A new book has been published, critical of the Covid consensus. Pandemic Response and the Cost of Lockdowns is a collection of essays by academics, each of whom has contributed an assessment of governments’ Covid policies from their particular subject-area in the human and social sciences.
The book includes sobering accounts of the impact of Covid policies in various states in the Global South – one of its three sections is comprised of essays written by academics with a specialism in one of these overlooked regions.
The other two sections include essays that reinterpret key Covid concepts, such as immunity and health, and that propose alternative paradigms through which Covid events might have been differently understood, such as those of intergenerational justice and proportionality.
But perhaps the greatest merit of the collection is that it represents the first of its kind: a broadly collaborative intervention from within the human and social science faculties of universities in a consensus that took hold in universities with alarming force and uniformity.
The rationale of the new publication is to offer alternative perspectives, on key concepts, prevailing paradigms and dominant contexts. It is a rationale that should be second nature to those employed to teach and research in the human and social sciences at universities; the one accomplishment that a third level education in these fields now guarantees is precisely that of offering alternative perspectives, of thinking differently.
Human and social science academics ought to have been positioned better than anyone to question the dominant view of COVID-19 and its effects and mitigation.
Yet, most academics in these faculties were and still are dispiritingly acquiescent.
Why? Why has their vocation for thinking differently not come to their aid when it really matters?
*
The academic enterprise of thinking differently began with the modern era. Descartes, father of modern science and philosophy, was also father of thinking differently, offering such a dramatically alternative perspective on ourselves and the world around us that he supposed that none of it was real:
I shall think, Descartes proposed in 1641, that the sky, the air, the earth, colours, shapes, sounds and all external things are merely delusions… I shall consider myself as not having hands or eyes, or flesh, or blood or senses, but as falsely believing that I have all these things.
Descartes could not have presumed that his idle exercise in thinking differently would be taken up by more than a few – those whose hands are calloused from laying stone upon stone are unlikely to suppose that their hands are not real; those who cradle their sick child, scarcely to consider that they do not have flesh or blood or senses.
But Descartes’ experiment in thinking differently took a surprising hold. Its rarified character proved enticing. So much so that it came to define what counted as thinking at all. The modern university – its humanities and social science faculties, at least – has been and is the institution of thinking like Descartes did, wildly and implausibly differently, the site in which external things are not believed in and so many alternative perspectives are proposed and admitted that everything may as well be delusion.
Whether or not the SARS-CoV-2 virus originated in a lab is a recurring debate. It is a red herring, supporting the opinion that the disease that it is deemed to cause – COVID-19 – originated somewhere. It did not. Professor Jon Ioannidis of Stanford, together with colleagues at the Oxford Centre for Evidence Based Medicine, has recently again confirmed that the infection-fatality rate for the SARS-CoV-2 virus is so completely within the envelope of what is normal-to-mild for seasonal respiratory infection that while SARS-CoV-2 may have originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Covid as we came to know it, Covid as the deadly pathogen advertised exhaustively and globally, originated nowhere – nowhere real, that is. Covid in that sense is a concoction. A delusion. An academic exercise.
As such, the whole Covid experiment brought to fruition Descartes’ brand of thinking differently that had come to dominate academia. In the age of Covid, we were told to doubt it all, to imagine that nothing is real, to stop believing in external things. That some of the infected had no actual symptoms, that cancer needed attending to, that many didn’t have gardens to sit in, that there were no extraordinary numbers of deaths during 2020, that nobody should die alone: these and many other realities were dismissed as mere delusions.
With Covid, we were entered into the kind of radical thought experiment that would previously have counted as merely academic, the kind of disregard for what is real that our universities have incubated so regrettably and so well.
It was the destiny of universities – our institutions of thinking differently – to be sucked into the biggest and most implausible thought experiment in history: the COVID-19 pandemic and its global mitigation.
Except for one thing. The Covid consensus was built not only on radical doubt but also on radical belief. Not all things were cast as delusions; one thing – Covid – was abroad as an absolute certainty.
