The Lancet: New report details “massive global failures” of COVID-19 response, calls for improved multilateral cooperation to end pandemic and effectively manage future global health threats

Peer-Reviewed Publication

THE LANCET

 

IMAGE: WIDESPREAD FAILURES AT MULTIPLE LEVELS WORLDWIDE HAVE LED TO MILLIONS OF PREVENTABLE DEATHS AND A REVERSAL IN PROGRESS TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT FOR MANY COUNTRIES. view more 

CREDIT: THE LANCET

Peer-reviewed/ Review, Opinion and Analysis/ People

• New Lancet Commission critically considers the global response to the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, citing widespread failures of prevention, transparency, rationality, basic public health practice, and operational cooperation and international solidarity that resulted in an estimated 17.7 million deaths (including those not reported).
• The report also finds that most national governments were unprepared and too slow in their response, paid too little attention to the most vulnerable groups in their societies, and were hampered by a lack of international cooperation and an epidemic of misinformation.
• World-renowned expert authors provide practical steps to ensure COVID-19 is no longer a pandemic threat through a vaccination-plus strategy and call for actions to strengthen multilateralism, alongside actions to strengthen national health systems and preparedness plans to defend against future global health threats and achieve sustainable development. 

Widespread, global failures at multiple levels in the COVID-19 response led to millions of preventable deaths and reversed progress made towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in many countries, according to a new Lancet COVID-19 Commission report.

The Lancet Commission on lessons for the future from the COVID-19 pandemic synthesises evidence from the first two years of the pandemic with new epidemiological and financial analyses to outline recommendations that will help hasten the end of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic emergency, lessen the impact of future health threats, and achieve long-term sustainable development.

The report warns that achieving these goals hinges upon a strengthened multilateralism that must centre around a reformed and bolstered World Health Organisation (WHO), as well as investments and refined planning for national pandemic preparedness and health system strengthening, with special attention to populations experiencing vulnerability. Crucial investments also include improved technology and knowledge transfers for health commodities and improved international health financing for resource limited countries and regions.

The Commission is the result of two years of work from 28 of the world’s leading experts in public policy, international governance, epidemiology, vaccinology, economics, international finance, sustainability, and mental health, and consultations with over 100 other contributors to 11 global task forces.

"The staggering human toll of the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic is a profound tragedy and a massive societal failure at multiple levels”, says Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Chair of the Commission, University Professor at Columbia University (USA), and President of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network. “We must face hard truths—too many governments have failed to adhere to basic norms of institutional rationality and transparency; too many people have protested basic public health precautions, often influenced by misinformation; and too many nations have failed to promote global collaboration to control the pandemic.” [1]

He continues, “Now is the time to take collective action that promotes public health and sustainable development to bring an end to the pandemic, addresses global health inequities, protects the world against future pandemics, identifies the origins of this pandemic, and builds resilience for communities around the world. We have the scientific capabilities and economic resources to do this, but a resilient and sustainable recovery depends on strengthened multilateral cooperation, financing, biosafety, and international solidarity with the most vulnerable countries and people.” [1]

Failures of global cooperation and inequality between countries

The COVID-19 response has shown several aspects of international cooperation at its best: public-private partnerships to develop multiple vaccines in record time; actions of high-income countries to financially support households and businesses; and emergency financing from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.

But the events of the past two years have also exposed multiple failures of global cooperation. Costly delays by WHO to declare a “public health emergency of international concern” and to recognise the airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 coincided with national governments’ failure to cooperate and coordinate on travel protocols, testing strategies, commodity supply chains, data reporting systems, and other vital international policies to suppress the pandemic. The lack of cooperation among governments for the financing and distribution of key health commodities—including vaccines, personal protective equipment, and resources for vaccine development and production in low-income countries—has come at dire costs.

Pre-COVID-19 rankings of country preparedness for pandemics, such as the 2019 Global Health Security Index, ranking the USA and many European countries among the strongest for their epidemic response capabilities, turned out to be poor predictors of the actual outcomes of the pandemic. The Commission found that the Western Pacific region, including East Asia and Oceania, primed by previous experience with the SARS epidemic of 2002, adopted relatively successful suppression strategies resulting in cumulative deaths per million around 300, much lower than in other parts of the world. Disjointed public health systems and poor-quality public policy response to COVID-19 in Europe and the Americas resulted in cumulative deaths around 4,000 deaths per million, the highest of all WHO regions.

“Over a year and a half since the first COVID-19 vaccine was administered, global vaccine equity has not been achieved. In high-income countries, three in four people have been fully vaccinated, but in low-income countries, only one in seven,” says Commission co-author, Maria Fernanda Espinosa, former President of the UN General Assembly and former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Defence, Ecuador. “All countries remain increasingly vulnerable to new COVID-19 outbreaks and future pandemics if we do not share vaccine patents and technology with vaccine manufacturers in less wealthy countries and strengthen multilateral initiatives that aim to boost global vaccine equity.” [1]

Isolated and unequal national responses, with devastating socioeconomic and health effects

The report is also critical of national responses to COVID-19, which often featured inconsistent public health advice and poor implementation of public health and social measures, such as wearing face masks and vaccination. Many public policies did not properly address the profoundly inequitable impacts of the pandemic on vulnerable communities, including women, children, and workers in low- and middle-income countries. These inequities were exacerbated by extensive misinformation campaigns on social media, low social trust, and a failure to draw on the behavioural and social sciences to encourage behaviour change and counter the significant public opposition to routine public health measures seen in many countries.

“National pandemic preparedness plans must include the protection of vulnerable groups, including women, older people, children, disadvantaged communities, refugees, Indigenous Peoples, people with disabilities, and people with comorbid medical conditions. Loss of employment and school closures due to the pandemic have devastated progress made on gender equality, education and nutrition and it is critical to prevent this from happening again. We ask governments, private sector, civil society, and international organisations to build social protection systems and guarantee universal health coverage,” says Commissioner, Gabriela Cuevas Barron, Co-Chair of UHC2030 (Geneva, Switzerland), Honorary President of the Inter-Parliamentary Union and former Senator in the Mexican Congress, Mexico.

Ending the pandemic emergency requires a comprehensive vaccination-plus strategy

The deepening of socioeconomic inequities, coupled with economic and public health setbacks and growing social and political tensions, has jeopardised the 2030 SDG agenda. Two clear timelines have been set for pandemic response and preparedness: immediate actions in the short-term to end the COVID-19 emergency, and longer-term policy recommendations for a new era of multilateral cooperation to achieve long-term sustainable development (see panel on pages 3-4).

To finally control the pandemic, the Commission proposes that all countries adopt a vaccination-plus strategy, combining widespread vaccination with appropriate public health precautions and financial measures.

“A global vaccine-plus strategy of high vaccine coverage plus a combination of effective public health measures will slow the emergence of new variants and reduce the risk of new waves of infection while allowing everyone (including those clinically vulnerable) to go about their lives more freely. The faster the world can act to vaccinate everybody, and provide social and economic support, the better the prospects for exiting the pandemic emergency and achieving long-lasting economic recovery,” says Commission co-author Prof. Salim S. Abdool Karim of the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, USA. [1]

To prepare for future pandemic health threats, the Commission recommends strengthening national health systems and the adoption of national pandemic preparedness plans, with actions to improve coordinated surveillance and monitoring for new variants, protect groups experiencing vulnerability, and create safer school and workplace environments by investing in ventilation and filtration.

