailments.

We know from infectious disease experts that these measures are essential – the human population has no immunity to this novel coronavirus and a vaccine or effective treatment may be some way off. The only strategy we have is halting its ability to spread by our behavior.

Nevertheless, the question of how states of emergency are instituted and maintained raises important ethical questions in which the relationship of the state to its citizens is at issue.

Emergency decrees are quite obviously a potential problem in places where authoritarian governments and heads of state are already actively seeking means to extend or consolidate power, and for whom emergency decrees represent an opportunity to legitimize extraordinary levels of state coercion and control.

But even in the most “functional democracies” civil libertarians are counseling us to be vigilant. Even where people recognize the necessity of social distancing and accept the curtailments that states of emergency place them under, it is vitally important to remain conversant with the pressures this puts on our political and social order.

The modern democratic state is founded on ethical principles of rights and personal/individual freedoms. It gains legitimacy from democratic participation of citizens, and is based on a concept of the ‘social contract’ in which there is a tacit agreement by individuals to submit to the sovereign or state. The rule of law offers individual protection of rights and freedoms and endeavors to provide public goods like social harmony.

So the modern democratic state is built on the (ethical) notion that individuals have rights and duties in respect of each other. These rights and duties are mediated by the state, so that individuals have rights and duties in respect of the state under the social contract. The social contract is submission to, and protection under, the rule of law.

The primary function of the state should be to strike a balance between the ethical imperatives of freedom and ‘common good, as the rule of law.

Under what is described by Carl Schmitt in legal theory as a ‘state of exception,’ the sovereign possesses the ability to transcend the rule of law for the public good.

What is the ethical character of the state of exception? States of emergency or states of exception put a certain pressure on the social contract and represent an ethically dubious space.

The particular concerns that civil libertarians have around the use of emergency decrees all converge on this question of what sort of ethical zone a state of exception is, as a zone where the contract has to be temporarily renegotiated and a new balance has to be struck between individual freedom and common good.

There is a general concern that such a balance should err on the side of protecting privacy, freedom of expression, and other basic tenets of liberal democracy.

The important political and ethical question at the center of the state of exception is: how does the exception relate to the norm?

If the norm is the rule of law, then is the state of exception to be inscribed within it, and curtailed by it, or does the state of exception itself stand outside the rule of law?

In the first case, the state of exception is ‘built in’ to the state – so that checks and controls are placed upon exceptional state measures.

But if this is the case, then it is hard to see how it remains exceptional rather than becoming the norm, since building the exception into the state itself leads either to an infinite regress (by seeking exceptions to the exception), or cancels out the exception altogether by constitutionally inscribing the exception into the state as the norm.

In the second case, the state of exception is ‘extra-juridical’ in character – according to the argument that it is not desirable to control executive action in emergency with standard judicial accountability mechanisms.

But here, state power begins to exceed state power, so to speak, and not being subject to juridical order it represents a zone wholly external to the rule of law and the protections and rights and responsibilities that the rule of law enshrines. It is therefore difficult to see how the social contract can be said to hold under such a situation.

If the sovereign’s exceptional decree is not subject to constitutional constraint, the power to decide on the state of exception is therefore the power to decide what should count as a state of exception, potentially maximizing the state’s capacity to function outside the rule of law.

The Italian philosopher, Georgio Agamben, has argued that the state of exception is a zone which is not properly ‘internal’ nor ‘external’ to the state, but represents a kind of political, juridical, and ethical gray area where the distinctions between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ are blurred, and that it in fact represents a realm of human activity not subject to the rule of law.

While there may not be sufficient evidence for Agamben’s claim that the modern democratic state is in a permanent state of exception, this accompanying claim bears thinking about: The state of exception assumes a fictitious political character in which the vocabulary of war is maintained, to justify recourse to government powers. Agamben believes the state of exception is a fiction sustained through military metaphor.

I do not here claim that the current emergency decrees across the world are fictions, yet it bears noticing that vocabularies of war are certainly sustaining them.

For Agamben, the stakes are high, and the danger is the slow disappearance of meaningful political action, because the attempt to encompass states of exception into the rule of law by legitimizing them represents a recognition of what is outside the law, and prompts sovereign attempts to encompass that very outside within the law. As a legal category, the state of exception therefore extends and completes the law’s empire.

What, then, is the peculiar ethical space of a state of exception, and what does that mean for us?

It is unclear what relation the exception has to normality, and what relation it has to the rule of law. Part of the point is about the possible erosion of civil liberties, but Agamben’s deeper worry about the slow disappearance of meaningful political action suggests that even as we remain committed to the truly monumental global effort to stem the tide of the coronavirus pandemic, we still need to pay attention to the pressures that government control of these measures places on the social contract between the state and its citizens, and to what it means for political discourse.

Posted on

Freedom of Religion Is Not Absolute

photograph of empty church pews

This article has a set of discussion questions tailored for classroom use. Click here to download them. To see a full list of articles with discussion questions and other resources, visit our “Educational Resources” page.

On April 7, 2020, prior to the Easter Holiday on Sunday April 12, 2020, Kansas Governor Laura Kelly issued an executive order which, among other things, had the effect of limiting the size of religious gatherings to fewer than ten people. Gov. Kelly’s order differed from similar stay-at-home orders issued by the governors of other states during the COVID-19 pandemic, like Florida’s Gov. Rick DeSantis, in that it did not include an exception for religious services. Subsequently the Legislative Coordinating Council of the Kansas State Legislature voted to revoke nearly all of Gov. Kelly’s emergency powers asserted in her executive order. Gov. Kelly then sued the Legislative Coordinating Council (LCC) for attempting to impede her constitutional powers as the executive of Kansas. Subsequently the Kansas Supreme Court upheld Gov. Kelly’s order, thus overturning the vote of the LCC.

The reporting on this case frames it as a decision between public health and religious liberty. This was, in fact, one of the stated concerns of the Kansas State Legislature’s LCC. However, the Kansas Supreme Court’s decision did not directly touch on issues of religious liberty. Instead the court reached its decision on procedural grounds, arguing that the Kansas State Legislature in general could not be a party to this lawsuit and that further the LCC did not have the authority in this instance to revoke Gov. Kelly’s executive order. That is, the LCC’s vote was null and void, as if it had never occurred.