If Descartes put all things in doubt, why was there no significant doubt of the Covid consensus within those university faculties that have taken their cue from his method?
But there was, of course, another side to Descartes’ total doubt. There was his moment of total certainty, his infamous proposition that I am thinking, therefore I am.
The proposition was not as worthy of Descartes’ absolute certainty as he judged it to be. Quickly, philosophers began to describe its weaknesses, and the chimerical nature of his ‘I’ is arguably still playing out in the ‘identities’ which so many now appeal to without question. Yet, Descartes posed his piece of certainty with a conviction as forceful as it was irrational.
It turns out that putting everything in doubt – ceasing to believe in external realities – readies us to posit at least one thing as certain, and to cleave to that thing however unlikely it is shown to be.
In the end, too much thinking differently stops you from thinking differently. It loosens the hold upon you of what is real and what is good, scrambling your reason and your feeling and leaving you vulnerable to the loudest, most garish, message, which you cling to as a lifebuoy in your delusion and repeat even more loudly and more garishly in your turn.
Imagining that all things are false is closely allied with believing that one thing is true. Covid put the whole of reality in doubt and then presented Covid as the only certainty in town. The certainty was as heady as the doubt that cleared the way for it, though each was as unreasonable as the other.
It is past time for universities to relinquish Descartes’ method. Those employed in them must ally their energy at proposing alternative perspectives and their eagerness to present a fundamental truth with their grave admission that there is a world out there, and it and those in it are to be neither doubted lightly nor subject to false certainty.
Academics must partner virtuosity with virtue, intellectual prowess with care and commitment, and revive again the vital Platonic insight that thought and talk without an eye to what is true and good are mere irresponsible sophistry – degrading in itself and dangerous in its susceptibility to dominant narratives and the interests vested in them.
Pandemic Response and the Cost of Lockdowns is a responsible collaborative intervention in the Covid consensus from the heart of the university. The first of many, it is hoped.
Dr. Sinéad Murphy is an Associate Researcher in Philosophy at Newcastle University.
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Nah, nothing to do with Descartes.
Incentives.
The incentives are all loaded towards compliance.
Thinking differently, i.e. differently to an established norm, carries penalties.
Like pretty much every institution in our society, universities are captured by big money who set out the goals and the incentives.
Agreed.
The Academy has been so inculcated by woke, intolerant groupthink, that it is inconceivable to the inhabitants of the bubble that alternate opinions exist.
In medicine at least no questioning the orthodoxy is permitted, unless the questioning stand to make money for Big Pharma.
In my experience, one thing politicians always fail to understand is the incentives – or disincentives, to normal human behaviour their policies create.
They don’t care. Their policies are created to serve their own interests. Which is why we need to bring back hanging instead of elections as a disincentive.
Whilst their feet ache with the amount of gold they have packed into their boots.
Totally agree. Not much incentive to apply critical thinking. I’m sure there are some academics who actually do have critical thinking skills, and they would have used these to conclude that keeping their trap shut about the folly and evil that was the Scamdemic was the sensible course of action. Ditto doctors, politicians and pretty much everyone else. Once the initial narrative was set by the actions of the Chinese and Italians and by Ferguson’s model and whoever the puppet masters were, it required courage to go against it, and that appears to be in short supply.
Certainly. And so far, they have abdolutely “got away with it.”
Perhaps the only true words that Pantsdown ever uttered.
And those embracing Socialist ideology.
Spot on! Compliance tends to be built in the DNA of the professional and managerial class. Few are brave or principled enough to speak truth to power.
This doctor is a rare exception. We all owe this man our everlasting gratitude. To me he stands head and shoulders above most of his contemporaries.
Link to above. https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-nhs-doctor-steve-james-who-challenged-sajid-javid-still-refusing-to-have-vaccine-as-ministers-reconsider-health-worker-mandate-12529372
The idea unis are places of great thinking is preposterous. They are youth centres for middle class kids to take drugs, drink a d put notches on their bed posts. All funded by the state and with debt. If you show up and work a tiny bit during this binge fest you’ll get a 2:1.
