Download pdf from here The Necropolitics of Covid Responses
The Necropolitics of Covid Responses:
Murderbot — 2021
Using the concept of “necropolitics” to discuss the covid topic may seem to be a classic example of sociological hyperbole and theoretical obscurity. I do not want to attach too much significance to it. Nevertheless, it makes for an intriguing perspective and perhaps helps to label some of the policies that we have been living with.
Achille Mbembe, an African philosopher, came up with the term “necropolitics” to describe operations of the state that “function through dividing the people into those who must live and those who must die” (Mbembe 2003: 16-17). The population resident in a particular state is subdivided into subgroups. The subgroup that is regarded as “disposable” are people whose very existence is perceived as “a mortal threat or absolute danger whose biophysical elimination would strengthen my potential to life and security” (2003:18). Examples that are commonly cited to illustrate necropolitics are often from countries of the Global South. Duterte in the Philippines sent police into slums to hunt down and kill drug dealers. In Brazil the Bolsonaro government licenced right wing militia thugs to kill street kids. In both cases those who were deprived of a right to life were portrayed as enemies of the vast majority and a threat to life and security.
Necropolitical gestures
In the last few years, I have had a different view of lockdowns and mandated vaccinations than some of my friends and acquaintances. It has been a bit disturbing to realize that their viewpoint amounts to a necropolitics — even if it is not as extreme as the examples Mbembe is talking about. The argument against lockdowns and mandated vaccinations is that the state should exclude certain subgroups of the population from rights to life that are normally taken as a given in the democracies of the rich world. These named subgroups are to become “disposable”. The continued life of these excluded subgroups depends, it is claimed, on measures that threaten the life and security of the rest of the population – the part from which they themselves are drawn.
My first encounter with these views was in a leftish book club. In August of 2020, Marianne emailed our book club over her concerns about lockdowns in Melbourne. The lockdown has been, she argued
a limitation of our collective freedom of movement and freedom of association [that] has meant the complete dislocation of the social, economic and spiritual lives of the majority of Victorians. This is in response to a virus which based on the statistics and unfolding outcomes poses a very low risk of death or serious illness to the majority of the population including children, youth, the middle aged and healthy senior citizens.
The lockdown is not “appropriate or proportional” given the health risks involved. Addressing the older members of the book club, she went on to say that “for those who find themselves at the end of their working lives, these developments and restrictions may appear to be a small inconvenience to ensure personal and community safety”. However, in the months and years to come she saw the lockdowns as bringing about “the very fabric of our society degenerating with social connections lost, family breakdowns, suicide, significant mental health issues impacting young and old and the implosion of our economy”.
The argument totally fits Mbembe’s definition of necropolitics. It acknowledges that a subgroup of the population – the unhealthy senior citizens – may well die without lockdowns. However, the state should not actively defend the rights to life of this subgroup with policies that could destroy the fabric of society through family breakdowns, economic collapse and emotional stress. She is fully aware that many old people fall into the risk category that she dubs “unhealthy” – through compromised immunity, obesity, asthma, heart conditions, diabetes and the like. Accordingly, she addresses the older members of the book club. At the end of your working life, you are past your use by date. You should be prepared to die so the rest of us can live well.
Twelve months later, Charlie, a friend in her late thirties sent me a very similar message.
I think there’s a big trickiness here around the fact that age is such a huge factor. For older people, lockdowns obviously make sense. For younger people, who are both less at risk and generally more reliant on social activities for mental health … Actually, it feels like this might be the first time our age difference has mattered significantly in our friendship. Please know that I’m not saying that I wouldn’t care if you were to die because of us not having lockdowns. I obviously would care a lot. But if it were a question of 1 in 20 of the elderly people in my life dying, when I know that they’ve had a good life, compared with the effect I’ve seen on [she names various young friends], and that I am aware is happening for people in DV situations, with mental health issues generally, and people with kids generally, it feels difficult to say that this is worth it.
Here the structure of a necropolitical argument is even more clearly spelled out. Old people may die. However, they have had a good life and should be prepared to step aside to ensure that young people live well.
My most recent exposure to this chain of argument was a blog post from Michael, a prominent environmentalist. The post was an explanation of his “sceptical” position on covid — “sceptics acknowledge the virus as real, but not as dangerous as the cure in lockdowns and other draconian measures”. In fact, “the socioeconomic and psychosocial impacts of the response will cause more deaths than the virus has so far, especially in poor countries”. From my reading of the post taken as a whole, I am seeing this as a three-part claim. Firstly, that the lockdowns in poor countries are preventing the poor from working and getting an income to buy food. Secondly, in the rich countries, suicides following lockdowns will produce a death toll higher than the disease itself. Finally, that the economic downturn following massive vaccine refusal will result in a vast economic contraction in the rich countries — which will also cause starvation and suicides. These claims are bracketed by the now familiar assertion that deaths are only likely for a small and disposable subgroup of the population. “The virus is real, novel and kills mostly aged, ill and obese people … The fear about the virus generated by the official response and media propaganda is out of proportion to the impact of the disease”.