Let us suppose, however, that the court had deigned to examine the constitutionality of Gov. Kelly’s order with respect to freedom of religion. Would they inevitably have found that the freedom of religion of the citizens of Kansas has been impaired? After all, the First Amendment in the US Bill of Rights says that Congress shall make no law restricting the free exercise of religion. Further the Kansas Constitution’s Bill of Rights says something similar in its seventh section, stating that its citizens will never have their right to worship God according to their conscience infringed. Despite this uncompromising rhetoric, it is not a forgone conclusion that the court would have found in favor of the LCC.

No person’s rights exist in a vacuum. Each right that one person bears creates corresponding obligations on the part of other people, groups, or institutions. Your right to the free exercise of religion creates an obligation on the part of various levels of government, at the very least, to refrain from interfering in how you choose to worship. However, that doesn’t allow you to do anything you please to me under the auspices of your religion. My own right to religious freedom, among the others I bear, must also be safeguarded by the government. Should your freedom of religion come into conflict with some right of mine, some form of adjudication would be needed. In other words, which have been attributed to numerous writers, “Your rights end where my nose begins.”

Here we can make sense of an important concept in arguments about constitutional law—the idea of a strict scrutiny. A case in which it is alleged that a fundamental right has been infringed, or in which a law is alleged to be enacted or enforced selectively against a “suspect classification” (e.g., religion or nationality) compels the court to review that case under standards of strict scrutiny. Among other things the government must demonstrate that its actions, where they infringe upon a fundamental right or disproportionately affect a protected group, do so for a compelling interest. What might such an interest be? For example, protecting another group’s fundamental rights. Hence the government may restrict your freedom of religion, to the minimum extent possible, if doing so is an effective and direct way to protect other citizens’ right to life. (That is, in judicial jargon, the government’s actions are “narrowly tailored” to achieve its compelling interest.)

Do orders like Gov. Kelly’s satisfy a strict scrutiny test? They clearly do. The state has a compelling interest to protect the lives of its citizens. Moreover, the restrictions laid out by stay-at-home orders are narrowly tailored; they prohibit physical gatherings of more than ten people, except for essential activities. This is narrow tailoring because it limits the breadth of the restrictions as much as possible. The restrictions would fail to be narrow if they, for example, forbade any people from coming within ten feet of each other for any purpose whatsoever. Nor are virtual gatherings forbidden. (Many worshipers are taking advantage of various teleconferencing technologies to observe their religious holidays responsibly.) Further, any gatherings that do occur should involve significant physical distance between each participant. These requirements are in line with epidemiological guidelines for minimizing the likelihood of viral spread by bodily contact and aerial exchange. Hence the restrictions are also directly linked to the achievement of the compelling interest to protect the lives of citizens.

Is all of the grand rhetoric about inviolable and inalienable rights just so much hot air, then? What can it mean that Congress shall make no law limiting the free expression of religion if it is acceptable that people should sometime be limited in the expression of their religion? It means simply that the government—or at least parts of it, occasionally—realizes that rights are things held in common by all citizens at once. The adjudication of conflicting rights claims ought not be interpreted as a decision that some kind of right, or some particular person’s right, has mysteriously evaporated for a time. Rather it ought to be interpreted as courts figuring out exactly how all citizens can bear all fundamental rights at all times. Only a narrow and selfish view of your rights can lead you to insist that you can indulge yourself at the cost of other citizens’ life and liberty.

Posted on

Expertise in the Time of COVID

photograph of child with mask hugging her mother

This article has a set of discussion questions tailored for classroom use. Click here to download them. To see a full list of articles with discussion questions and other resources, visit our “Educational Resources” page.

Admitting that someone has special knowledge that we don’t or can do a job that we aren’t trained for is not very controversial. We rarely hesitate to hire a car mechanic, accountant, carpenter, and so on, when we need them. Even if some of us could do parts of their jobs passably well, these experts have specialized training that gives them an important advantage over us: They can do it faster, and they are less likely to get it wrong. In these everyday cases, figuring out who is an expert and how much we can trust them is straightforward. They have a sign out front, a degree on the wall, a robustly positive Google review, and so on. If we happen pick the wrong person—someone who happens to be incompetent or a fraud—we haven’t lost much. We try harder next time.

But as our needs get more complicated, for example, when we need information about a pandemic disease and how best to fight it, as our need for that kind of scientific information is politicized, figuring out who the experts are and how much to trust them is less clear.

Consider a question as seemingly simple as whether surgical masks help contain COVID-19. At first, experts said everyone should wear masks. Then other experts said masks won’t help against airborne viruses because the masks do not seal well enough to stop the tiny viral particles. Some said that surgical masks won’t help, but N95 masks will. Then some experts said that surgical masks could at least help keep you from getting the disease from others’ spittle, as they talk, cough, and sneeze. Still other experts said that even this won’t do because we touch the masks too often, undermining their protective capacity. Yet still others say that while the masks cannot protect you from the virus, they can protect others from you if you happen to be infected, “contradicting,” as one physician told me, “years of dogma.”

What are we to believe from this cacophony of authorities?

To be sure, some of the confusion stems from the novelty of the novel coronavirus. Months into the global spread, we still don’t know much about it. But a large part of the burden of addressing the public health implications lies not just in expert analysis but how expert judgments are disseminated. And yet, I have questions: If surgical masks won’t keep me from getting the infection because they don’t seal well enough, then how could they keep me from giving it to others? Is the virus airborne or isn’t it? What does “airborne” mean in this context? How do we pick the experts out of this crowd of voices?

Most experts are happy to admit that the world is messier than they would prefer, that they are often beset by the fickleness of nature. And after decades of research on error and bias, we know that experts, just like the rest of us, struggle with biased assumptions and cognitive limitations, the biases inherent in how those before them framed questions in their fields, and by the influence of competing interests—even if from the purest motives—for personal or financial ends. People who are skeptical of expertise point to these deficiencies as reasons to dismiss experts.

But if expertise exists, really exists, not merely as a political buzzword or as an ideal in the minds of ivory tower elitists, then, it demands something from us.