Exactly. It’s why I didn’t bother finishing my first year. Total shitshow. Went and got a job instead, and got paid to learn stuff.
I believe the author misses a key point – you cannot train a person to think differently, you can only train a person to show how thinking differently is possible. After that it’s largely down to your innate ability for critical thought (the same as you can’t train someone to be a professional sportsman, but can train them in an associated field). The brain has limitations as does the body. Any thinking can be distorted quickly by inputs such as fear, peer pressure, personal incentives etc. and to think clearly and calmly despite these other forces also cannot be taught. Certainly, to believe that thinking differently can somehow be ingrained into students by academic teachings, within universities that hold no respect whatsoever for opinions that veer from the popular narrative, is for the birds.
Innate ability to think critically is one part, ability to withstand social pressure is another. I know quite a few people who had their doubts about the vax, went ahead for whatever reason (mostly because they had been promised a return to normality). If the societal outlook on vaxxes had been different, they would have been less likely to go along with something they had doubts about. But when everyone is doing it…
Marching to the beat of a different drummer is not always easy.
Agree. I do acknowledge that in my post (peer pressure) :-). It’s certainly a mixture of things and social conformance is a huge factor.
‘… you can only train a person to show how thinking differently is possible. ‘
And to encourage independent thought, curiosity, search for knowledge and self-teaching.
This disappeared from schools long ago which is why we have a majority population of non-thinking, compliant, easy to manipulate, mindless blobs… and that includes experts, intellectuals, people in the media and of course scheming, grifting, self-serving politicians.
I think people are seriously underestimating the role that a captured MSM and corrupted social media played in all of this.
Since the rise of the internet, MSM, be it traditional press or tv news, have been under pressure and losing revenue. They are now owned by whoever pays their bills, under corona this will have been to a great extent governments themselves and then big pharma. Thanks to Elon Musk we have now had it confirmed that in addition to those 2 sources, US intelligence agencies – and presumably others throughout the world – infiltrated and corrupted social media. (I think most of us knew this after the US 2016 election.)
It didn’t matter where you turned, everywhere everyone, every news source said the same thing. Scientists and doctors were chosen to speak who would spread the desired message. MSM was only allowed to present the message that governments wanted presented, social media had bots and paid shills in place, along with a witch hunt taking out dissenting voices.
People across the world were being given the same message, wherever they turned. A commonly repeated phrase was – if our government wanted to destroy our economy with lockdowns, why are all the other governments doing it? They simply could not fathom that the message was coordinated across the world, so therefore it had to be science and simple reality that was presented. No one has ever questioned, for example, why all of a sudden MSM across the Western world started referring to illegal aliens as migrants – was it because editors had a religious epiphany? No, they were ordered to start using different words. Same with the corona story. When it’s all around you, people are quick to assume it must be correct.
Look up a Belgian virologist called Marc van Ranst and a presentation he gave at Chatham House in 2019, saying how in case of a pandemic it was essential to get a consistent story in place, to make sure the media has one source to go to, etc. He lays the groundwork for how to get the narrative you want in place – it was all about the narrative.
Since the rise of the internet, MSM, be it traditional press or tv news, have been under pressure and losing revenue. They are now owned by whoever pays their bills
I have an essay from the 1920s (from Kurt Tucholsky) on the bookshelf in my bedroom where he elaborates on the fact that there is no such thing as an editorially independent press. The editor is always an employee of the publisher and the publisher is always mainly interested in advertisement revenue. Hence, the editor is structurally (so to say) aware of the fact that publishing stuff which might piss of major advertiser would be an imprudent course of action (the essay dates back to a time when papers were still predominantly local to certain towns).
This contradicts the (still fashionable) Then came the internet and … ! hypothesis.
Seeds only grow in fertile soil. If the population were not susceptible, social media and the MSM would have had little influence.