Promoting multilateralism to build a more resilient future, and unlock a new approach to global health funding

To improve the world’s ability to respond to pandemics, the Commission calls for WHO to be transformed and bolstered by a substantial increase in funding and greater involvement from heads of state representing each region to better support decision-making and actions, especially on urgent and controversial matters. The Commission supports calls from other panels for a new global pandemic agreement and an update of the International Health Regulations.

With the support of WHO, the G20, and major financial institutions such as the World Bank, the Commission recommends increased and more effective investment for both pandemic preparedness and health systems in developing countries, with a focus on primary care, achieving universal health coverage, and disease control more generally.

To achieve this goal, the Commission estimates that around $US60 billion would be required yearly, equivalent to 0.1% of the gross domestic product of high-income countries. Consolidation and expansion of several existing health funds should be closely aligned with the work of WHO, and the Commission emphasises that health-system strengthening must be implemented at the local level, reflecting regional needs and priorities, rather than from the top-down by a few donor countries.

Alongside this long-term funding commitment, the Commission recommends a 10-year effort by G20 countries to bolster research and development and investments in infrastructure and manufacturing capacity for all critical pandemic control tools including testing, diagnostics, vaccines, treatments, and PPE, alongside support and training for health workers in low- and middle-income countries.

These investments and the restructuring of multilateral global health efforts are essential to achieve the 2030 SDG Agenda. In 2019, the IMF estimated that LMICs face a financing gap of $300-500 billion a year to achieve SDGs, and this gap has increased as a result of the pandemic. Global recovery plans from the pandemic are not aligned with the SDGs and do not do enough to counter climate change.

Further recommendations are made, such as the call for an expansion of the WHO Science Council to apply urgent scientific evidence for global health priorities, including future emerging infectious diseases; strengthening of WHO through the establishment of a WHO Global Health Board with representation of all six WHO regions; and strengthening of national health systems on the foundations of public health and universal health coverage, grounded in human rights and gender equality. The Commission also recognises the need for an independent, transparent investigation into the origins of SARS-CoV-2, alongside robust regulations, to help prevent future pandemics that may result from both natural and research-related activities, and to strengthen public trust in science and public authorities.

A linked Editorial published in The Lancet says, “…as the Commission demonstrates, reassessing and strengthening global institutions and multilateralism will not only benefit the response to COVID-19 and future infectious diseases but to also to any crisis that has global ramifications. The release of The Lancet COVID-19 Commission offers another opportunity to insist that the failures and lessons from the last three years are not laid to waste but are constructively used to build more resilient health systems and stronger political systems that support the health and wellbeing of people and planet during the 21st century.”

NOTES TO EDITORS

The Commission received funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Nizami Ganjavi International Center, and the Germany Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). A full list of authors and their institutions is available in the report.

[1] Quote direct from author and cannot be found in the text of the Article.

The labels have been added to this press release as part of a project run by the Academy of Medical Sciences seeking to improve the communication of evidence. For more information, please see: http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/AMS-press-release-labelling-system-GUIDANCE.pdf if you have any questions or feedback, please contact The Lancet press office pressoffice@lancet.com  
 

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JOURNAL

The Lancet

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Systematic review

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

The Lancet Commission on lessons for the future from the COVID-19 pandemic

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

14-Sep-2022

COI STATEMENT

SSAK declares grants paid to the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa from the National Institutes of Health (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases), the South African Medical Research Council, the National Research Foundation, and the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership. He is a vicepresident of the International Science Council; a commissioner of the African Commission on COVID-19; and a member of the WHO Science Council, the Advisory Council of the Physicians for Human Rights, the Global Medical Advisory Board on COVID-19 for Sanofi Pasteur, and the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. CBa declares consulting fees from and is a member of the advisory board of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network. MEB and PJH are co-directors of a team of scientists at Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, who are co-inventors of a COVID-19 recombinant protein vaccine technology owned by Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) that was licensed by BCM, non-exclusively and with no patent restrictions, to several companies committed to advancing vaccines for low-income and middle-income countries. The co-inventors have no involvement in license negotiations conducted by BCM. Similar to other research universities, a long-standing BCM policy provides its faculty and staff, who make discoveries that result in a commercial license, a share of any royalty income. To date, BCM has not distributed any royalty income to the co-inventors of the COVID-19 recombinant protein vaccine technology. Any such distribution will be undertaken in accordance with BCM policy. CBu declares grants from the Health Research Council of New Zealand, the New Zealand Ministry of Health, and the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade; consulting fees from Johnson & Johnson Japan; payment from University of Malaya; and is the president of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco—Oceania. GCB is co-chair of the UHC2030 International Alliance. AH declares grants and consulting fees from the Wellcome Trust and the Oak Foundation. NJ declares support from the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and consulting fees from the University of California, San Francisco Department of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Foundation for Global Governance and Sustainability. ET declares consulting fees from the United Nations Development Programme. VV-F and IS are co-chairs of the Nizami Ganjavi International Centre. MAP declares grants from the Rockefeller Foundation to his institution and is a member of the Board of Directors for Management Sciences for Health, and non-executive Governing Board member of Sidra Medicine. JT declares funds from the Victorian Government to BehaviourWorks Australia for surveys and research on COVID-19 related behaviours, from Monash University and from Melbourne Water. AG was a member of the Open Society Global Drug Policy Program until February, 2022. MH declares funds from the Victorian Government, the New South Wales Government, the Australian Government, and the Macquarie Foundation to the Burnet Institute, Melbourne, VIC, Australia for research and modelling work related to COVID-19, and grants from AbbVie and Gilead Sciences that are unrelated to this work. JVL declares grants from AbbVie, Gilead Sciences, MSD, and Roche Diagnostics, and consulting fees from NovVax, all unrelated to this work. All other authors declare no conflicts of interest. This report does not represent the institutions nor the organisations for which the authors work.

Study confirms ED cases spike after Australian bushfires

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CURTIN UNIVERSITY

New research has – for the first time – found a direct link between people’s exposure to bushfire smoke and visits to Perth’s metropolitan emergency departments within days.

As part of research led by the Department of Health, Curtin University and Murdoch University, researchers examined more than 1.54 million emergency department admissions between 2015 and 2017 to assess the immediate impact of a person’s exposure to bushfire smoke over four days.

Lead author Senior Research Fellow Dr Adeleh Shirangi, from the Curtin School of Population Health, said total emergency department admissions and overall cardiovascular presentations increased by up to seven per cent when people were exposed to high levels of tiny toxic air pollutants created by bushfires.

“Bushfire smoke has significant and measurable impacts on human health and increases the number of patients seeking medical treatment in emergency departments. Pollutants from bushfires can affect air quality hundreds and even thousands of kilometres away from the site of the fire,” Dr Shirangi said.

“Air pollutants as tiny as three per cent the size of a human hair, known as PM2.5, are of particular concern as it can penetrate deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream, leading to various cardiorespiratory problems. 

“This tiny air pollutant is most significantly elevated during Australian bushfire events, and its levels exceed the regulatory air quality standards, meaning it is extremely unsafe to inhale.”

Dr Shirangi said the results confirmed existing research that people aged 60 years and above, people with disadvantaged socioeconomic status and those with heart or lung problems were more susceptible to bushfire smoke.