Experts understand their fields better than novices. They are better at their jobs than people who have not spent years or decades doing their work. And thus, when they speak about what they do, they deserve some degree of trust.

Happily, general skepticism about expertise is not widely championed. Few of us — even in the full throes of, for example, the Dunning-Kruger Effect — would hazard jumping into the cockpit of an airplane without special training. Few of us would refuse medical help for a severe burn or a broken limb. Unfortunately, much of the skepticism worth taking seriously attaches to topics that are likely to do more harm to others than to the skeptic: skepticism about vaccinations, climate change, and the Holocaust. If you happen to fall into one of these groups at some point in your life — I grew up a six-day creationist and evolution-denier — you know how hard it is to break free from that sort of echo chamber.

But even if you have extricated yourself from one distorted worldview, how do you know you’re not trapped in another? That you aren’t inadvertently filtering out or dismissing voices worth listening to? This is a challenge we all face when up against a high degree of risk in a short amount of time from a threat that is new and largely unknown and that is now heavily politicized.

Part of what makes identifying and trusting experts so hard is that not all expertise is alike. Different experts have differing degrees of authority.

Consider someone working in an internship in the first year out of medical school. They are an MD, and thus, an expert of sorts. Unfortunately, they have very little clinical experience. They have technical knowledge but little competence applying it to complex medical situations.

Modern medicine has figured out how to compensate for this lack of experience. New doctors have to train for several years under a licensed physician before they can practice on their own. To acquire sufficient expertise, they have to be immersed into the domain of their medical specialty. The point is that not every doctor has the same authority as every other, and this is true for other expert domains, as well.

A further complication is that types of expertise differ in how much background information and training is required to do their jobs well. Some types of expertise are closer to what philosopher Thi Nguyen calls our “cognitive mainland.” This mainland refers to the world that novices are familiar with, the language they can make sense of. For example, most novices understand enough about what landscape designers do to assess their competence. They can usually find reviews of their work online. They can even go look at some of their work for themselves. Even if they don’t know much about horticulture, they know whether a yard looks nice.

But expertise varies in how close to us it is. For example, what mortgage brokers do is not as close to us as landscapers. It is further away from our cognitive mainland, out at sea, as it were. First-time home buyers need a lot of time to learn the language associated with the mortgage industry and what it means for them. The farther out an expert domain is from a novice’s mainland, the more likely they are on what Nguyen calls a “cognitive island,” isolated from resources that would let novices make sense of their abilities and authority.

Under normal circumstances, novices have some tools for deciding who is an expert and who is not, and for deciding which experts to trust and which to ignore. This is not easy, but it can be done. Looking up someone’s credentials, certifications, years of experience, recommendations, track records, and so on, can give novices a sense of someone’s competence.

As the expertise gets farther from novices’ cognitive mainland, they can turn to other experts in closely related fields to help them make sense of it. In the case of mortgages, for example, they might have a friend who works in real estate or someone in banking to help translate the relevant bits to us in a way that meets our need. In other words, they can use “meta-experts,” experts in a closely related domain who understand enough of the domain to help them choose experts in that domain wisely.

Unfortunately, during a public health emergency, uncertainty, time constraints, and politicization mean that all of these typical strategies can easily go awry. Experts who feel pressured by society or threatened by politicians can — even if inadvertently — manufacture a type of consensus. They can double-down on a way of thinking about a problem for the sake of maintaining the authority of their testimony. In some cases, this is a simple matter of groupthink. In other cases, it can seem more intentional, even if it isn’t.

Psychologist Philip Tetlock, in his book with Dan Gardner Superforcasting: The Art and Science of Prediction (2015), explains how to prevent this sort of consensus problem by bringing together diverse experts on the same problem and suspending any hierarchical relationships among them. If everyone feels free to comment and if honest critique is welcomed, better decisions are made. In Are We All Scientific Experts Now? (2014), sociologist Harry Collins contends that this is also how peer review works in academic settings. Not everyone who reviews a scientific paper for publication is an expert in the narrow specialization of the researcher. Rather, they understand how scientific research works, the basic terminology used in that domain, and how new information in domains like it is generated. Not only can experts in related domains allow us to challenge groupthink and spur more creative solutions, they can help identify errors in research and reasoning because they understand how expertise works.

These findings are helpful for novices, too. They suggest that our best tool for identifying and evaluating expertise is, rather than pure consensus, consensus among a mix of voices close to the domain in question.

We might call this meta-expert consensus. Novices need not be especially close to a specialized domain to know whether someone working in it is trustworthy. They only have to be close enough to people close to that domain to recognize broad consensus among those who understand the basics in a domain.

Of course, how we spend our energy on experts matters. There are many questions that political and institutional leaders face that the average citizen will not. The average person need not invest energy on highly specialized questions like:

  • How should hospitals fairly allocate scarce resources?
  • How do health care facilities protect health care workers and vulnerable populations from unnecessary risks?
  • How can we stabilize volatile markets?
  • How do we identify people who are immune from the virus quickly so they can return to the workforce?

The payoff is too low and the investment too significant.

On the other hand, there are questions worth everyone’s time and effort:

  • Should I sanitize my groceries before or when I bring them into my living space?
  • How often can I reasonably go out to get groceries and supplies?
  • How can I safely care for my aging parent if I still have to go to work?
  • Should I reallocate my investment portfolio?
  • Can I still exercise outdoors?

Where are we on the mask thing? It turns out, experts at the CDC are still debating their usefulness under different conditions. But here’s an article that helps make sense of what experts are thinking about when they are making recommendations about mask-wearing.

The work required to find and assess experts is not elegant. But neither is the world this pandemic is creating. And understanding how expertise works can help us cultivate a set of beliefs that, if not elegant, is at least more responsible.

Posted on

A Stoic’s Guide to Crisis

photograph of mountain stream falling through jagged rocks

Since my news article about the context of coronavirus numbers was published, the number of reported cases has increased seven-fold. Schools have closed down as education becomes virtual. The vast majority of workers have been told to stay home. Social distancing has become the new norm. As I sit here in social isolation–hopefully like many of you–I think about how I ought to react to this pandemic.