Scientists, experts, academics etc etc. They are human beings the same as everyone else. They have mortgages and families to feed. It is hard to get a person to disagree with something when their salary depends upon agreeing.
… or reason somebody out of something they haven’t reasoned themselves into.
‘independent thought’ in universities is an illusion — training is all about learning the ‘prior wisdom’ and for the most part there’s no space in academia for those who go against it.
Sure, there are the occasional flashes of inspiration that change the prior wisdom, but they’re few and far between and typically involve an academic harming their career by chasing something where there is continuous resistance.
If anything, this has only got worse over the last 30 years or so.
In effect, the selection process for academics acts to concentrate those who go with the conventional view into academia, and rejects those who go against it.
Of course, there are some independent thinkers, but they were dealt with by the threat of disciplinary action for those rejecting the government’s message. This is why most who offered criticism (in 2020 and 2021, anyway) being retired or near retirement — at that point there’s not so much future career to harm.
How can there be much independent thought in universities when the process for getting there is one of compliance.
Those who make it to university are those who have shown themselves over the course of their childhood and adolescence to be the best at complying with pre-established objectives, i.e. passing exams.
Universities are the landing spot for the most functional compliant people in society.
A few oddballs get through, but not many.
That’s an important point: A successful academic career necessitates bubbling up through the social web of a university. Someone who openly disagrees with viewpoints university administration approves of is never going to get anywhere.
Entire humankind’s curiosity is dangerously skewed towards arts, humanities, social sciences …. as opposed to science and technology. Even an average, experienced IT person, mathematician, chemist etc. will spend more spare time browsing and reading through humanities and social sciences space than through various science and technologies reviews, and have never heard the names of 2022 Nobel prize winners in physics. Even worse, they will have no idea what the prize was about, and will show no enthusiasm about the issues related to reality not existing at local levels. Interestingly, the same applies to people with degrees in physics, and vast majority of SciFi lovers.
It is, to a large degree, down to the value system at the most fundamental level and us in this Internet (comms, ICT) space unfit to handle too much connectivity and too much data due to evolutionary traits we have that are more of a risk in these transitional times (irrationality is an evolutionary trait, and is so our attraction to echo chambers, to name two illustrative ones.)
I also blame the proliferation of the God complex among ‘experts’, politicians and journos.
Aided and abetted by ‘technology’.
And: It and it’s resulting doability illusion and zeal correlates with the fear of losing control, status and power.
Philosophically, the Cartesian habit of thought of believing nothing is known as scepticism, so the publication of this article here is somewhat ironic.
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A personal soapbox, friend 😜
… so completely within the envelope of what is normal-to-mild
This can only be from the perspective of someone who either never caught Alpha or Delta or who was lucky enough to suffer only mildly from it. I caught Delta and its effect was certainly not mild.
The Ioannidis article needs referencing. I would be surprised if its message was as reported.
And your point is? I had a really nasty bug some years ago which put me flat on my back for days, needing steroids for the cough and a stint of post viral syndrome. There are hundreds of respiratory viruses circulating at any one time, many of which are bad enough to leave you groaning in bed wishing for oblivion. So, people may not have had ‘alpha’ or ‘delta’, but it doesn’t mean they have never suffered from a nasty viral bug, or suffered as much, if not more than, you. (And if you want real nastiness, try norovirus!)
Doesn’t depend on your definition of “mild”. I got some kind of flu-like bug last summer, couldn’t eat much or do much for a week. But I didn’t need to be helped to the loo or to wash myself nor did I require hospitalisation nor medication beyond lemsip to bring fever down a little. Does that count as “mild” in your book? What would count as “not-mild”? I guess my flu wasn’t “mild” like the sniffles I currently have, which have not stopped me from doing anything, but in the context of people requiring hospital care, oxygen masks, special medication or whatever, I would say it’s mild at least for a relatively healthy person, which is what I am.
The definition of mild sickness (at least the one I’m aware of) is Doesn’t require hospitalization.