This argument is not entirely the same as those discussed so far, though it has a similar structure. It is not the (well known) mental stress and economic problems that are foregrounded. Instead, the argument makes a number of speculative claims about large scale possible deaths to counterpose to the known deaths of the aged, ill and obese. This is certainly necropolitics, in so far as the continued rights to life of a subgroup of the population are to be null and void because of the risks to the life and security of the majority.
Necropolitics as policy
While it is one thing to talk about necropolitics as advocacy, it is something else to talk about how it may play out as state policy. In an interesting discussion of different policy responses Damien Contandriopoulos (2021) argues that the discipline of public health “lost its soul” during the pandemic. This is because public health measures designed to save life were dropped as states bowed to the pressure coming from businesses to keep the economy open. In a second deviation from the founding principles of public health, the worst health impacts fell upon the poorer, more marginalized sections of the population. The discipline of public health became complicit in these inadequate policies. Contandriopoulos distinguishes three basic responses. The first was the Covid-zero or elimination strategy pursued by only a few states, such as Australia, New Zealand and China. The next was the majority response which he refers to as a “balanced containment” approach. Finally, there was the “laissez-faire necrophiliac” response pursued by Brazil and some US states. I will argue that the balanced and laissez faire approaches were both examples of necropolitics. Economic interests and public opposition to lockdowns were given priority in a situation where the outcome in deaths for certain sections of the population was entirely predictable.
The Covid-zero elimination strategy
The Chinese case is clearly an example of a successful elimination strategy. Early on the state enforced very severe lockdowns and virtually eliminated the virus. This was followed by a vaccination campaign. So far over two billion doses of the three vaccines produced by China have been administered so it makes sense to think that the whole population has been vaccinated (Thomas 2021). While these vaccines are not as effective in preventing infection as those used in the West, it seems likely that they work sufficiently to prevent deaths and hospitalisations. The death rate is very low compared to other countries — three people per million (Ritchie et al 2021). I am taking it that the Chinese figures are reasonably accurate. They are certainly not contradicted by any news reports coming out of China. In addition to local lockdowns which have been targeted to outbreaks of infection, the Chinese government has banned citizens from travelling abroad and banned entry into China from other countries. In areas that were locked down, employment dropped by up to 16 per cent (Hemp & Spearritt 2021). Full employment quickly recovered as the lockdowns were eased. Food was available through online order or at markets and supermarkets. Free meals were distributed to medical staff (Harper 2020). For those thrown out of employment through lockdowns, various forms of income support enabled them to buy food and pay rent. For some workers who were in unemployment insurance schemes, there was a paid benefit. Others relied on savings or returned to the rural areas from which they had migrated previously (Kemp & Spearritt 2021).
The Australian zero case strategy was never the intention of government policy. The aim was to reduce cases to an acceptable level. However, by following medical advice the various state governments and the federal government ended up with an elimination strategy. The second wave in Melbourne was indicative. As cases kept climbing the state government became aware that the eventual outcome would be the collapse of the health system. To prevent the outbreak from getting out of hand they imposed more and more stringent lockdowns and eventually the case load did fall to zero. At the height of the lockdowns in Melbourne, residents were not allowed to travel further from their homes than five kilometres. Schools and most businesses were closed. Takeaway food was permitted so long as patrons did not enter the café. Playgrounds were closed. Residents were permitted to leave home for essential shopping, for medical appointments or to exercize – no more than one hour. A single person household could appoint a buddy from another house to visit them. Otherwise, household visits were not permitted, even for family members. There was a curfew at 8 pm. Facemasks were required if you were outside of your house. QR scans were mandatory when shopping for essentials, so that outbreaks could be tracked. Fines were over two thousand dollars. There was a high level of acceptance of these measures as necessary, with the state government continuing to get majority support in opinion polls. In other states, it was rare to have lockdowns this extreme, but they were nevertheless severe enough to work. Travel from and to Australia was banned. Border restrictions operated between states to contain outbreaks within state boundaries. Meaning that some states had zero cases and rarely had to resort to lockdowns.
This policy was extremely effective in preventing deaths. The death rate in Australia as of this month was 54 per million (Ritchie et al 2021). An extremely low figure compared to other rich countries, as we shall see. One way to think of this is to compare Australia to the UK, a country with a balanced containment strategy. Their rate of death per million is 2,020 (Ritchie et al 2021). If the Australian population (25 million) had a similar rate of death, we would have had 50,500 deaths by now. Instead, we have had 1,448 deaths so far (Covid 19 Data Repository 2021). In other words, Australia’s approach has saved 49 thousand lives compared to that taken by the UK.
The balanced containment approach
Balanced containment strategies balanced the economic impact of lockdowns against the public health impacts of the disease. As Contandriopoulos argues, the “reference point of balanced-containment strategies slowly shifted from minimizing cases to optimizing intensive care bed occupancy rates near or above 100%” (2021:2). This is a necropolitical strategy. The deaths that come with the strategy are a predictable and expected outcome that is being balanced against supposed risks from more rigorous lockdowns.