As one individual, there is little about this pandemic that is within my control. I am avoiding physical social contact, I am washing my hands, I am heeding the advice of my government, and I am keeping myself informed. I am doing my best to neither contract nor spread the virus, especially because I am intimately familiar with the concern for those with weak immune systems. But I cannot control the course of the pandemic nor how my government or fellow civilians respond.

My life has been disrupted through no fault of my own. My academic year has ended prematurely. My days are now confined to my bedroom. Trips, job searches, post-grad plans, living arrangements, and much more have been cancelled or put on hold. Everything is uncertain. For many, life is on pause but time continues to move. It is a strange feeling. Shouldn’t I be upset? Shouldn’t I be disappointed? Shouldn’t I be anxious, worried, panicked?

Or should I be stoic? Or better yet, Stoic? Stoicism is a philosophy that prioritizes rational thought over emotion and argues that contentment is found when one’s natural role is realized and acted out.

What would the famously non-emotional Stoics of Antiquity say if I were to ask them, “How should I respond to the disruption this pandemic has caused me?”  One might find the answer to this question in Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations.

The Roman emperor writes, “A bitter cucumber? Throw it away. Brambles in the path? Go round them. That is all you need, without going on to ask, ‘So why are these things in the world anyway?’” (Med., 8). This pandemic has caused many bitter cucumbers and brambles in the path. But, the Stoics would argue, there is no reason to question their occurrences. By doing so, you make the cucumber more bitter and the bramble more obstructive.

Aurelius continues: “Remember, that as it is a shame for any man to wonder that a fig tree should bear figs, so also to wonder that the world should bear anything, whatsoever it is which in the ordinary course of nature it may bear” (Med., 8.13). These seemingly random and disruptive events are a natural facet of life. If and once you understand that, there is no reason to toil over the events’ occurrence just as you would not toil over a fig tree bearing figs.

But the ethics of Stoicism is not without magnificently substantial flaws. Aurelius argues, “Whatsoever doth happen in the world, doth happen justly” (Med., 4.8). I pity the person who is charged with making the case that the spread of COVID-19 is somehow just. He continues:

“Nothing can happen unto thee, which is not incidental unto thee […] As nothing can happen either to an ox, a vine, or to a stone, which is not incidental unto them; unto every one is his own king. If therefore nothing can happen unto anything, which is not both usual and natural, why art thou displeased?” (Med., 8.45).

The philosophy holds that everything is predetermined, which is absurd. The lack of an emotional response to crises is justified by the notion that every event is essential. You should not fret about crises because a crisis would not happen to you if you were not equipped to handle it. That which occurs to you is within your nature to occur to you; therefore, why be upset that it is occurring to you? Hmm. I am not satisfied. Nor should you be. One possible implication of endorsing this position is to have no coordinated response to the pandemic whatsoever.

But there is something useful to be disentangled from this wonky, possibly illogical view of nature: Understand what is within your control and adjust your mindset accordingly.

“Let thy chief fort and place of defence be, a mind free from passions. A strong place and better fortified than this, hath no man,” writes Aurelius. “Keep thyself to the first bare and naked apprehension of things, as they present themselves unto thee, and add not unto them.” (Med., 8.46-47).

In other words, keep your mind free from the subjective values you assign to an event. Do not allow your mind to be consumed by emotions felt with regard to the event lest the event cause you even more disruption or pain as a result.

To illustrate this advice, the Roman emperor asks you to suppose someone is speaking ill of you. The fact that someone is speaking ill of you is indisputable. But the degree of the offense or hurt that the speech causes depends on your reaction to it.

The fact that the pandemic has caused school closures, employment displacement, uncertainty about the future is indisputable. But the degree to which those realities affect your emotional and mental well-being depends on your reaction to it. How you react is within your control. Best not to add additional suffering.

In one passage particularly pertinent to our current situation, Aurelius observes: “Hath not yet experience taught thee to fly from the plague? For a far greater plague is the corruption of the mind, than any certain change and distemper of the common air can be” (Med., 9.2).

Posted on

Profiting from Pandemic

headshots of Richard Burr and Kelly Loeffler

During the last week of March, it was widely reported that members of Congress used information from their privileged briefings on COVID-19 to adjust their holdings in the stock market before the information was made public. Politicians including Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler, North Carolina Senator Richard Burr, Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe, and California Senator Diane Feinstein all sold suspicious amounts of their holdings around the time of briefings about the oncoming epidemic. It would be illegal if these allegations turn out to be true: financially benefiting based on actions performed based on non-public information is against the law for members of Congress. However, it is legal for members of Congress to hold stocks, and buying and selling financial material or benefiting financially from holdings while a member of Congress is fine legally. This makes evaluating the activity of Congress people difficult, as the legality of their behavior depends on the grounds for their activity.

That we need to determine the mental state of the actor in order to determine the legality of the behavior is not unique to these circumstances. Indeed, it is common in the law for behavior to only be considered criminal if someone performs an action intentionally, knowingly, recklessly, or negligently – all states of mind. Courts and lawyers are adept at creating standards for testing what would qualify as the relevant mental state (or mens rea) for particular crimes, and investigations are underway.

In these circumstances, the possibility that members of Congress may have financially benefited from privileged information is troubling for further reasons. The particular briefings the public servants received concerned the oncoming epidemic that would have dramatic impact not only on the economy but on public health and safety. Their estimates of the impact of this epidemic would be what led to the alleged adjustments in their investments, and therefore they would have been informed and concerned about the epidemic weeks or months before taking any action to mitigate the oncoming national crisis.

The lack of action seems straightforwardly unethical, especially in light of the continued lack of support and action on the part of the federal government as the national crisis escalates and shows all signs of continuing to escalate. The federal government has not intervened sufficiently. After passing a one-time $2 trillion dollar stimulus package, the Senate is no longer in session.

Regarding their use of the information for personal gain: Is it reasonable to expect those with privileged information that they could greatly benefit from to avoid taking steps to act on that information? How about if it was reasonably certain they wouldn’t get caught? Folks with privilege and power frequently don’t get caught, and when they do, the penalties for their malfeasance can be much less onerous than the benefits they received by skirting the moral and legal demands that constrain the actions of us all. Some views of human nature are explicitly predicated on the assumption that we are self-interested, so the “rational” action in such cases would be to benefit from the information they had. This line of reasoning supports a ban on those who have such privileged information from advantaging themselves from it, and using it as a privilege over those who don’t have access to it. Some members of Congress who are currently accused of insider trading in fact support such bans.