“This study was the first of its kind to find a significant ‘dose-response’ relationship between a person’s exposure to elevated PM2.5 during bushfire events and their increased risk of ED admissions due to transient ischemic attacks (brief stroke-like attacks), with the most acute effects occurring in one (25 per cent increase) or two days (20 per cent increase) after exposure,” Dr Shirangi said.

“The percentage of people who attended emergency departments with acute lower respiratory tract infections also increased within one day (19 per cent increase) and three days (17 per cent increase) after their exposure to elevated PM2.5 during bushfires at high levels.”

An analysis of the global burden of disease due to outdoor air pollution estimated that PM2.5 caused about three per cent of mortality from heart and lung diseases. Australian studies show a five per cent increase in non-accidental deaths on days of high exposures to bushfire smoke.

“Long-term health effects from low-level exposures to toxic air particles remain a cause for concern. Long-term exposure is linked to impaired lung function, and even premature death,” Dr Shirangi said.

“Extreme fire weather has increased in Australia over the last 30 years due to climate change. We are experiencing more extreme heat events, an increase in severe fire danger days and a more extended fire season than ever before.

“Where safe to do so, people should stay indoors. A suitable face mask, such as the N95 mask known for its use during COVID19, should be worn outside or for those who are unavoidably exposed to bushfire smoke.”

Health advice on how to protect against the harms of exposure to smoke from landscape fires, including information for sensitive groups, and those with specific health conditions, can be found on the Department of Health’s website.

A collaborative research effort was made by the Epidemiology Branch at the Department of Health, Curtin University, Murdoch University, The University of Western Australia, the University of Tasmania, and the Western Australian Bureau of Meteorology, as well as NGIS who provided spatial technology data.

This research was funded by FrontierSI, formerly known as the Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information, and the WA Department of Health.

The full paper, titled ‘Exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) during landscape fire events and the risk of cardiorespiratory emergency department attendances: a time-series study in Perth, Western Australia’, is available online here.

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JOURNAL

BMJ

DOI

10.1136/jech-2021-218229 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Study confirms ED cases spike after Australian bushfires

New unemployment filings in U.S. rise to highest level in 8 months

The Fearless Girl Statue is seen outside the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street in New York City. The Labor Department said on Thursday that more than 240,000 U.S. workers filed for new unemployment benefits last week, the highest level since late November in 2021. 

File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

July 14 (UPI) -- The number of American workers filing for new unemployment benefits has increased to its highest level since last fall, the Labor Department said Thursday in its weekly update.

The number of first-time filings, the department said, rose to about 244,000 last week, which is the most recent period for which data is available. It represented week-to-week increase of 9,000.

The figure is the highest it's been since last November and is close to the lowest post-COVID19 pandemic level, 256,000.

The number of new claims was higher than most economists predicted. They said they expected Thursday's report to show a total of about 235,000 new claims.

Thursday's report came one day after tech giant Microsoft announced that it planned to cut 1% of its workforce. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI

First-time jobless filings have been around the 230,000 mark since last month and reached a contemporary low of 166,000 in March.

Thursday's report also marked the ninth straight week that initial claims were above 200,000 and sixth consecutive week above 230,000.

The four-week moving average rose to about 235,700, a slight weekly increase, and the total number of all jobless claims was 1.3 million.

The labor assessment came after Microsoft announced this week that it would layoff about 1% of its workforce and GameStop said last week that it plans to make job cuts in the near future.

Earlier this month, the department reported that there were 372,000 new hirings during the month of June -- far above the 250,000 that most analysts expected.

DEMOCRACY AND SOCIETY 19.05.2022 | Slavoj Žižek

Heroes of the Apocalypse

The war in Ukraine has made it clear that we can’t go on with business as usual. This is our wakeup call to change for the better

Four Horsemen of Apocalypse, by Viktor Vasnetsov. Painted in 1887.

Toward the end of April 2022, barely two months after Russia invaded Ukraine, the world became aware of a deep change in what the war means for the future. Gone is the dream of a quick resolution. The war has already been strangely ‘normalised,’ accepted as a process that will continue indefinitely. Fear of a sudden, dramatic escalation will haunt our daily lives. Authorities in Sweden and elsewhere are apparently advising the public to stock up on provisions to endure wartime conditions.

This shift in outlook is reflected on both sides of the conflict. In Russia, talk of a global conflict is growing louder. As the head of RT, Margarita Simonyan, put it: ‘Either we lose in Ukraine, or a third world war begins. Personally, I think the scenario of a third world war is more realistic.’

Such paranoia is supported by crazed conspiracy theories about a united liberal-totalitarian Nazi-Jewish plot to destroy Russia. Upon being asked how Russia can claim to be ‘denazifying’ Ukraine when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is himself Jewish, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov replied: ‘I could be wrong, but Hitler also had Jewish blood. [That Zelensky is Jewish] means absolutely nothing. Wise Jewish people say that the most ardent anti-Semites are usually Jews.’

On the other side, especially in Germany, a new version of pacifism is taking shape. If we look past all the lofty rhetoric and focus on what Germany is actually doing, the message is clear: ‘Given our economic interests and the danger of being pulled into a military conflict, we must not support Ukraine too much, even if that means allowing it to be swallowed by Russia.’ Germany fears crossing a line beyond which Russia will become truly angry. But only Vladimir Putin decides where that line lies on any given day. Playing on Western pacifists’ fear is a major part of his strategy.

The need for ‘heroic’ acts

Obviously, everyone wants to prevent the outbreak of a new world war. But there are times when appearing too cautious will only encourage an aggressor. Bullies by nature always count on their victims not to fight back. To prevent a wider war – to establish any kind of deterrence – we, too, must draw clear lines.

While we previously expressed fears that Ukraine would be quickly crushed, our real fear was exactly the opposite: that the invasion would lead to a war with no end in sight.

So far, the West has done the opposite. When Putin was still only preparing to launch his ‘special operation’ in Ukraine, US President Joe Biden said his administration would have to wait and see if the Kremlin would pursue a ‘minor incursion’ or a full occupation. The implication, of course, was that a ‘minor’ act of aggression would be tolerable.

The recent shift in outlook reveals a deep, dark truth about the Western position. While we previously expressed fears that Ukraine would be quickly crushed, our real fear was exactly the opposite: that the invasion would lead to a war with no end in sight. It would have been much more convenient if Ukraine had fallen immediately, allowing us to express outrage, mourn the loss, and then return to business as usual. What should have been good news – a smaller country unexpectedly and heroically resisting a large power’s brutal aggression – has become a source of shame, a problem we don’t quite know what to do with.

Europe’s pacifist left warns against any re-embrace of the heroic-military spirit that consumed earlier generations. The German philosopher Jürgen Habermas even suggests that Ukraine is guilty of moral blackmail vis-à-vis Europe. There is something deeply melancholic in his position. As Habermas well knows, post-war Europe was able to renounce militarism only because it was safely beneath the US nuclear umbrella. But the return of war to the continent suggests that this period may be over and that unconditional pacifism would require deeper and deeper moral compromises. Unfortunately, ‘heroic’ acts will be needed again, and not only to resist and deter aggression, but also to cope with problems such as ecological catastrophes and hunger.
The fear of change

In French, the gap between what we officially fear and what we really fear is nicely rendered by the so-called ne explétif, a ‘no’ that carries no meaning on its own because it is used only for reasons of syntax or pronunciation. It mostly occurs in subjunctive subordinate clauses following verbs with negative connotation (to fear, to avoid, to doubt); its function is to emphasize the negative aspect of what came before it, as in: ‘Elle doute qu’il ne vienne.’ (‘She doubts he’s /not/ coming’), or ‘Je te fais confiance à moins que tu ne me mentes.’ (‘I trust you unless you /don’t/ lie to me’).