The British case:
Britain is a prime example of the balanced containment strategy. At the beginning of the pandemic the prime minister Boris Johnson argued against lockdowns and following the advice of some medical experts favoured a “herd immunity” strategy, depending on at least sixty per cent of the population catching the virus. It was already very clear that such a policy would be accompanied by a great number of deaths. The government was ambivalent about face masks, the deputy chief medical officer claiming that masks would trap the disease and allow infection. As cases per day soared to 3000, the government finally changed its strategy and initiated the first UK lockdown on 26 March 2020 (Institute for Government 2021). As Contandriopoulos points out, this was in response to a hospital crisis. Soon after the lockdown was announced the overload was so severe that there was insufficient supply of PPE for nursing staff. At the peak of this lockdown there were 5400 cases per day — April 29th (UK Government 2020b).
Much of this first lockdown resembled the Australian lockdowns in basic structure. Non-essential businesses were shut, people were told to stay at home and, if possible, work from home. Schools were closed. People were told stay separated in public, though there was no requirement to mask up while outside. On 15th June face masks were made compulsory on public transport in England and on the 24th July, they were required in shops (BBC news 2020a). Nevertheless, implementation was patchy. While the police were given powers to “enforce” the lockdown, fines were minimal compared to states in Australia. UK police were to first “encourage” people to follow the rules and if they continued to ignore the instructions they might be fined – for a first offence £200 but only £100 if the fine is paid within 14 days (Metropolitan Police 2020). The press statement given by the PM to announce the lockdown strongly suggested that certain key elements were recommended rather than mandated. In his 23rd March speech, he stated:
You should not be meeting friends. If your friends ask you to meet, you should say No. You should not be meeting family members who do not live in your home. (Johnson 2020)
In the various Australian states, international and state border controls were rigorously enforced. Australians were not permitted to leave the country. A very small number of international arrivals were quarantined in government-controlled hotel facilities. In the UK, there were very limited restrictions on international travel. Up until January 2021, people coming into the UK were required only to isolate at home for ten days (Nickson 2021).
What was also significant was the short duration of this first lockdown. As soon as cases started to decline, and while they were still more than 700 per day, the lockdown was ended with schools and non-essential businesses re-opened, the two-metre social distance rule being revoked — in early June 2020 (UK Government 2021b; Institute for Government 2021).
By September, cases had climbed again, and mild restrictions were first imposed in September 2020. The restrictions were laughable in reference to those imposed in Australia. The hospitality sector was opened but with a curfew at 10 p.m! By 5th November of 2020, a second nationwide lockdown was implemented and then ended on 2nd December (Institute for Government 2021). Again, this was revoked as soon as numbers started to fall. Following that, lockdowns were only applied to targeted “hot spots” and not to the whole country. Even these local restrictions were relaxed for Christmas in 2020, regardless of the infection rate. At the peak of this outbreak, on 31st December there were 53,000 cases per day (UK Government 2021b).
As early as December 13th, this surge was overwhelming the British medical system. In London, up to 97 per cent of hospital beds were occupied. Dr Katherine Henderson, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, explained:
We are at a really dangerous point which could tip into finding it incredibly difficult to manage.
Routine clinics and procedures had been cancelled to free up staff (Roxby et al 2020).
A third lockdown was imposed on 6th January 2021 and relaxed in March. By 5th June, cases per day had gone down to 4,200 (UK Government 2021b). By the middle of the year the government announced a “Freedom Day” and the end of restrictions for England — 19th July. The idea was that a high rate of vaccination would prevent the pandemic from causing hospitalisations and deaths. In fact, this was optimistic given that at the time only 67 per cent of adults had been double vaccinated in the UK (NHS 2021). In consequence, a final wave of the virus between early July and the present (October 2021) meant case numbers per day peaked at over 50,000 and were consistently over 20,000 (UK Government 2021b). There have been at least another 10,000 deaths in the UK since July (UK Government 2021c). Throughout these events, Boris Johnson praised the virtues of his strategy in keeping the economy going.
Another indication of the inadequacy of policy in the UK is the extent of food insecurity caused by the imposition of the first lockdown. In April and May, the Food Standards Agency carried out a survey of 2,000 UK residents. Nearly one in six were food insecure in May – going without meals or cutting down meal sizes. A quarter of families with children and a third of 16- to 24- year-olds were food insecure. Seven per cent of the British population were using food bank services – free food distributed by charities (Butler 2020). The implication is that a substantial section of the population would have had reasons to get around the lockdowns whenever possible – to get casual employment and income. The income support that went with the lockdowns was inadequate in ensuring compliance. The British scheme for support to businesses and employees was called a “furlough” scheme and was designed to fund firms to pay 80 per cent of a wage to employees that had been stood down because of Covid unemployment (Partington 2020). For example, in the first lockdown 8.4 million employees were paid under the scheme (BBC News 2020b). Nevertheless, many were ineligible, as employees had to have been employed at the time when the lockdown first started. The extent of food insecurity in the UK during lockdowns indicates the failure of the furlough scheme to adequately compensate for the impact of the lockdown and the economic impact of the virus itself. As with the whole of the balanced containment strategy the policy enabled a lockdown sufficient to save the health system from total collapse without preventing a very considerable death rate. A telling comparison with the Australian elimination strategy is the difference between income support in the two countries. In Australia a scheme almost identical to the UK furlough scheme was called “Jobkeeper”. This was supplemented by a doubling of the unemployment benefit in the first year of the pandemic – the “Jobseeker” payment. The effect was to shore up the bottom end of the labour market and permit effective lockdowns in the various states.