Posted on

Hydroxychloroquine and the Problem of Expert Disagreement

photograph of Coronavirus Update Breifing with Dr. Fauci at the podium with Trump behind him

On April 5th, after promoting the use of an anti-malarial drug to (possibly) help stem the tide of the coronavirus outbreak, President Trump commented, “What do I know? I’m not a doctor, but I have common sense.” According to Trump, even though we still lack conclusive evidence that hydroxychloroquine is an effective treatment for COVID-19, there is no reason not to try using it: the medication has been prescribed for other reasons for years and some preliminary results suggest it might also help diminish the effects of the novel coronavirus.

In contrast, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and member of the Coronavirus Task Force assembled by the White House to combat the outbreak, has repeatedly cautioned against counting on a treatment regimen that, based on what we know at this point, may not actually work; speaking to Fox and Friends on April 3rd, Fauci warned “We’ve got to be careful that we don’t make that majestic leap to assume that this is a knockout drug. We still need to do the kinds of studies that definitely prove whether any intervention is truly safe and effective.”

What should the average American (who, presumably, knows next to nothing about hydroxychloroquine) make of this disagreement? In most cases, we have reason to believe that the President of the United States – whoever that person happens to be – is in a position to be well-informed and trustworthy. Similarly, we have good reasons to think that doctors who have been appointed to lead federal research institutes (like the NIAID) – not to mention medical doctors in general – are believable experts about medications and prescription practices, as well as other matters of healthcare. How is a non-expert supposed to know who should be believed when purported experts disagree?

This is what philosophers sometimes call the “problem of expert disagreement” – if a layperson needs the insight of an expert to make a reasonable judgment about a claim, but two potential experts disagree, how can the layperson decide which expert to believe? Although the answer here might initially seem trivially easy – the layperson should just listen to whichever expert has more relevant knowledge about the claim – things aren’t so simple: how can the layperson know what counts as “relevant knowledge” if they are, in fact, just a layperson?

So, instead, we might look to the credentials of the two experts to see what sort of education or experience they might be employing when making their recommendations. If we know that one expert graduated from a well-respected university that specializes in the relevant field while the other received a degree from a university that does not train experts in the specific domain, then we have some reason to trust the first over the second. Ultimately, though, this test might not be much better than the first option: it requires the layperson to be able to judge the relative merit of credentialing institutions rather than credentialed individuals and this also seems unrealistic to expect actual laypersons to be capable of doing.

It’s worth noting, though, that this is exactly what laypersons think they’re doing when they simply assert that someone “went to Cornell” or “is the President” – they’re citing some person as an authority in virtue of credentials that they hold, regardless of whether those credentials are actually relevant to the question up for debate. In the worst cases, this isn’t just some misleading effect of celebrity, it’s actually the fallacious “argument from authority” (or an argumentum ad verecundiam, if you prefer): this example of bad reasoning occurs whenever a bad argument is grounded on the basis of someone’s authority in an irrelevant area of expertise.

Finally, laypersons might judge between two disagreeing experts by investigating which expert agrees with the standard consensus of other experts in their field. By increasing the sample size of experts beyond just the original two, the layperson can feasibly judge whether or not a particular person is an outlier among their peers. Presumably, a majority of experts will hold the most credibly supported position in the field (indeed, it’s not clear what else would constitute such a position). Of course, there are problems with this method too (experts in a field might agree with each other for all sorts of reasons other than a concern for the truth, for example), but it’s worth noting that this technique can be used even by the most ignorant of laypersons: all we need to know to judge between two experts is which expert’s peer group is bigger.

Typically, the problem of expert disagreement is debated among philosophers interested in social epistemology – the study of how knowledge works in group contexts – but when expert testimony bears on moral matters then ethicists should be concerned with it as well. It’s general epistemological doctrine that thinkers should believe what’s true, but (even if you deny this) it’s straightforwardly (or at least pragmatically) clear that people interested in protecting themselves and their loved ones from a pandemic should listen to the best medical experts available.

All of this is to say that, in the case of hydroxychloroquine and its purported role in fighting COVID-19, Fauci’s expertise (if you’ll forgive me for putting it this way) clearly trumps Trump’s. In the case of the first test, Dr. Fauci’s position as a medical expert gives his opinion immediate priority for medical questions over that of President Trump (whose job often entails seeking the expert advice of specialists like Fauci). For the second test, Dr. Fauci’s educational and professional career are clearly more relevant to medical questions than President Trump’s history of making real estate and television deals – and no amount of “common sense” matters here, either. Finally, although Trump has repeatedly referenced a survey of medical professionals in support of his position, Fauci’s insistence on controlled testing is simply the standard vetting process scientists seek to ensure that new treatment regimens are safe; the group Trump appeals to (based on that survey) numbers around 2300 individuals, whereas Fauci’s is something on the order of “most every medical researcher who has practiced in the last century.” United States presidents command many things, but the scientific method is not one of them.

Which might also be why Trump now appears to be actively censoring Fauci during press briefings, but that’s a topic for a different article.

Posted on

The Pandemic and the Threat of Income Inequality

photograph of Sao Paulo favelabutting up against expensive buildings in background

In years past, the concept of national security has primarily been understood militarily. Recently, however, the effects that the disparity between the very rich and the poor has on national security have been hypothesized as a potential cause of social unrest, increased crime, or as a threat to economic growth. With the COVID-19 epidemic, the potential for wealth inequality to act as a threat to national security is even more obvious; poorer people are disproportionately affected by the epidemic and this makes it more difficult to manage. Recognizing that income inequality is a national security issue highlights a new aspect of its moral significance for societies everywhere.