Jacques Lacan used the ne explétif to explain the difference between a wish and a desire. When I say, ‘I am afraid the storm will /not/ come,’ my conscious wish is that it will not come, but my true desire is inscribed onto the added ‘no’: I am afraid the storm will not come, because I am secretly fascinated by its violence.

To paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, we will have avoided going down in history as the first society that didn’t save itself because doing so wasn’t cost effective.

Something like the ne explétif also applies to European fears regarding the cessation of Russian gas deliveries. ‘We are afraid that the interruption of the gas supply will cause an economic catastrophe,’ we say. But what if our stated fear is fake? What if we are really afraid that an interruption of the gas supply would not cause a catastrophe? As Eric Santner of the University of Chicago recently put it to me, what would it mean if we could quickly adapt? Ending Russian gas imports would not inaugurate the end of capitalism, but ‘it would nonetheless force a real shift in the ‘European’ way of life,’ a shift that would be most welcome irrespective of Russia.

To read the ne explétif literally, acting upon the ‘no’ is perhaps the most genuine political act of freedom today. Consider the claim, propagated by the Kremlin, that stopping Russian gas would be tantamount to economic suicide. Given what must be done to put our societies on a more sustainable path, would that not be liberating? To paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, we will have avoided going down in history as the first society that didn’t save itself because doing so wasn’t cost effective.
How Europe can win the ideological war

The Western media are full of reporting on the billions of dollars that have been sent to Ukraine; yet Russia is still receiving tens of billions of dollars for the gas it delivers to Europe. What Europe refuses to consider is that it could exert an extraordinarily powerful form of non-military pressure on Russia while also doing much for the planet. Moreover, to renounce Russian gas would allow for a different kind of globalization – a sorely needed alternative to both the Western liberal-capitalist variety and the Russian-Chinese authoritarian brand.

Russia does not only want to dismantle Europe. It is also presenting itself as an ally of the developing world against Western neo-colonialism. Russian propaganda ably exploits many developing and middle-income countries’ bitter memories of Western abuses. Was the bombing of Iraq not worse than the bombing of Kyiv? Was Mosul not flattened as ruthlessly as Mariupol? Of course, while the Kremlin presents Russia as an agent of decolonization, it lavishes military support on local dictators in Syria, the Central African Republic, and elsewhere.

Anything short of radical change will fail, turning the EU into a fortress surrounded by enemies that are determined to penetrate and destroy it.

The activities of the Kremlin’s mercenary organization, the Wagner Group, which is deployed on behalf of authoritarian regimes around the world, offer a glimpse of what Russian-style globalization would look like. As Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Putin crony behind the group, recently said to a Western journalist: ‘You are a dying Western civilization that considers Russians, Malians, Central Africans, Cubans, Nicaraguans, and many other peoples and countries to be Third World scum. You are a pathetic endangered bunch of perverts, and there are many of us, billions of us. And victory will be ours!’ When Ukraine proudly declares that it defends Europe, Russia responds that it will defend all of Europe’s past and present victims.

We should not underestimate the effectiveness of this propaganda. In Serbia, the latest opinion polls show that, for the first time, a majority of voters now oppose accession to the European Union. If Europe wants to win the new ideological war, it will have to alter its model of liberal-capitalist globalization. Anything short of radical change will fail, turning the EU into a fortress surrounded by enemies that are determined to penetrate and destroy it.

I am well aware of the implications of boycotting Russian gas. It would entail what I have repeatedly referred to as ‘war communism.’ Our entire economies would have to be reorganized, as in the case of a full-blown war or similarly large-scale disaster. This is not as far away as it may seem. Cooking oil is already being informally rationed by shops in the United Kingdom because of the war. If Europe renounces Russian gas, survival will demand similar interventions. Russia is counting on Europe’s inability to do anything ‘heroic.’

True, such changes would heighten the risk of corruption and provide opportunities for the military-industrial complex to grab extra profits. But these risks must be weighed against the larger stakes, which go well beyond the war in Ukraine.

The Five Horsemen

The world is dealing with multiple, simultaneous crises that evoke the four horsemen of the apocalypse: plague, war, hunger, and death. These riders cannot simply be dismissed as figures of evil. As Trevor Hancock, the first leader of the Green Party of Canada, has noted, they are ‘remarkably close to what we might call the four horsemen of ecology, which regulate population size in nature.’ In ecological terms, the ‘four riders’ play a positive role by preventing overpopulation. But when it comes to humans, this regulatory function hasn’t worked: ‘The human population has more than tripled in the past 70 years, from 2.5 bn in 1950 to 7.8 bn today. So what happened … Why are we not controlled? Is there a fifth horseman that will cause our populations to crash at some point, as lemmings do?’

‘So, although of course an asteroid strike or super-volcano eruption could wipe us out, the greatest threat to the human population, the ‘fifth horseman’ if you like, is us.’

Until recently, Hancock observes, humanity was able to hold the four riders in check with medicine, science, and technology. But now the ‘massive and rapid global ecological changes we have triggered’ are moving beyond our control. ‘So, although of course an asteroid strike or super-volcano eruption could wipe us out, the greatest threat to the human population, the ‘fifth horseman’ if you like, is us.’

Whether we will be destroyed or saved is up to us. Yet while global awareness of these threats is growing, it has not translated into meaningful action, so the four riders are galloping faster and faster. After the plague of Covid19 and the return of large-scale war, hunger crises are now looming. All have or will result in mass death, as will the increasingly severe natural disasters wrought by climate change and biodiversity loss.

We should, of course, resist the temptation to glorify war as an authentic experience to lift us out of our complacent consumerist hedonism. The alternative is not simply to muddle through. Rather, it is to mobilize in ways that will benefit us long after the war is over. Given the dangers we face, military passion is a cowardly escape from reality. But so, too, is comfortable, non-heroic complacency.

© Project Syndicate

The biggest mistake of the pandemic is still haunting us

Contact tracing studies showed that outdoor transmission was rare and that indoors, time spent in the same room mattered more than distance between people 

(Photo: AP)

Updated: 26 Apr 2022,

Faye Flam, Bloomberg

The World Health Organization took two years to admit Covid-19 spread through airborne particles. We’re still dealing with the fallout.

We’re now being left to choose our own risks when it comes to Covid-19, but it’s clear that many people still don’t recognize the importance of fresh air. Some super-cautious people don’t seem to realize how much danger can be mitigated by socializing outdoors or opening windows. Others seem not to understand how much risk persists indoors even when others are more than six feet away.

One big reason the public may still be so confused: the World Health Organization’s long delay in recognizing that Covid was spreading through airborne transmission. On March 28, 2020, the WHO listed on its website as a “FACT" that “Covid19 is NOT airborne." Everyone was confused back then, so being wrong was understandable — but showing that degree of confidence was not. There were credible scientists at the time saying airborne spread was happening. Worse still, it took two years to change course — a delay experts pondered in a recent article in Nature, “Why WHO Took Two Years to Say Covid is Airborne." It was a mistake that eroded public trust and confused people about how to avoid the virus.