The inadequacy of the lockdowns in the UK was largely responsible for a death rate of 2,020 per million or 138,000 people in total (Ritchie et al, 2021). The outcome from these policies was completely predictable. As early as March 16th, 2020, the Imperial College modelling for a “mitigation” strategy was that 250,000 would die and that hospitals would not be able to cope with the pandemic (Ferguson et al 2020:16). While the government took this advice to the extent of imposing lockdowns, part of the “suppression” strategy, these were never more than a temporary and half-hearted response compared to the medical advice.
Other balanced containment scenarios:
Similar scenarios played out in other European countries such as Spain, Portugal, Germany, Italy, France. What was immediately evident to Australians watching the international news footage was that lockdowns were very mild compared with those that we were experiencing. Shots of beaches packed with unmasked revellers were not unusual for countries experiencing the most severe outbreaks. The tourist industry was given priority and international guests continued to arrive in countries that were being badly affected by the virus. The mortality rates per million reflect these policy decisions. Italy — 2,173. Spain — 1,854 deaths per million. France — 1,744. Germany — 1,121 (Ritchie et al 2021).
Necrophiliac laissez faire
Contandriopoulos nominates the third Covid strategy as “necrophiliac laissez faire” and refers to Brazil and some states in the USA as examples (2021: 2).
The USA:
While some states in the USA pursued balanced containment strategies, others resisted lockdowns. Legislatures even passed laws preventing schools from requiring masks. For example, in Texas more than 50 school districts defied orders banning them from requiring masks. Government departments in Texas were also banned from requiring masks in their offices. A stay-at-home order was issued only once, for the month of April. In Florida the governor repealed all emergency orders in May 2021 and the legislature passed a law banning governments from requiring masking or social distancing. As with Texas, a stay-at-home order had been imposed early in 2020 (March 20th) and was repealed at the end of April (New York Times 2021; USA Today 2021). As was clear in the international news, President Trump encouraged his supporters to go without masks, promoted ineffective “cures” for Covid, downplayed the seriousness of the pandemic, constantly claimed that the pandemic was over and opposed lockdowns (Paz 2020). Finally, after he had left office, he supported vaccination as the way out of the pandemic, to the great consternation of many followers.
This combination of minimal policy responses and balanced containment has meant a huge death toll in the United States — 2,133 deaths per million and 710,000 deaths in total (Ritchie et al 2021). As policy in the USA was to a large extent decided in each state, the death rate can also be considered state by state. Quite a few states that pursued the laissez faire strategy most avidly ended up with more than 3,000 deaths per million, in other words at least a third more than the worst outcomes for the balanced containment strategy – for example Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, New Jersey.
Sweden:
The case of Sweden is hotly debated. An early government decision not to impose lockdowns suggests Sweden is in the “necrophiliac laissez faire” camp where policy strategies are concerned. Despite this, at the present time, the Swedish death rates do not seem that different to those of some European countries that experienced lockdowns. This has been used as an argument to show that lockdowns were never useful or necessary. For example, the current rate per million for Sweden is 1,466 compared to UK 2,020, France 1,744, Germany 1,121 and Netherlands 1,084 (Ritchie et al 2021). Another kind of comparison suggests very different conclusions. That is to compare Sweden’s outcomes with those for adjacent Scandinavian countries that pursued strong containment policies. For example, Denmark (459) Finland (196) and Norway (159) (Ritchie et al 2021). Sweden also recorded more cases of Covid per capita than other European countries. By August 2021 about 11 out of every 100 people in Sweden, compared with 9.4 out of every 100 in the UK and 7.4 per 100 in Italy (Bendix 2021).
It is difficult to discuss the Swedish case in reference to the other European responses. As noted, the differences between Sweden and many European countries are not that drastic. This is despite the fact that they had lockdowns and Sweden did not. If we are comparing Australia to the UK and again to laissez faire states within the United States the huge differences in death rates invite us to compare policies, as I have argued above. This case is harder to make in comparing Sweden to other European countries. For example, as I will explain, Swedish citizens responded with strong compliance when requested to self-isolate and stay away from work without an enforced lockdown. It seems highly unlikely that citizens in the UK or France would have responded in the same way (Mishra et al 2021). So cultural differences may well explain why Sweden and other European countries ended up with similar death rates despite policies that on the face of it look quite different.
In Sweden the Public Health Authority set Covid policy, and up until December of 2020 the government acceded to the PHA decisions, as the expert body in charge. The policy was driven by Tegnell, the head of the PHA. While this was never completely patent, various statements of Tegnell’s suggest that he was pursuing a “herd immunity” strategy. The virus would be permitted to range widely in the community and infect up to sixty per cent of the population. Those who survived the virus would be immune and would not pass the virus on to others, stifling the outbreak (Habib 2020). In an e-mail exchange between Tegnell and the head of the Finnish public-health agency, on March 14th and 15th, Tegnell suggested that keeping the schools open could help the young and healthy develop immunity sooner” (Pickett 2021). In keeping with this belief, Tegnell kept expecting the infection rate to flatten out, and made constant announcements that the curve was flattening out when in the end these optimistic forecasts were not borne out. The idea was that “herd immunity” was starting to work to flatten the virus. In fact, only 7 per cent of Swedes had developed immunity in this early period, far from sufficient for any herd immunity to arrive (Habib 2020). The policy of herd immunity was necropolitical in the sense that it was known well that exposing 60 per cent of Swedes to the virus would probably lead to a one percent death rate for those infected. The figures from Wuhan already indicated this. Tegnell never seems to have realized the extent of the problem, comparing locking down to “using a hammer to kill a fly” (Bendix 2021).