The United States has one of the highest levels of wealth inequality in the developed world. It is not new information to most people that the top 1% of income earners make 30 times the income of those in the middle. The top 10% of families held 76% of the wealth in the United States in 2013. Over the past ten years many have tied this information to national security. An article from 2013 notes that this disparity, along with a lack of employment, could lead to an increase in youth gangs, property crime, and higher prison populations. Another from 2018 similarly points to the potential for higher crime. Despite these concerns, others have argued that we should not see income inequality as a problem. In 2013, the Cato Institute argued that the threat of civil unrest owing to income inequality is negligible and has no relationship to the concept of national security, noting “it is difficult to credit the view that inequality poses a security threat unless ‘security’ is completely redefined.” In 2017, the Heritage Foundation published a report arguing that there is little evidence that the very rich and the very poor have significantly divergent interests or influence over policy.

Yet, one event that the articles I have cited did not seem to see coming was an existential threat like a viral pandemic. It is well known from past cases that viral outbreaks can be particularly harsh on the poor. During the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic, the poor were significantly affected by the first wave. During the current COVID-19 epidemic we see this pattern repeating. Given that many people are now staying and home and not working, income is falling. Half of the nation would not have $400 if needed for an emergency which means that they are going to have a difficult time paying their rent and other living expenses. The result is going to be that millions will not be able to pay and could face evictions. While some politicians and governments are working to prevent this, that hasn’t stopped the calls for rent strikes during the pandemic. This means that during a time when social distancing is necessary, evictions and increases in the number of homeless will make the spread of the virus more difficult to contain.

In addition, wealth inequality is having a direct effect on healthcare. Roughly 10% of Americans did not have health insurance before the pandemic and most of these are likely to live in poverty. Without insurance, people are more likely to want to treat themselves at home or to avoid seeing a doctor. Now, millions of Americans who rely on employment benefits for coverage may now lose it. As many as 14 million may lose their jobs by summer. Those most vulnerable for losing their jobs are likely to work in the service and retail industries and are more likely to be low-wage workers. The cost of treatment for COVID-19 can be up to $35,000. This means that millions of Americans who could already not afford to pay rent can definitely not afford the potential cost of treatment. Indeed, there are already reports of potential deaths owing to lack of insurance.

What this means is that you now have large numbers of people who, despite the risk of increasing the spread of COVID-19, now still need to work in order to prevent losing their homes and their coverage. You have people who have now lost their jobs and their healthcare coverage less likely to seek medical care if they need it or to follow health protocols prescribed by governments to prevent the spread of the virus. This means that less will come forward for testing and less treatment of those who may have contracted COVID-19. As Joseph Eisenberg, chair of epidemiology at the University of Michigan notes, “People will go a lot longer since they don’t have access to healthcare…that both means they’ve been in the community more and been transmitting more, and when they get to the hospital their prognosis is going to be a lot worse.” So, in addition to a health crisis, there will also likely be an insurance crisis and a housing crisis owing to the economic situation of those worse off.

In addition, many of the jobs now deemed essential to keep supply chains going are those filled by the working poor. These include those who work in the food industry, custodial staff, many others including grocery stores staff. These people, in addition to staff employed in Amazon warehouses, are worried about a lack of protection against the virus. Amazon workers are calling for a strike to demand protection. Grocery store staff are worried about a lack of protective equipment as well. Despite efforts to protect these employees, several of them have now contracted the virus. At first many of these employers were not even offering paid sick leave and now that they are, there is still confusion. While many of these employers are now offering pay raises in response to the crisis, this still means that we are in a situation where most of us are now depending on low income workers to keep deliveries coming and to ensure that there is still food on the store shelves. These individuals are the very same who are now at a higher risk of contracting the virus and simultaneously less likely to seek treatment for it.

How does all of this relate to national security? Income inequality has exacerbated the healthcare crisis, will contribute to the eventual economic and financial crises, and has resulted in a situation where society is now counting on many of the poorest people to continue to risk their health in order to ensure supply lines continue to function, all while being more likely to be hurt by the pandemic. Now only does this increase the risk of social unrest, it makes handling the pandemic more difficult. Income inequality is now an existential threat to national security. While it may be easy to think that once the pandemic ends this threat will pass, a warming climate means the range of disease-carrying animals is increasing; this may not be the last major pandemic we will face. While it is cynical to think that we should only deal with a problem like income inequality because of this, the fact that the disparity between the rich and poor is a national security threat reminds us that there is a moral significance for everyone to do something about it.

Posted on

Coronavirus Briefings: Virtue in Ignorance?

photograph of Trump answering questions at press briefing with Vice President Pence and Dr. Fauci one either side

Last week, KUOW, an NPR Member station in Seattle, said that it would no longer air the daily White House Coronavirus Task Force briefings live. On Wednesday, CNN and MSNBC both cut away from the president’s briefing when Trump kicked off the report by talking about a new counter-narcotics operation and progress on the border wall. CNN’s John King called Trump’s manipulation of Americans’ fear-driven attention “shameless” and “political.” But these networks’ actions have also been criticized for political bias in refusing to relay the news of the day. The decision to cease coverage of the president’s special briefings represents another chapter in the ongoing debate about how the media should cover Trump, and, more generally, where news agencies’ obligation to the public lies.

As of the time of this writing, over 200,000 people have signed a petition asking media outlets to stop covering the president’s coronavirus briefings live. Many of those individuals are no doubt motivated by party identification, but there are a number of moral reasons that are being offered as justification. Chief among these are appeals to decency and presidential decorum. Many have objected to the way that Trump has transformed (or perhaps weaponized) these fireside chats into political rallies. National emergency briefings aren’t the time for partisan politics, and they certainly aren’t the time for campaigning. These daily television spots are not legitimate policy briefings genuinely attempting to inform the public, but spectacles put on for political purposes. Flanked by muzzled science experts and a carousel of business leaders, Trump projects power while lacking substance. He bad-mouths reporters, fields planted questions, and is self-congratulatory when his guests aren’t too busy singing his praises. Critics argue that such displays are beneath the dignity of the office.

Second, there is a very real fear concerning the amount of misinformation that Trump has been circulating when talking off the cuff. That kind of ad libbing is deadly. While we are confronted by a disease that threatens to kill as many as 240,000 of us (in the U.S. alone), our current leader can’t be bothered to get his facts straight or fall in line with the recommendations of experts. At the very least, news outlets have an obligation not to give a platform to epistemic trespassers or snake oil salesmen. All the after-the-fact commentary and correction in the world can’t undo the damage being done on live TV as Trump undermines and contradicts public health experts.