The problem, it turns out, was not one of evidence but burden of proof. The WHO officials thought they should assume Covid-19 was not airborne until they saw proof that it was. But why not assume it was airborne and put the burden of proof on other modes of transmission?

Looking back on my own columns on the question of how Coved was transmitted, I quoted different experts back in March of 2020 about the way infected people emit viral particles in little bits of saliva, from larger “droplets" that fall within six feet or smaller aerosols that can linger in indoor air and travel larger distances. Most experts favored droplets as Covid’s primary mode of spread, but others were very concerned about airborne transmission, in which the virus contaminates stagnant indoor air and spreads despite physical distancing and loose-fitting cloth masks.

It’s clear now and should have been clear then that the WHO had put the burden of proof in the wrong place.

One simple rule about scientific burden of proof was voiced by philosopher David Hume and popularized later by Carl Sagan: Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. When a revolutionary idea breaks all the rules — such as Einstein’s theory of relativity, which violated Newton’s laws — we don’t accept it without rigorous testing. Airborne transmission of Covid-19 was never an extraordinary idea, but the WHO nonetheless demanded an extraordinary level of proof.

But plenty of other diseases move through the air. Rather than insist that airborne transmission be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, the WHO should have used an approach called abductive reasoning. That’s when scientists consider which ideas best fit all the available evidence. Darwin used it in Origin of Species to describe why his theory of natural selection fit detailed observations of living things better than creationism or other ideas. With abductive reasoning, competing ideas might fit some of the evidence — but if they can’t explain the whole body of data as well as some other idea does, they take a back seat.

By late spring of 2020, multiple lines of evidence pointed to airborne spread as responsible for at least some cases of Covid-19. Contact tracing studies showed that outdoor transmission was rare and that indoors, time spent in the same room mattered more than distance between people. Other studies showed that the disease was spreading in bursts — most people didn’t give it to anyone, but a few gave it to huge numbers through so-called superspreading events, almost always indoor gatherings. This doesn’t rule out the other modes of transmission, like droplets transmitted at close range and contaminated surfaces, but it does suggest that airborne spread was playing an important role.

Science is a bit more malleable than many people think — it’s not about facts and proof but about hypotheses, observations, inferences, evidence, theories and consensus. Thinking about burden of proof often helps in evaluating health-related claims, where “no evidence" doesn’t necessarily mean wrong, and some evidence doesn’t mean you have the whole answer.

Even the term “airborne" can be confusing if it’s not translated into practical advice about how to avoid getting infected. Now that governments in the U.S. and Europe are moving away from mandates and expecting people to behave according to our own risk tolerance, it’s more important than ever for public health authorities to clarify how best to minimize risk for those who choose to do so.


Faye Flam is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and host of the podcast 'Follow the Science.' She has written for the Economist, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Psychology Today, Science and other publications.

How teen pregnancies skyrocketed in lockdown

South Africa is fighting to keep girls in school

Colleta Dewa
22 April 2022


In most provinces of South Africa, teen pregnancies have more than doubled during the pandemic, and the police often fail to follow up on statutory rape cases. Many schoolgirls have been cornered by the lack of digital tools, exposed to blackmail and exploitation at the hands of those they asked for help so they could participate in online learning. The country has introduced special programmes to keep teenage mothers on their education track, but human rights groups say more is needed.


‘It is painful and heart-breaking watching a child become a mother. Children should be children not birthing other children. Because I could not afford to buy her a phone or a laptop, he took advantage of that!’, says 64-year-old Nosipo Murweri whose 13-year-old granddaughter Mbali1 was reportedly raped and impregnated by a 32-year-old man from their neighborhood. Unbias the News caught up with Murweri on an early morning in November 2021 as she joined the queue at Matale police station in Cullinan village, Gauteng Province in South Africa. Murweri has been frequenting the police station since March 2020, following up on Mbali’s rape case, but the police have only been ‘adding salt to her wound.’

‘Despite having told the police who the perpetrator was, nothing has been done. No arrest up to this day. The pain is even worse when I see him roaming the streets and my little girl dropped out of school because he impregnated her. She cries when she sees others going to or coming back from school. She feels like she is doomed,’ said Murweri. Mbali is just one of the 750,000 children who dropped out of school in South Africa between January 2020 and May 2021 due to learning disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Another epidemic

By May 2021, the number of school-aged children not attending classes was approximately 650,000-750,000, a jump between four and five hundred thousand from pre-pandemic times, according to education researchers. Although the reasons for dropping out range from familial struggles to involvement with drugs and gang initiation, the pandemic precipitated a worrying consequence: the rise in teenage pregnancies directly linked to school that aimed at curbing the spread of the virus.

Gauteng province alone recorded 23,000 births by girls under the age of 18 between April 2020 and May 2021, with 934 of them below the age of 13. This province is home to nearly 15 million people, a quarter of the country’s population, including the country’s largest city Johannesburg, as well as the administrative capital Pretoria. Figures shown to Unbias the News by the organization indicate that seven out of the country’s 10 provinces recorded more than double the number of teenage pregnancies during the pandemic.

‘Unless we act fast and decisively, the impact on girls’ futures and all our futures will be devastating,’ said Marumo Sekgobela, spokesperson for Save The Children. ‘Save the Children has embarked on a program together with the government to ensure that adolescents have access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health information and services,’ added Sekgobela.

Rahima Essop, Head of Communications and Advocacy at Zero Dropout Campaign, an organization that aims to halve the number of South Africa’s school dropouts by 2030, says the pandemic made children from poorer communities ‘more vulnerable to dropping out of school.’ As she explains:

Students from the most vulnerable households are at highest risk of dropping out of school. If we don’t find ways to support these learners through school, we effectively trap them in cycles of inter-generational poverty and social exclusion, which often re-inscribe racial and gender inequalities. Over the course of the Covid-19 lockdown, the highest rates of dropouts have been among the poorest households in rural areas.

Though she could not give the exact statistics, Essop noted that African and Black students constitute the highest number of dropouts, as compared to white and Indian South African students.

A digital divide

According to Statistics South Africa (STS SA) more than 2.2 million jobs were lost to the economic consequences of the lockdown, further straining budgets in most households and making it difficult for some families to keep their children in school. Although schools managed to carry on using online resources and dividing attendance days, more than 50% of children in rural communities could not afford online learning due to lack of digital resources, including both data and devices.

Minister of Basic Education Matsie Angelina Motshekga told Unbias the News:

Parents struggle to provide fees, transport, and school supplies due to the hardships exacerbated by the global pandemic. Because most schools resorted to online learning during lockdown periods, poorer communities could not afford these, hence children from these communities were left out and some of them subsequently dropped out of school.

Section 29 of the country’s constitution states that every person in South Africa has the right to a basic education and the Constitutional Court states that access to school, which must include attendance, as a ‘necessary condition’ to the fulfillment of the right to basic education.

There are 13 million children in grades 1 to 12 in South Africa but the pandemic pushed school attendance to its lowest level in 20 years. Although education is free in some public schools, demand for enrolment into non-paying schools exceeds capacity. As a result, not everyone is accommodated.

