Paying a higher price

Those least able to cope with lockdown are paying the highest cost. By Nick Cater.

If Australian governments fail in their quest to eradicate coronavirus it won’t be through lack of trying. Since the delta variant is estimated to be twice as infectious as earlier variants it will take double strength measures to wipe it out. While some may shrink at the prospect, our premiers seem game to try.

It is worth reminding ourselves that the enforced lockdown of entire cities we now think are normal is the most extreme public health measure ever undertaken in Australia. As recently as 18 months ago such a draconian response would have been unthinkable.

Yet today the curtailment of economic and social activity by government regulation is regarded as a proportionate response to increasing infections, even an increase as small as zero to one.

The frustration manifest in Saturday’s protests should not surprise us, even though we deplore the tactics and the blatant disregard for the wellbeing of others. Nor should we be surprised at the reaction from Britain where one prominent columnist described Australia’s obsession with case numbers as masochistic nutbaggery.

“The zero Covid project has collapsed, so why are we still indulging the elimination extremists?” wrote Camilla Tominey in The Telegraph on Saturday. “It might have been a sound policy at the start of the pandemic – but not at the end of it.”

Curiously, those most wedded to lockdowns are the most vocal advocates of social and economic equality. Oscar Grenfell, for example, writes in the Socialist World Wide Website that ending the NSW lockdown would be “a profit-dominated response” favouring the corporate elite at the expense of the working class.

As a member of the Socialist Equality Party, dedicated to the overthrow of capitalism, Grenfell’s attachment to lockdowns is perhaps understandable. Others, however, have less excuse for ignoring the unfairness of measures that require those least able to cope to pay the highest cost.

The workers who are most disadvantaged by lockdowns earn a living with their hands. The economic and psychological pain is less acute for those who work mainly with their heads, many of whom are quietly enjoying working from home. They have the good fortune to be members of the cognitive elite and are generally on secure salaries. They are also the people with the most influence on public policy, which is bad luck for Australians who simply want to run their businesses or go to work.

Before the pandemic, the social justice movement lavished sympathy on the precariat, a term coined in Britain to define workers with unsteady incomes. Now they don’t seem to care, leaving workers in sectors like catering and cleaning to fend for themselves.

The Covid-19 pandemic has widened the gulf between head, hand and heart workers, a key political and social dynamic in contemporary Australia. In the 1990s less than 10 per cent of adults had been to university. Today 30 per cent of men and 38 per cent of women have a Bachelor degree or higher.

The result, writes David Goodhart in his latest book Head, Hand, Heart, is the rise of a global, cognitive elite who tend to look down on the rest, convinced that they are not just better educated, but better full-stop. The cognitive elite run governments throughout the developed world, dominate the media and have become entrenched in our institutions and corporations. Their views are far from uniform, but they share a common perspective and common interests that marks them out from the rest.

At a social level, lockdowns have been inconvenient for almost everyone. Home schooling and lost contact with family and friends is no fun. The economic interests of the laptop class, however, have been largely unaffected by the forced reduction of economic activity.

The divide is equally sharp in the business community. Businesses that can operate online have adapted seamlessly and many have prospered. The pain has fallen on vulnerable businesses like restaurants, cafes and small retailers which operate largely on turnover in leased premises with little spare cash or assets to see them through. We can only guess what proportion of these will have the strength to reopen at the end of the pandemic, but we can be certain there will be fewer than there were at the start.

The response to Covid-19 is being driven by an aversion to risk, a striking characteristic of the cognitive class, particularly in matters like public health where the costs are socialised. The advocates of longer and harder lockdowns seldom seek to justify them with an assessment of actuarial risk, as opposed to the imagined risk in early 2020 when the coronavirus was still called novel.

The actuarial risk is shrinking. The chances of hospitalisation or death from Covid-19 grows a little bit smaller every time someone is fully inoculated. By the end of last week, jabs were being given at a rate of 120 a minute.

The size of the reduction in risk depends on the age of the recipient and the type of dose.

Because the marginal benefit of vaccination rises sharply with age, vaccinating the elderly first, particularly in nursing homes was a smart way to mitigate a lot of risk quickly. Now that more than 75 per cent of those over 70 have been jabbed once, and more than 40 per cent have been jabbed twice, the threat that our health service will be overwhelmed is much lower than it was in February. The vaccine program may be incomplete, but we can be confident that we have flattened the curve.

Yet the response from state governments grows ever more extreme, more costly and more disproportionate to the threat. It becomes less based on evidence and more driven by a sense of panic and a blinkered obsession with a single blunt instrument.

It may be too early to calculate the value of lockdowns, but not too early to question the wisdom of the experts. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time they’ve got something wrong and stayed wrong long after the error should have been apparent.

Going to university can do that for you. Higher education encourages abstract thought and prioritises theory over pragmatism. Since the cognitive elite is often remote from practical reality, poor judgment is slow to correct. When bad government programs fail, the response all too frequently is to apply them harder. Perhaps it is time to put aside the ratchet and start looking for plan B.

Watch Nick Cater interview author David Goodhart about his latest book, Head Hand Heart: The Struggle for Dignity and Status in the 21st Century, in which he argues that mass higher education has given rise to a new knowledge class that dominates governments and other institutions.