On the other hand, it cannot be denied that everything the president does or says is, in a fundamental way, noteworthy. As Jack Shafer of Poltico writes,

He speaks and economic markets move. He speaks and political markets shudder. Even when he holds his tongue—a rare occurrence for our current president, I’ll admit—the world shifts. Like it or not, his lies move markets, too.

As such, we must consider whether these daily briefings represent important news items even if the content may be actively causing harm. Even the president’s most vocal critics can see the benefit of having a daily public record of the president’s words for the sake of transparency and accountability.

Further, these daily briefings also serve as a window into the brain and soul of our commander-and-chief. Rarely are our political leaders called upon day after day to give live updates on an ongoing emergency and to do so in a way that is suitable for consumption by the general public. What the president says, how he decides to frame it, and how he comports himself while doing it, all convey important information that transcends what fits on the page or can be communicated by an amended account. In these productions, believers hear hope and self-assurance; and critics hear braggadocio and incoherence. Even if it’s true that there is nothing more on offer than spin and self-promotion, aren’t even those performances worth relaying to the public?

The answer to that question may all come down to our pessimism regarding the public’s  competence. Those in favor of stopping coverage are inclined to play the role of guardian. As Shafer argues,

[Their] greatest fear isn’t that Trump will lie or that Trump’s lies will somehow deceive them. What they worry about the most is that the average viewer will be sucked in by Trump’s lies. This paternalistic mindset holds that the same individual who can be trusted to vote in elections can’t be trusted on his own to listen to long, unbroken statements from the president. He must be guided and protected by volunteer censors.

But we can’t have it both ways; a truly informed voter can’t be spoon-fed. It may be that those who are willing to tune in should decide for themselves the value of the information being shared.

Finding a middle ground in this disagreement on the media’s role in relaying the president’s message is not easy (nor is it a new problem). National Public Radio, for example, has made the decision to stop airing the briefings live. Instead it offers commentary and analysis, while including a link to the full briefing should its users care to see it. In defense of this move, Elizabeth Jensen, public editor for NPR, explains the newsroom’s mission to “serve the public and democracy,” writing,

I take that to mean that it should provide facts to help listeners make decisions in their lives, not spin, particularly at a time when public health is at stake. That means having its reporters listen to the briefing and immediately share important updates in the newscasts and newsmagazines, without giving a platform for falsehoods, or speculative comments on as-yet-untested treatments or campaign rally-style rants.

Perhaps this is a suitable compromise between the values of transparency and journalistic integrity. Or perhaps this again privileges opinion over facts and editorializing over reporting, or objectionably puts “knowers” in a position to protect the rest of us.

Other White House correspondents have proposed alternative solutions: “I don’t think trying to keep him from people because he lies is necessarily the right answer. Cover him aggressively, but let people see what he’s saying.” To that end, “networks could adapt, and carry them live, but fact-check in real time.” Whether such a strategy is feasible or effective remains to be seen.

Unfortunately, it may be that, regardless of the stance news outlets take, their consumers will always simply hear what they want to hear.

Posted on

Responding to Crisis: Individuals versus Income

photograph of diverse crowd waiting in line

A $2 trillion dollar COVID-19 bailout package has been hotly contested in Washington as rent checks and bills become due. U.S. President Donald Trump signed the $2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act on Friday the 27th of March, a bill was passed that includes a means-tested payment to individuals with a tax-identification number. Because the bill is means-tested, folks who have more financial burdens are set to receive more money. An individual making more money over the course of a year may not receive anything. Individuals who earned less than $75,000 will receive $1,200, or couples who earned less that 150,000 will receive $24,000. For those with children, they will receive $500 per child. (There seems to be a sliding scale, where you receive less funds the more you make, up to 99,000 for an individual and 198,000 as a couple.)

In some countries, workers will be paid portions of their pay through the COVID-19 crisis. Norway will pay 90% of their worker’s wages. The UK will pay 80% of the wages of workers kept on payrolls during the COVID-19 crisis to incentivize businesses not to lay them off, up to around the median income. The justification behind such policies is to balance the cost of keeping people employed against a huge run on unemployment benefits and the impact of widespread unemployment on the economy long-term. Denmark has a similar strategy.

Means-tested policies indicate that the benefit will differ depending on the financial means of an individual or family unit. And there are good reasons for some social programs to be means-tested. The government has limited funds and therefore sending our resources to those who will most benefit from them, or who are most in need of them, can seem like a good principle for allocation. If we have an accurate view of the person’s financial means, then targeting those without sufficient means to receive more resources can be justified.

Moral questions are difficult with government benefits in principle. There are some people who would benefit most with more money, which could lead us to a forward-looking approach (so, with $500 more dollars, could make a HUGE difference to their lives). There are those that NEED $500 more than that first group, so we could be present-centered. Or, we could look at WHY people are in the state that they are in and try to fix injustices done by providing a monetary sum.

There are (at least) two concerns that arise with means-tested benefits. First, social concerns about capturing people’s true needs through the tests for financial resources. Whether the resources in question (access to goods do not all amount to funds) that a particular policy is trying to target tracks the means being measured (typically – financial funds). Justice and accessibility issues are the main concerns here, and are difficult for a government benefit system to directly address. Typically, what is needed are more diverse programs that can support communities and recognize the many facets and goods of a flourishing life, as well as the structural barriers that create difficulties in access to these social and economic goods.

Second, if we determine that money is the best way (quickest, or most effective given the blunt instrument government benefits can be), then there are real epistemic concerns with determining where money should go in order to do good. From a governmental perspective, we don’t see particulars of people’s cases with any degree of detail. Say we had the idea to target those affected by our current crisis with funds. For gig workers, their economic status is precarious, but cannot be summarized in terms of salary or unemployment status. For those who don’t lose their job with the right status (being laid off instead of given a 0-hour shift indefinitely), they don’t even qualify for unemployment benefits, and so an aid package targeting those who are benefiting from a program overburdened by our current crisis will not target them. We also currently have workers who are doing a great deal more work than they are paid to do, and taking on an overrepresented risk to their health and safety during a time of great emergency. We don’t have a system to capture these individuals, because their tasks are spread among many different systems of our workforce.