Minister Motshekga noted that the country’s ‘Eastern Cape province had the highest number of dropouts, followed by the Free-state Province.’ These provinces are dominated by rural areas.
Aggravating inequality

The pandemic has proven to be nothing but a messenger of irreversible setbacks, inflicting permanent and visible scars on the lives of many girls in South Africa and the world at large. It has also exposed how inequality and poverty aggravate gender-based violence against girls. It’s painfully exemplified in Mbali’s case:

I last went to school in March 2020. Schools were being closed abruptly due to COVID19 lockdowns. Others were doing lessons from home using laptops or smart phones but I have neither of these at home … Because I was eager to catch up with my fellow classmates, I would go to Muchuzi (the alleged rapist) to ask for his phone so that I could attend online classes. He would give me the phone but after a month, he told me that I have to pay him back by sleeping with him. This happened many times until June (2020) when I discovered that I was pregnant. …

My grandmother told the Village Head and they both went to approach him but he denied it. That is when we went to the police and we were told that I should have reported the matter the first time it happened.

Early pregnancy in the country forces many girls to drop out of school and can leave them stigmatized by society for being teenage mothers, or leave them trapped in early marriage. Culturally, there is a belief that falling pregnant out of wedlock is a symbol of loose morals or a bad upbringing.
Police failing to catch up

Because of poverty, some of these girls are forced to submit to the demands of their abusers and in some cases, the police are letting them down by not treating some of the incidents with the seriousness and urgency they deserve.

According to the country’s constitution, the age of consent is 16, but girls as young as ten are giving birth. Despite the statutory rape offence, Mbali says Muchuzi went on to threaten her with ‘revenge porn,’ saying that if she goes to the police, he ‘would circulate the video he took while they were having sex.’

‘Although there are isolated cases where victims complain that the police did not help them, I can assure you that child and women abuse is a major concern and a priority for the police,’ said police spokesperson Brigadier Vishnu Naidoo.

The human rights advocacy group Legal Resource Centre (LRC) says that in a country where child abuse is so rampant, police and the judiciary ‘need not let the girls down.’ Shaatirah Hassim of the Legal Resource Centre says:


‘South Africa needs to address teenage pregnancies which are rising at an alarming rate. The police may argue that they are doing their best in dealing with this, but we need a collective effort at national level to see if the men responsible for these statutory rapes are actually being prosecuted. Do the figures of victims tally with figures of convicts of statutory rape? If not, who is sleeping on duty, the police or judiciary?

Schools are a form of protection. Girls stuck at home during lockdown were vulnerable to falling victims of male relatives or neighbors, compromising and complicating the chances of abuse cases being reported to police. ‘Some cases just go unreported for various reasons: sometimes their families or community prevent victims from reporting when the perpetrators are close relatives, sometimes it’s fear of the unknown or threats by the perpetrators,’ argues Brigadier Naidoo. ‘Sometimes they choose to settle the issues on their own or force the girls into early marriages. This makes it difficult for the police to do their work.’
A lost generation?

Florence Siziba, the School Head at Lonhaba High School in the West Rand, says an integrated and holistic approach is needed to support girls to stay in school and achieve their full potential during and after pregnancy. Siziba said,


Bit by bit we are losing a generation to school dropouts related to COVID-19.At my school, currently four girls did not return to school due to pregnancy. Two of them are 14-years-old, one is thirteen and Letwin is 16.

Letwin was supposed to be taking her final exam but she ran away from home due to the abuse she faced at the hands of her parents when they discovered she was pregnant. We tried to track her down to sit for her exams but to no avail. She was one of the brightest students.

In a country where about a third of young people aged 15 to 24 are both unemployed and without education or training for future employment, to underestimate the drastic effect dropping out has on their futures is both short-sighted and devastating.

‘We are hopeful that the figures will drop since the Minister of Basic Education has intensified the implementation of Comprehensive Sexuality Education in schools,’ added Siziba. But sex education can only go part of the way in addressing the unequal standards faced by student who become pregnant.
The scar is only seen on me

Unbias the News tracked down Letwin, who gave birth in October 2021 and found her at her auntie’s place. She shared her story:


I am supposed to be taking my final exams but I have a newborn child. What pains me the most is that the guy who impregnated me is also a student and he is in class, taking his exams. The scar is only seen on me because it is a woman who gets pregnant.I tried to go back to school after lockdown but it was not easy. The teachers and fellow students stigmatized me. Sometimes I would sleep in class only to wake up to laughter and mockery statements so I decided to stop because it was draining me.

I faced bullying at school and lack of compassion at home. My dad would wake me up even at midnight telling me to go to the man who impregnated me. That’s when I decided to run away and came to stay with my auntie here.

According to Panyaza Lesufu, Education Member of the Executive Council for Gauteng Province, ‘of the thousands of girls who get pregnant, only a third are likely to return to school after giving birth.’

‘I would want to go back to school after giving birth. My auntie has spoken to people from UNICEF and they linked me up with social workers who said they can take my child to a safe place as I go back to school and will reunite us when I am done with school and ready to take the baby’, said Letwin of her future plans.
Light at the end of the tunnel

Muriel Mafico is the deputy representative for UNICEF in South Africa. She says that the teen pregnancy surge ‘requires a multi-sectoral engagement. Families, communities, schools and government have to work together. Mental health and psycho-social support is needed for the girls/victims.’

At the national level, the Ministry of Education has embarked on a massive drive to help keep the pregnant girls in schools. Granville Whittle, deputy director general of the Department of Basic Education says they deployed 3,000 young people known as ‘learner support agents’ to schools mandated with supporting young girls who get pregnant.

‘This includes taking schoolwork to their homes if they missed school or are at home sick, and also to help them access social welfare services such as child support grants when the babies are born.’ Whittle explained. ‘They also provide emotional support for vulnerable pupils and those from granny-headed households with homework.’

Whittle added that the ministry also signed an agreement with the United States’ government for additional funding aimed and hiring more learner support agents. ‘Programmes are in place to educate girls on voluntarily giving up of their children for adoption. It is also important to note that those who dropped out still have the opportunity to re-enter the system in 2022,’ Whittle added.
The right to remain in school

The future of many girls impregnated and forced to drop out of school has been compromised, but where are the fathers if they are neither in prison nor in the lives of the mother and child?

‘For the years that I have worked in communities around South Africa, I realized that the father always plays a shadowy role in the whole teen pregnancy journey, but I want the nation to know that there are laws that can make these men take care of their children,’ said Monsi Madosi, a social worker with the department of Social Welfare.

The urgent need to address the matter pushed the cabinet to approve the Teenage Pregnancy Policy in mid-November. The policy grants a right for pregnant students to continue with their education as do male students who impregnate them. It also contains a reporting requirement for children who fall pregnant as a result of statutory rape. The policy goes into effect this month.

South Africa joins five other countries from Sub-Saharan Africa, namely Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Uganda, Sierra Leone and São Tomé and Príncipe, in countermanding discriminatory policies and adopting policies that allow pregnant students to stay in school.

The teenage pregnancy crisis in South Africa has brought into question the country’s social and criminal justice policies, as well as their sincerity to efficiently deal with child abuse cases. The future of girls like Mbali and Letwin, future depends on whether society continues to see them as students as they become parents.

This article was contributes to Eurozine by Unbias the News. Illustrated by Victoria Shibaeva, edited by Tina Lee

Names have been changed to protect the identities of the young subjects.