A second necropolitical aspect of this strategy was that deaths in Sweden were most likely those of older people, and also of the migrant workers who could not choose to work from home, as Swedes were encouraged to do by the PHA. Ninety per cent of the Swedish deaths were those of old people and fifty per cent were in nursing homes (Claeson & Hansen 2020; Pickett 2021). Old people were rarely transferred from nursing homes to hospitals, by comparison with the pre-Covid normal for Sweden. There were no mask mandates and in fact nursing home staff were banned from wearing masks. Initially, there was no ban on visits to nursing homes by relatives. The impact of this was compounded by advice from the PHA that informed people that it even if one member of a family was infected, other family members could go out in public as long as they were not experiencing symptoms, obscuring the fact that non symptomatic relatives could carry the virus (Habib 2020). Yngve Gustafsson, professor of geriatric medicine at Umea University noted that it was routine for doctors to give telephone consultations to patients in nursing homes, prescribing palliative medications such as morphine and midazolam that were known to suppress breathing (Habib 2020). While the government did not state that old people were disposable, it is difficult to believe that this discourse, circulating in the community, did not inform their decisions.
One of the strangest aspects of this situation was that despite mounting evidence in medical journals the PHA continued to recommend against masks. “The Swedish health agency communicated to the public that there was insufficient evidence that masks prevent transmissions, that they are often used incorrectly, and that they could be used as an excuse not to distance properly, which would be harmful”. Medical staff were even prevented from wearing masks in hospitals (Pickett 2021). It was not until January of 2021 that masks were finally mandated by government – and then only for public transport in peak hour!
The PHA policy was to recommend that people stay home and not go to work if they could work from home. They were also recommended not to visit other houses. However, there was no compulsion in any of this to begin with. Gatherings of up to 500 people were permitted. All shops, schools and entertainments remained open. By the middle of the year, it was clear that the Swedish death rate was well above that of adjacent Scandinavian countries. Accordingly, there were some changes in policy. High schools and universities were closed and social distancing measures put in place for bars and restaurants. Visits to nursing homes were banned (Pickett 2021). By the end of the year there were limits on the size of public gatherings and non-essential public spaces, such as gyms, pools and libraries were closed (Bendix 2021). By January 2021, the parliament legislated to permit further measures if necessary (Hanson & Claeson 2020).
What was amazing about all of this was that actual behaviour followed other European countries more closely than you might have expected. Mobility to work and outside of the home declined quite markedly following the PHA advice, especially for older people (Hanson & Claeson 2020). In addition, the laissez faire policy did not actually save Sweden from an economic downturn as bad or worse than that experienced in other Scandinavian countries that had locked down. Sweden’s economy still shrank 8.6% from April to June in 2020. By comparison, Denmark’s economy shrank 7.4% during that time, Norway’s 5.1%, and Finland’s just 3.2%. Sweden’s unemployment rate also rose from 6.6% in March 2020 to 9.5% in March 2021. Norway, Denmark, and Finland all saw unemployment rise by smaller margins: around one percentage point, on average (Bendix 2021).
So, in the end what can we say about this policy? The first thing is that while mobility declined, the decline was quite small compared to countries in Europe where lockdowns were imposed. Sweden’s population mobility from March to May of 2020 went down least out of 28 countries examined by the OECD. Public transport and leisure activities dropped just 22%, compared with 66% in Spain (Bendix 2021). Surely these differences translated into infection and death rates? The most useful study of this compares the UK, Denmark and Sweden (Mishra et al 2021). The authors look at the time varying reproduction rates (Rt), of Covid from the time when lockdowns began to be introduced in Europe (the end of March 2020). They compare the profiles of mortality rates to indicate the prevalence of the virus at this time. By that measure the UK had much more seeding of Covid and faster spread into the community. Denmark and Sweden were pretty well on a par, the virus taking longer to get into these countries and the low density of settlement impeding transmission. The lockdowns in the UK and Denmark were very effective in reducing mobility and were accompanied by masking. In Sweden, the failure to implement a lockdown meant that the reduction in mobility was delayed. The authors develop counterfactuals based on R rates to discover what would have happened if the different countries had adopted different policies. UK mortality would have approximately doubled had Swedish policy been adopted, while Swedish mortality would have more than halved had Sweden adopted UK or Danish strategies (Mishra et al 2021). A similar prognosis is advanced for the Danish case. Their mortality rates would have ended up the same as Sweden’s, four times higher than they actually were, if they had used the Swedish policy settings (Mishra et al 2021).