This one-time payment was determined based on minimum wage for a month. Many say it is woefully inadequate. Senator Stabenow from Michigan has said, “One-time payments are not what people need. What people need is a paycheck. They need ongoing income until this is done. That’s what they need.” Others take moral issue with who gets to benefit.

A congressman from Arizona, Rep. Andy Biggs, objected to a COVID-19 stimulus package because it allowed funds to go to child support for families that weren’t straight. He claimed that government funds going to people that didn’t match his understanding of a familial unit “redefined family.” The way money is allocated in the bill depends on having the responsibility for children, because monthly costs for households with children are, obviously, higher, than those without. This does not specify the financial responsibility for children in the way that Representative Biggs would like, including children that are related biologically, adopted, foster children, stepchildren, and “a child of a domestic partner.” Domestic partners can be of any gender, and this, to Rep. Biggs, means that the bill defines family to include partners raising children of any gender. To have the federal government recognize such a set of relationships is sufficient to deny the entirety of the provisions of the bill.

Most take Representative Biggs to be ridiculous and bigoted, but with bigotry on the rise in the face of COVID-19 in the form of hate crimes against Asian Americans, and the higher susceptibility of the LGBT+ population to COVID-19, the least we can do is match our global peers in supporting the people that make up the economy, or there will be no economy to return to.

Posted on

Re-Thinking Mass Incarceration: COVID-19 in Jails and Prisons

photogaph of barbed wire around prison building

More people per capita are incarcerated in the United States than in any other country in the world—698 out of every 100,000 people are currently incarcerated. Many jails and prisons in the United States are overcrowded. This means that the number of people they have detained exceeds their safe carrying capacity both in terms of space and resources. As the COVID-19 threat intensifies, people across the planet are being strongly encouraged, and in some cases ordered, to stay at home and to practice social distancing. This advice is impossible to follow in a jail or a prison, especially one that is overcrowded. At the time of this writing, hundreds of inmates and prison staff have tested positive for COVID-19.

Conditions in jail and prison are far from ideal for preventing and responding to infectious disease. To fight the spread, people are being asked to wash their hands regularly. Detention facilities are often set up in such a way that regular hand washing is not easy. In many institutions, hand sanitizer is considered contraband because of its high alcohol content. Inmates found in possession of it face disciplinary action. The same bathrooms are used by many people, and toilet paper and tissue are limited. To complicate matters, healthcare services in detention facilities are often shorthanded and of poor quality. These elements of detention environments create extremely unsafe conditions not only for incarcerated people, but also for staff at those institutions.

In response to these concerns, authorities at both state and federal levels have ordered the release of incarcerated individuals. On March 27th, Attorney General William Barr directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons to release some of their prisoners that are sick or elderly, depending on the nature of their crimes and their record of behavior while incarcerated. He asked federal prisons to consider whether confinement at home might be the best option for these prisoners.

State systems are also taking steps to reduce the number of prisoners at their facilities. For example, in Utah, prison officials are expected to release at least 80 inmates by Thursday, April 2nd. They are focusing their attention on people whose parole or release dates were set to take place in the next few months.

The COVID-19 crisis in United States detention facilities highlights a troubling fact about the criminal justice system in the United States. Across the country, 555,000 people are detained in prison who have been arrested but not convicted of any crime. What’s more, 25% of people in jails are being held for low-level offenses like jaywalking or sitting on the sidewalk. The average cost of bail in the United States is $10,000, and those who remain in jail until their trials are people who cannot afford to pay that bail. In the current context, the result is that poor people who are arrested but who have not yet had their day in court are forced to remain in an environment in which social distancing is impossible. Many of these people may well be innocent of the crime for which they are accused.

Some states are taking preventative action to reduce the number of people being held in jail during the COVID-19 emergency. For example, in the case of misdemeanors, officers across the country are being asked to give citations rather than make physical arrests.

Critics of the decision to release inmates argue that, at the very least, victims of accused or convicted persons should be made aware of the release before it happens. After all, in at least some cases, the released individuals might pose a threat to the person they victimized. Some argue that victims have a right to secure conditions in which they feel safe before inmates are released. One ready response to those that have these concerns is that most of the people who are being selected for early release are non-violent offenders, or offenders who for reasons such as age or infirmity are unlikely to perpetrate a violent crime upon release.

Many applaud the decision to release incarcerated individuals but are concerned that the process isn’t moving anywhere near quickly enough to prevent the spread. The delay that notification of victims would cause could make the situation much worse.

Others are concerned that release of convicted criminals and those arrested under suspicion of committing a crime is a miscarriage of justice and may constitute a significant threat to public safety. A pandemic doesn’t nullify the crimes that were committed, and criminals shouldn’t get off easy because we’re going through an international emergency.

In response, some argue that this line of thought expresses a purely retributivist attitude toward criminal punishment. This attitude is tremendously common in the United States, but there are good reasons to think that it is misguided. In an ideal world, our response to criminal behavior shouldn’t simply be to put offenders in prison and throw away the key; instead it should be guided by more holistic and evidence-based considerations about what would be best both for the offender and for society at large. People who commit crimes are still human beings deserving of moral consideration and concern.

People who commit crimes do so with full awareness that there might be legal consequences. That said, the decision to commit a crime does not translate into a decision to be locked up in close quarters with people who carry a deadly infectious disease. No person deserves that; it’s inhumane. If all goes well, we’ll deal with the spread of COVID-19 in jails and prisons as best we can. Going forward, we are morally obligated to take preventative and proactive measures for dealing with this kind of thing in the future, knowing full well that prison populations are hotbeds for the spread of infectious disease.

Finally, our response to COVID-19 highlights something significant about criminal justice policy in this country—mass incarceration is not a practical necessity. There are steps that we can take to incarcerate fewer individuals. We know this because we are currently taking those very steps. This pandemic has the potential to teach us many lessons. With any luck, it will cause our culture to be more reflective about our incarceration practices.