Published 22 April 2022
Original in English
First published by Unbias the News


© Colleta Dewa / Unbias the NewsPDF/PRINT

In collaboration with

European Cultural Foundation

ANALYSIS

COVID19 AND FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS

The legitimacy of lockdown, according to Jürgen Habermas

Jürgen Habermas recently argued that the pandemic measures of the German government hadn’t gone far enough. To weigh the state’s duty to protect life against other rights and freedoms was unconstitutional, he warned. In the ensuing controversy, critics accused him of authoritarianism. Were they right?

Published on 26 March 2022 
Peter J. Verovšek - Eurozine (Vienna)
 

Hajo | Cartoon Movement

LONG READ

Jürgen Habermas’s article in the September 2021 issue of German political monthly Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik is the latest example of what his first editor described as the philosopher’s ability to create "a huge brouhaha" (einen gewaltigen Wirbel) in the German public sphere. (1)

In the piece, Covid-19 and the protection of life, Habermas not only defended the legitimacy of restrictions on civil rights – including free movement and assembly – designed to reduce infections by SARS-CoV-2, but also argued that the German government was not going far enough to protect the population. By taking as its baseline the availability of intensive care beds, rather than the risk of infection per se, the government was, he argued, failing to observe its constitutional duty to "exclude all courses of action that risk the probable endangerment of the life and physical integrity of a foreseeable number of innocent citizens."

On Habermas’s reading, the prohibition on the subordination of individual human life to any other goal is the supreme value not only of Germany’s post-war democratic political culture, but of the Basic Law itself. To argue – as some German jurists recently have – that risk to human life could be weighed against other basic rights was therefore not merely unethical, it was also legally false.

Although Habermas initially frames his argument broadly in terms of the democratic constitutional state, his citations and later discussion reveals that it is primarily addressed to the legal-ethical discourse in Germany (as so many of his public interventions are).
More : Instrumentalising the health crisis. On herd democracy and human dignity

Even in Germany, the reaction was somewhat muted compared to previous occasions. This probably says something about not only the public appetite – or lack thereof – for serious discussion about the measures to fight the pandemic, but also the polarisation of these debates when they do occur. Rather than engaging objectively with Habermas’s arguments, the response descended into the kind of polemic with which, after two years of pandemic, we are all-too familiar.

In a response entitled The Habermas dictatorship, published in the conservative German daily Die Welt on 11 October, features editor Andreas Rosenfelder accused him of creating a 'biopolitical Leviathan that can restrict any freedom for the purpose of infection control, always and everywhere, without condition and without measure'. Rosenfelder objected to Habermas’s framing of the critics of the lockdown policy as 'libertarians' opposed to state authority by definition. This, he argued, implied that the government and those who supported its 'strict' lockdown policy were simply 'defending' a legal norm, rather than 'a practice hastily borrowed from China'.

Rosenfelder’s diatribe – and the resonance it received on social media – reflect the discontent within parts of German society with what is seen as the 'media technocracy' over the course of the pandemic. Wild assertions such as that lockdowns are 'borrowed from China' (if anything they are rooted in the development of quarantines and cordons sanitaires to restrict the freedom of movement during the bubonic plagues) are par for the course in this discourse. Hyperbole aside, however, Rosenfelder was right that Habermas allows the government significant authority to restrict fundamental rights.

But while Habermas’s prioritisation of the protection of life might be extreme in certain respects, his proposals were neither particularly radical nor potentially authoritarian. Moreover, despite championing 'the unforced force of the better argument', Habermas is aware that philosophy does not have a privileged position in modern life.(2) Whereas professional thinkers may highlight certain problems, it is the public that serves as the ultimate arbiter.

As I shall argue, this fallibilistic commitment to the public sphere as the essence of modern democratic life has important implications both for Habermas’s argument itself, and for the power of governments to restrict the fundamental rights of their citizens in the face of SARS-CoV-2 while respecting the strictures of democratic legitimacy.

Origins

Starting with his attack on Martin Heidegger in 1953 for failing to apologize for his collaboration with the Nazis, to his role in the Historians’ Debate in the mid-1980s and his interventions in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008, Habermas has intervened in almost every important controversy in post-war Germany. More recently, he has expanded his focus to debates on the future of the EU and the emerging European public sphere.

While Habermas argues that the public intellectual plays a crucial role in a liberal political culture as a 'guardian of rationality', he does not consider them to be neutral figures.(3) On the contrary, while public intellectuals help to ensure that the public exchange of ideas proceeds thoughtfully and on the basis of good information, they can take strong positions and make ‘arguments sharpened by rhetoric’.(4) Habermas has therefore never shied from controversy in his quest to improve the quality of public debate about the key issues of the day.
More : The virus as metaphor

In this case, Habermas’s argument had been rehearsed in a number of shorter public comments, both in Germany and abroad. In an interview in Le Monde in April 2020, Habermas noted that while emergency measures posed a number of problems for democratic legitimacy, pandemic states of exception were required in order to protect ‘the fundamental right to life and to physical integrity’. Despite the understandable pull of the ‘utilitarian temptation’, politicians must not, he argued, trade lives against economic considerations.

This is not to say that Habermas disregards such considerations entirely. On the contrary: in a plea published in both Die Zeit and Le Monde two weeks earlier, he and his co-signatories – including German former Foreign minister Joschka Fisher, French-German former Green MEP Daniel Cohn-Bendit and German academic Axel Honneth – called on the European Commission to set up an EU-based 'corona fund' by borrowing on international financial markets at low interest rates. This, they argued, would enable the EU’s members to 'shoulder the huge financial burdens of the crisis together'. Such a step would not only allow poorer states to care for the economic wellbeing of their citizens without having to lift lockdowns prematurely; it would also take advantage of a new social atmosphere in which it was 'popular to show helpfulness, empathy and hope'.

While the pandemic created a tension in the generally “complementary relationship” between democratic self-empowerment of citizens to act collectively and the individual rights protected by the constitution, states of exception demanded that such conflicts be resolved in favour of the former

These earlier interventions highlight two aspects of Habermas’s thought that his critics overlooked. The first regards the role of solidarity in democratic politics, especially within a state of emergency. In his Blätter article, Habermas argued that democracy was incompatible with an individualistic conception of citizenship and instead required citizens to conceive of themselves as part of a collective able to act for the common good. Especially under crisis conditions – such as those brought about by Covid-19 – 'the state is dependent on unusually high cooperation from the population'. While the pandemic created a tension in the generally 'complementary relationship' between democratic self-empowerment of citizens to act collectively and the individual rights protected by the constitution, states of exception demanded that such conflicts be resolved in favour of the former.

In contrast to proponents of a looser approach, Habermas rejected the idea of a 'trade-off between the right to life and those competing basic rights that public health measures do indeed seriously impinge upon'. In situations such as the Coronavirus pandemic, precedence had to be given to the protection of life as the prerequisite for all other rights. The state could still 'offset' the priority given to the protection of life 'against secondary effects that threaten lives elsewhere and in other ways, but not against claims from competing basic rights'.