A final comment on this is that while Sweden ended up with a similar death rate to many other major European countries, the comparison here is not between a country without lockdowns and countries with effective lockdowns. As explained above, the policies of the European governments are best seen as “balanced containment” policies designed to allow Covid to circulate to the point where the medical system could not cope with the rate of hospitalisation — and then to lockdown temporarily and ineffectively to bring the numbers slightly below that disastrous level. In many ways the Swedish experiment was not that different really, though the rhetoric made it look a lot more distinctive. The Swedish government started to overrule the advice of Tegnell and the RHA when caseloads and deaths reached a point where the hospitals could not cope. In December 2020 ICUs were full in Stockholm and Malmo (Pickett 2021). The final mandatory imposition of masks on public transport and the restriction of public gatherings to 50 people were imposed following this second wave. Mishra et al (2021) describe the policies of Sweden as substantially the same as those in Britain and Denmark by June of 2020 — with a similar restrictive effect on mobility and infection rates. For an indication of the impact of a laissez faire policy it makes more sense to turn states of the USA such as Mississippi, Louisana, Alabama and New Jersey – with mortality rates higher than 3000 per million.
Letting the Truth Get in the Way of a Good Story
Within the framework of necropolitics, attention is focused on the actions of the state in the context of liberal democracy. It is impossible to retain the conditions for liberal democracy if the state gets majority support to declare open season on sections of the population, suspending all the usual rights and privileges that citizens can expect. The argument against necropolitics can be construed as analogous to the argument for a free press in democracies.
It may seem that adjudicating Covid responses through the lens of “necropolitics” obscures the very issues that advocates of necropolitics want us to consider. As Michael puts it, that the virus is “not as dangerous as the cure in lockdowns and other draconian measures”. So let us for the moment ignore the issue of “necropolitics” and use some version of a “consequentialist” approach to ethics to compare outcomes (Singer 1993, Leahy 2017). In this analysis deaths from Covid are weighed up against deaths and other ill effects that come from the “draconian” measures taken by states to reign in the virus. Clearly this is a very fraught analysis, as with any consequentialist approach to ethical questions. How many sleepless nights in lockdown equate to one old person dying from Covid? Nevertheless, it makes sense to assess this argument. In fact, I do not find it persuasive where the lockdowns are concerned. I will focus on Australia first, where lockdowns were stringent enough to be effective, and go on to look at issues relevant to other countries.
The Australian case
Suicides, mental health and domestic violence:
Suicide rates in Australia fell during the pandemic and the lockdowns, despite many predictions and allegations to the contrary. Suicide deaths fell 6.2 per cent to the lowest age-standardised rate since 2016, a decline of 179 suicides from the year before the pandemic (Clun 2021). Deaths from the flu also fell as distancing measures affected transmission. On the other hand, deaths from alcoholic poisoning went up — an increase of 8 per cent or about 100 deaths (Clun 2021).
Domestic violence was more common, and more people sought counselling for mental health problems. A study of domestic violence surveyed 362 domestic violence agencies. A strong majority of agencies reported more cases during the pandemic. For example, 67 per cent of the agencies reported seeing new clients for the first time (Hermant 2021). The Black Dog Institute cited surveys which showed an increase in psychological distress for young people. In 2017, about 15 per cent of young people aged 18 to 34 reported high levels of psychological distress. This doubled to 30 per cent during the pandemic (Patty 2021). In NSW, presentations to emergency wards for suicidal ideation and self-harm increased by 17 per cent compared to 2019, with a 47 per cent increase for children aged 12 to 17. The NSW department of health cautions that an upwards trend was already taking place before the pandemic (Koziol 2021).
It would be a mistake to attribute all of this psychological distress to the impact of the lockdowns. Looking at the Black Dog Institute study more closely, questions asked in their survey were about the impact of the pandemic, rather than about the impact of lockdowns. The survey was conducted after the lockdowns had finished in NSW — in the middle of 2020 — and respondents were drawn from the whole of Australia, including states where lockdowns had not been necessary. Sixty-five per cent of their sample reported no impact or a positive impact on their friendships and almost all reported using digital media to stay in touch socially. It is also worth noting that this online survey is far from a random sample of young people — the people most likely to have undertaken the survey would have been those who were experiencing the pandemic as a mental health concern (Werner Seidler et al 2020). Much of distress reported in such accounts was due to the economic insecurity that accompanied the pandemic. For example, a young man interviewed by Anna Patty remarked: “Last year was horrible. I wasn’t earning any money because work had cut back during the COVID lockdown, and I was in between jobs for some of it.” While lockdowns were certainly an aspect of this economic damage, the failure of the Australian governments to adequately compensate for unemployment was also a part of the problem. As Meyerowitz-Katz et al (2021) point out, the stress associated with Covid itself is also a part of the explanation for a rise in anxiety — the fear of death that was so ever present in Australia during the first few months of the pandemic. As Meyerowitz-Katz et al (2021) also note, the psychological impact of bereavement and sickness also has to be taken into account in evaluating the lockdowns. In Australia it seems likely there were at least 50,000 deaths fewer than would have occurred without lockdowns. That is, many young people who would have lost parents and close relatives. In addition, there would have been the stress caused by hospitalisations and long covid cases.
