In Covid's Wake – How Our Politics Has Failed Us

This is an important book by two academic political scientists containing pertinent critical reflections that one will not read in any (very costly) official government review of how the Covid episode was handled. It focuses especially on democracy under Covid, the politicisation of science, and the suppression of dissenting views. The authors are right in my view to maintain that the Covid pandemic ‘tested, and is still testing, our commitments to democracy and liberalism, and the basic norms of science, scholarship, journalism, and politics.’ (p. 3) Both liberalism and science require openness to criticism. The main metaphor was one of war, entailing ‘a totalising conflict that threatens basic civil rights and liberties, honest assessments of the whole body of scientific evidence and its frustrating limits, and the pluralism of liberal democratic societies’ – deeply polarised in the US by partisan loyalties.

Moreover, ‘following the science’ necessarily entails making political and value judgements; and the ethical foundations of science are compromised by politicisation, significant undisclosed conflicts of interest, and even deception at high levels involving for instance the coordinated efforts to brand the lab origin as conspiracy theory. The authors argue that there is systemic dysfunction in public culture, including domains of expert and learned opinion: ‘science, universities, and journalism, society-wide knowledge-generating and knowledge-testing systems - our epistemic environment, or the public discussive sphere.’ (p. 19) They believe that this dysfunction can be rectified, which ‘would help liberals be truer to their liberalism, scientists be truer to the values of science, and citizens better approximate the civic virtue of public reasonableness.’ In the fields of public health and environmental issues, there needs to be ‘greater commitment to reasoned debate, engagement with good faith disagreement, serious analysis weighing costs and benefits, and non-partisan integrity in doing science, journalism, and academic work.’ (p. 26)

A series of analytical chapters examine themes such as following the science, embracing China’s model, stigmatising disagreement, ignoring the costs of Covid policies, the politicisation of science, and the use of ‘noble lies’ in handling what was defined as misinformation and disinformation. Importantly, the authors consider expert ‘technocratic rule versus democracy’ whereby elites hubristically decide that they know better than everyone else; expert advice is important, but should be accountable within a system of checks and balances (p. 275). We also need to be vigilant with respect to our tendencies towards groupthink, intolerance of dissent, and premature closure. More generally, the authors conclude that the elite’s ongoing (authoritarian) obsession with controlling the spread of what they call misinformation gives them too much power and is incompatible with liberalism, science, and democratic self-government. (pp. 285, 296) Experts must be permitted to disagree with one another, and one interesting suggestion for the future is to have a dissenting Team B prepared to question everything. This book amounts to the independent honest reckoning that governments have largely failed to provide - at great expense to the taxpayer – and as such should be widely read by politicians, academics, journalists and public health officials.