This conclusion follows from Habermas’s philosophical thought. His social and political theory is rooted in the fact that human interactions can be interpreted from two different and incompatible viewpoints: the internal perspective of a participant in a 'lifeworld' and the external, 'system'-based perspective of an observer. While the latter has certain advantages, most notably in governing efficient and materially productive market relations, Habermas worries about the ability of such functional, system-thinking to 'colonize' the lifeworlds of individuals by encroaching too far onto their daily lives and everyday interactions with others.(5)

For Habermas, prioritizing economic considerations (by privileging individual private rights) over the protection of life is precisely such a form of colonisation. In his interview with Le Monde, he noted that the 'language of “value”, borrowed from the sphere of economics, encourages quantification. But a person’s autonomy cannot be treated in this way … there is no “choosing” one human life over another.’ During short states of exception, therefore, politics 'as the means to achieve collective goals” demands priority over the law as ‘medium for guaranteeing subjective freedoms'.
Implications

A powerful statement of the danger of creeping authoritarianism has come from another public intellectual and philosopher, Giorgio Agamben. At the beginning of the pandemic, Agamben noted 'the increasing tendency to use the state of exception as the normal paradigm of government'. Habermas’s Italian counterpart therefore warned of the deleterious consequences of normalizing the kind of public monitoring, surveillance and restrictions on movement deemed necessary to fight the Coronavirus.Habermas is sensitive to concerns about the overuse of emergency politics. However, he noted that 'only Covid deniers could vilify measures justified solely for the duration of the pandemic as an excrescence of biopolitics'. In his public comments, Habermas has repeatedly emphasized that exceptional measures to protect life can be democratically legitimate only when supported by a majority of the population. He therefore stressed that when the political perspective of the participant is allowed to infringe upon basic rights, citizens must be able to trust ‘that the government will not allow the regime of legally mandated common-interest behaviours introduced on health-policy grounds to persist beyond the current hazardous situation’.

Understanding the basis for such trust and what prevents democratic states from imposing or extending states of exception indefinitely requires a deeper dive into Habermas’s philosophical system. Habermas defines democracy not in terms of majorities – as with republican supporters of popular sovereignty – nor in terms of unfettered respect for individual rights – as with liberals. Rather, democracy requires that ‘all decisions of consequence will depend on the practical discourse of the participants’.(6)

This does not mean that all such decisions must be made by referendum or that citizens have to actively consent to every government policy. Instead, the democratic process is legitimized by the ability of citizens to voice their disapproval through opposition, protest and debate. Not only that: the government must remain sensitive to the public’s discursive veto power by changing course in response to mass repudiations of government policy.(7)

As the foundation of modern democratic life, what Habermas refers to as the ‘anarchic, unfettered communicative freedom’ of public debate must be open to all topics and to everyone affected. This ‘wild’ process of opinion-formation, ‘in which equal rights of citizenship become socially effective’, must be matched by the sensitivity of the government and the institutions of law to public opinion.(8) Such an approach ensures the defence of civil liberties – both through the legal system and the prerequisites of the public sphere itself – and allows citizens to see themselves as co-authors of the laws that bind them. Even the compulsory restrictions imposed by state during the pandemic retain their ‘unique character as a voluntary contribution of the individual towards the collective accomplishment of a universally approved political task’.

If an open, functional and politically influential public sphere is the prerequisite for democratic legitimacy, then the presence of such an institution is the origin of citizens’ trust that the state will not abuse its powers. Even if governments were to overstep these boundaries, Habermas believes that the public could make use of vibrant national political spheres and the sensitivity of political institutions to public opinion to force a change. Because the modern, digitized public sphere enables both opinion-formation and the mobilisation of the people without physical contact, restrictions on mobility and measures to ensure physical distancing no longer impede its functioning.(9)
Even the compulsory restrictions imposed by state during the pandemic retain their "unique character as a voluntary contribution of the individual towards the collective accomplishment of a universally approved political task"

The situation is very different in illiberal or authoritarian regimes, where the ability of citizens to express themselves is restricted by surveillance, media concentration and other measures designed to tame the ‘wildness’ of the public sphere. ‘Illiberal democracies’ like Poland and Hungary still hold elections and protect constitutional rights at a theoretical level; however, since citizens are no longer empowered to act in a politically autonomous way that would allow them to see themselves as co-authors of the law, these regimes can no longer claim democratic legitimacy. In this regard measures to fight the pandemic are no different than any other political decision.
Conclusions

In appealing for the legitimacy of public health measures designed to prevent predictable and avoidable increase in infections and deaths, Habermas is fulfilling his role as a public intellectual ‘who seeks out on important issues, proposes fruitful hypotheses, and broadens the spectrum of relevant arguments in an attempt to improve the lamentable level of public debates’.(10) He is speaking in response to the growth in Corona-denialism in Germany and around the world, which is not just disrupting civil order, but also prolonging the pandemic and facilitating the mutation of the virus and the potential creation of vaccine-resistant variants of SARS-CoV-2.

This task is very different from that of epidemiologists who advise governments. Habermas argues that it is not the place of philosophers to give their opinions on the gravity of the threat of the virus itself, as Agamben did in calling Covid-19 ‘a normal influenza’. Instead of undermining public faith in medicine, intellectuals can help to ensure that societies engage in processes of opinion-formation to ensure that both expert advice and the will of the people are taken into account and balanced in a politically acceptable manner.

In this way, public intellectuals help to create and maintain the democratic solidarity necessary for individuals to act collectively as citizens. This is necessary, because – as Habermas noted in his Blätter article – ‘without civic common interest to back up mandatory law, the democratic state under the rule of law cannot have a political existence’. Aiding in the creation of such a collective ‘we-perspective’ is a crucial contribution, especially during crises such as the present, which demand sacrifices from everyone and can only be overcome concertedly. The pandemic should be seen as a chance to show solidarity and the ability to act collectively, not an opportunity to stubbornly assert one’s individual rights in a way that endangers others and further prolongs a pandemic that everyone wishes was already over.


👉 Original article on Eurozine. 

References

(1) Karl Korn quoted in Lorenz Jäger, ‘Heimsuchung von Heidegger’, Zeitschrift Für Ideengeschichte 15, no. 3 (2021), 12.

(2) Peter J. Verovšek, ‘The Philosopher as Engaged Citizen: Habermas on the Role of the Public Intellectual in the Modern Democratic Public Sphere’, European Journal of Social Theory 24, no. 4 (2021).

(3) Jürgen Habermas, Philosophical Introductions: Five Approaches to Communicative Reason, Cambridge: Polity 2018, 152.

(4) Jürgen Habermas, ‘Heinrich Heine and the Role of the Intellectual in Germany’, in The New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and the Historians’ Debate, Cambridge: MIT Press 1989, 73.

(5) See Peter J. Verovšek, ‘Taking Back Control Over Markets: Jürgen Habermas on the Colonization of Politics by Economics’, Political Studies (2021).

(6) Jürgen Habermas, Theory and Practice, Boston: Beacon Press 1974, 34.

(7) Stephen K. White and Evan Robert Farr, ‘“No-Saying” in Habermas’, Political Theory 40, no. 1 (2012).

(8) Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, Cambridge: MIT Press 1996, 186, 307–8.

(9) Katharine Dommett and Peter J. Verovšek, ‘Promoting Democracy in the Digital Public Sphere: Applying Theoretical Ideals to Online Political Communication’, Javnost – the Public 28, 4 (2021).

(10) Jürgen Habermas, Europe: The Faltering Project, Cambridge: Polity Press 2009, 52, 55.