Economic impacts:
The evidence does not indicate a huge economic impact from the lockdowns in Australia — an impact well above and beyond that which was caused by the virus itself. In fact, the success of the lockdowns in saving lives may have assisted us to avoid some of the worst economic impacts. The Australian economy experienced continuous growth from June 2013 to December of 2019 when growth started to flatten out for reasons unconnected to Covid. There was a dramatic fall from March to June of 2020 related to the economic impact of the pandemic – a drop of seven per cent. However, the economy started to bounce back after this and by June of 2021, GDP had been restored to the level that could have been expected without the pandemic, and with a normal rate of growth since then (ABS 2021a). Unemployment figures followed this trajectory. The rate of unemployment beginning 2020 was 5.1 per cent. It increased to a peak of 7.4 per cent by July and got back to 5 per cent by May 2021 (ABS 2021b). Comparing the impact on GDP with the UK, the pattern of impact is similar though the UK changes are much more drastic. In the UK the biggest fall in GDP was in the second quarter of 2020 – a drop of 19%. By the third quarter of 2020 the economy jumped back and in the second quarter of 2021 it was growing again (UK Office of National Statistics 2021). In other words, the de facto elimination strategy in Australia cannot be blamed for an economic downturn more severe than experienced through the UK’s balanced containment strategy. The short-term impact in the UK was much more drastic, probably reflecting the high death rates. For the United States, there was a similar pattern with an even more intense fluctuation of GDP, dropping by 32 per cent in the second quarter of 2020 and recovering quickly in the third quarter to reach previous levels by the first quarter of 2021 (BEA 2021). An argument could be made that the extent of the economic swing at the beginning of the pandemic was proportional to lockdown severity – least extreme in Australia with greatest lockdown stringency, more extreme in the UK and even more in the USA. In all three cases, huge amounts of government pump priming restored economic growth very quickly, the largest amount of this money ending up in the pockets of the very rich.
It seems highly likely that the economic impacts of the pandemic are only loosely related to lockdowns. Economists Goolsbee and Syverson compared counties in the United States that imposed lockdowns with neighbouring counties that did not have them (2021). Summarizing their findings for periods when the pandemic was at its height, they wrote that while “overall consumer traffic fell by 60 percentage points, legal restrictions explain only 7 per centage points of this” (2021: 192). It seems that customers restricted their own mobility out of fear of the virus. The economic impact was most closely associated with deaths from Covid reported in the county in question. Customers avoided large, crowded shops whether stay at home orders were in place or not.
While the governments of Australia incurred large debts paying for the income and business support that allowed lockdowns and maintained the economy, it seems unlikely that this debt burden is going to be a particularly significant problem. Repayments on the debt are not likely to cause future governments any great headaches. Commenting on projections from the Parliamentary Budget Office, Ross Gittins writes “we can outgrow the debt and that the interest bill isn’t likely to become a significant burden on taxpayers even though the debt remains unpaid” (2021). From my perspective, this scenario makes a lot of assumptions about issues that are unclear. Mostly, about the economic impact of climate change and the costs of reducing emissions. What I would say in this light is that the expense of the lockdowns is a fairly minor matter compared to these ongoing issues. As well, the decision to deal with the expense of lockdowns through going into debt is a political decision rather than an inevitable economic cost of lockdowns. Following the logic of modern monetary theory, it would have been perfectly possible for the Australian government to have issued money free of debt to cover these expenses. The effect would have been that those thrown out of work or affected as businesses would have had money to compensate for the economic impact of the lockdowns. Businesses supplying essential services of food, transport and the like would have continued with the same output as before, with some customers using their welfare money to buy supplies. A reallocation of goods and services to meet need — without the necessity to pay back interest on loans to the wealthy.
School closures and educational outcomes
At the time of the lockdowns in Australia there was widespread concern that home schooling would lead to learning difficulties for children. In practice, remote learning worked reasonably well. Professor Jenny Gore from the University of Newcastle headed up a team of educational researchers looking into this issue. They found that the “academic achievement of more than 3000 year 3 and 4 students in our study was just as strong in 2020 as it was in 2019.” These findings were backed up in the national NAPLAN tests of numeracy and literacy, which also found no impacts from the lockdowns (Gore 2021).
General comments
The above is not intended to minimize the hardships created by the lockdowns and by the pandemic itself. For example, in Melbourne CBD the vacancy rate for shops is now about 20 per cent while it was only 5 per cent before the pandemic (Waters 2021). Many small retail businesses have gone to the wall. The psychological distress caused by isolation has been a very widespread experience. Disentangling the impact of the pandemic itself from the impact of lockdowns is by no means an easy matter, as the discussion so far has indicated. Nevertheless, as far as the Australian case is concerned, it is contrarian to claim that the cure has been more dangerous than the pandemic. As I have argued, it would not have been surprising to have had up to 50,000 covid deaths without the lockdowns and border closures imposed over the last two years. Along with this would have gone many more hospitalisations and cases of long covid – a back of the envelope guess would suggest 350,000 hospitalisations and at least 100,000 long covid cases. Associated with these deaths and illnesses there would have been considerable psychological stress. On the other side of the ledger, much of the impact that has sometimes been attributed to lockdowns has been the effect of the pandemic itself — restricting movement, closing down retail and causing anxiety.