I caught the flu at the end of December 1999, and its effect was certainly not mild. It was the worst flu I’ve ever suffered. What does that prove?
You caught Delta and its effect was certainly not mild. What does that prove?
John P A Ioannidis: “Across 51 locations, the median COVID-19 infection fatality rate was 0.27%”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33716331/
Descartes is to blame in academe. Hmm. Robert F Kennedy sees it differently in medicine: medical research funding is controlled worldwide by Fauci, Gates, Farrar (Wellcome trust) and the CCP. No one has dared to speak up about the covid scandal, and the covid-vaccine scandal, because they would have lost their jobs, their careers, their research funding, their professional standing, if they had. The costs of heterodoxy were too high. This may change now Fauci is going. No one dared speak up against Pablo Escobar. The rats began creeping out as soon as his power waned. The omerta has nevertheless been astoundingly solid. Everyone knew the virus was artificial, could not, in less than 2 hundred years, have evolved naturally with so many mutations affecting only the spike. They all knew the wet-market ‘’pangolin-pie’ thing was a sham, too. Yet no one said a word.
Good to see another article by Dr Murphy (after quite a long gap, unless I’ve missed one).
As I was reading something simpler occurred to me: what a pity it is that universities don’t appear to value liberty.
Then again, I suppose they are all merely money-making enterprises now.
‘… that propose alternative paradigms through which Covid events might have been differently understood, such as those of intergenerational justice and proportionality.’
The usual nonsensical gobbledygook masquerading as science and intellect.
And that is why, ‘So Many Academics, Trained to Think Critically, Embrace the Pandemic Narrative?’ – because they are pretentious flakes, who believe they MUST be right if they think it so and MUST accept what other clever people say or be thought of as the mindless Brexit-voting masses who just don’t understand things.
The same parasites ‘believe’ in global welting/climate change and Socialism… but that I suppose is the same thing with different names.
Good to hear again from Dr Sinead Murphy; it’s been a long time since we have had one of her articles.
Rather than just jump in and offer our own well-rehearsed arguments about what went wrong, I’m tempted to buy the book and see what other viewpoints it offers. I see another of the contributors is Lee Jones, late of this place. At least it got published!
The big silence continues as I’m seeing news straplines of a a footballer taken I’ll and Martina Navratilova revealing she has two different cancers – but they have been removed: endless repeats of the RMT and also the NHS declaring the Worst Crisis Evah.
Descartes method doesn’t deserve to be called a method. As human beings, we cannot transcend the physical limits of our existence: We can neither ever experience what’s outside of the universy we exist in (because if we could experience it, it wouldn’t be outside of it) nor can we ever experience ourselves as phenomenons of outside observarion. Because of this, speculating about either of both, ie, about the reliabilty of our perception of things, is just a waste of time and somebody who believes this to be clever is just a fool. To paraphrase Wittgenstein: We must be silent about things we cannot talk about (Worüber man nicht reden kann, davon muß man schweigen).
About truth and post-truth. Due to our already mentioned physical limitations, no individual can ever completely grasp the objective truth about the world around us. The traditional scientific approach to history was based on the notion that such an objective truth does exist and that we can approach it by sincere collaboration, ie, by taking the body of what’s presently considered the objective truth about history and making (relatively) minor improvements to it in order to achieve at a better approximation of the objective truth.
In contrast to this, the postmodern/ epistomological approach to history could be summed up by paraphrasing a once well-known Barbie-phrase (Mattel): Truth is hard, let’s go shopping! Because no individual can ever completely grasp objective truth, it’s declared to be immaterial and to be replaced by whatever fanciful speculation some individual … well … fancies. A lot of our problems stem from this (meanwhile pretty dated and badly aged) Anything goes! ‘method’.
“Why? Why has their vocation for thinking differently not come to their aid when it really matters?” Probably because their cloud of ‘self importance’ means they believe their biases are truer than critical thinking or evidence. Their stubborn refusal to even consider evidence is testament to that.