For other countries
Meyerowitz-Katz et al (2021) researched the health effects of lockdowns under the title “Is the Cure Really Worse than the Disease?” Their conclusions are much the same as those I have argued for in the Australian case. They use the World Mortality Set data to look at excess deaths. Countries with stringent lockdowns such as Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Taiwan and South Korea “had either no excess mortality or only very modest increases in mortality during lockdown periods when there were few or no COVID-19 cases. Indeed, there are no locations in the dataset that experienced both excess mortality and lockdowns concurrently with low numbers of COVID-19 cases, which is what we would expect if lockdowns were independently causing large numbers of short-term deaths” (Meyerowitz-Katz et al 2021). By contrast, countries with few Covid restrictions experienced many excess deaths through Covid – parts of the USA, Brazil, Russia. Many low-income countries, such as Brazil, India and South Africa experienced such severe impacts from Covid that their normal health services were compromised. For example, TB clinics were re-purposed to treat Covid cases. Just as in Australia, there have been no increases in suicide deaths in other countries with lockdowns. Meyerowitz-Katz et al (2021) make the point that stress associated with the pandemic is very likely to be coming from the deaths that lockdowns could have prevented. In the USA 43,000 children have lost a parent and 2 million a grandparent.
The view expressed by Michael that the impacts of draconian policies have been more dangerous than the disease itself “especially in poor countries” is likely based on media reports of lockdowns in India and South Africa being connected to unemployment and hunger for the poor. As we have seen, this connection is not restricted to the global south with a similar phenomenon reported for the UK. As in that case, what we may also say is that the inadequate social welfare net is a political decision to discard the poor, a kind of necropolitics too. This should come as no surprise for countries in the global south. For example, in both Africa and South Asia, the rate of stunting from malnutrition for children under 5 years old is close to a quarter (Leahy 2019). What has been common in the global south have been limited lockdowns poorly enforced — a variety of the balanced containment strategy intended to avoid a collapse of the medical system. Given the current global politics of capitalism, states in the global south do not have the option to provide adequate welfare nets. The consequent low wages for those who are employed have meant high profits for global businesses and low prices for the residents of the rich countries. It has never really been realistic for the poor countries to impose “draconian” lockdown measures, without the possibility of providing alternative income support to the poor. Friends from Indonesia have explained that the lockdowns have been obeyed up to a point by the middle class, who have worn masks and avoided going out in public, while ordinary workers have carried on business as usual. The number of people infected with and dying from Covid has been artificially deflated by a government policy that requires people to pay for Covid tests — meaning that they are never taken by the poor. At the present time, the only measure likely to relieve the impact of Covid in the poor countries is a program of free vaccination, funded and organized by the rich countries.
Final words
Support for a necropolitics of Covid has been a minor theme in some on-line media posts from anti-vax influencers. While open support for the logic of necropolitics has rarely had a mainstream airing, it has nevertheless been implemented in real government policies. Almost all the deaths in the rich countries could have been avoided had governments locked down stringently until the vaccines were available and injected into arms. Stringent lockdowns would have been backed by adequate social welfare measures to pay people who were not working — at levels that would have enabled rent, mortgages, food and other services to be paid for. That this has not happened has reflected the power of the capitalist class and neoliberal ideology in the rich countries. For most people on working wages in the rich countries, it would have seemed like a pipe dream that governments would pay them an adequate income when they were not working. Instead, their fear of unemployment was joined to the very real downsides of lockdown to constitute a political force. Constant protests organized by the far right have given governments a licence to pursue the inadequate policies of balanced containment and laissez faire. This political process was aided by a hidden necropolitics that was clearly enunciated by only a few. As indicated in the first part of this paper, this view was based on the premise that a subgroup of the population — the old and infirm — were disposable. This necropolitics is psychologically driven by the insecurity of life in a neoliberal economy. There is never enough, life is hard, you must make the tough decisions. From the perspective of the capitalist class the very real danger of this context was that governments would solve the problem by printing money and paying a Universal Basic Income. Any such move would have encouraged people to wonder why adequate public spending and income support were not available in normal times.
This whole schemozzle has been played with great efficiency by the far right. They have been very successful on social media in spreading conspiracy theories, treating lockdowns as an assault on ancient freedoms and undermining confidence in medically informed policy and in vaccines. Their strategy is “accelerationism” — exploiting any opportunity to bring on what they see as the inevitable crisis of liberal democracy and using this crisis to institute the authoritarian ethno-state (Nilan 2021). Indeed, the view that we face an inevitable crisis of liberal democracy is also shared by some sections of the environmentalist movement. Capitalist industrialism cannot in the long run deal with the environmental problems it brings about. As Holmgren writes, in a situation of “energy descent”, we cannot rely on the state. Its efficacy to deal with any problems, environmental or otherwise, must decline (Holmgren 2018). Accelerationism can be attractive as part of this narrative. Since the failure of the state is inevitable, let us bring it on now to avoid any further environmental disasters (Jensen 2006). In the context of Covid this argument can be a recipe for sabotaging effective responses of the state where Covid is concerned, whether lockdowns or vaccinations. Proving the theory of state failure in advance. For myself this is a strange logic. It makes sense to acknowledge and even celebrate successes of liberal democracy now, whatever the future holds. As we have seen so far, there have been precious few effective state responses to the Covid crisis.
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