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It is comforting to know that, in a time of great danger, the government is working with the best scientists to do what is best for us. But comfort is often untrue, since science can be used to make things seem safer than they really are. And it can give an excuse to the authorities who do not want to listen to the governed.
The government’s approach to Covid-19 is a contradiction. On the one hand, it is an example of what the scholar James Scott calls “high modernism”: the belief that smart people in government can use science to make the world do what they want. On the other hand, it indicates that the government believes that it can make the world do very little. This combination of overconfidence and insecurity makes you want to control, not listen.
President Cyril Ramaphosa says the government is taking a “properly calibrated” approach to lift the blockade that will balance the needs of the economy with controlling the virus. Your vehicle is the five-tier program, which will balance these two needs not only at the national level, but also in each region. It is backed by a strong scientific and research team on the ability of companies to reopen and protect public health.
This is a marked change from the government’s response to aid, which was hostile to science. The contrast is more moving because the public face of the scientific team is Salim Abdool Karim, a renowned epidemiologist whose work on AIDS was rejected by the then government. So Karim was relegated to the margins. Now he is a celebrity. So, like governments elsewhere, South Africa is now “following the science.”
But science only helps us if it does not become a fetish, a means to control people and not to protect them. It is doubtful that anyone anywhere knows how to facilitate a lock to “perfectly” balance freedom and health. Even if the planners are miraculously correct, people never behave as the plans say they will: there is a big gap between what the government wants to happen in the municipalities and the cabin settlements and what it actually does. “Carefully calibrated” planning that ignores people whose lives and livelihoods are at stake will always be resisted in a way that undoes the plans.
A deaf ear
Deep down, the government knows it. He asked for comments on the plans, which he would not need if they were pure science. But because he thinks too much or too little of himself, he didn’t want to give people a real voice, so he settled for a “consultation” that only organized pressure groups heard, while some in the government used the process. as an excuse to do what they always wanted to do. This does not square with his claim, which has been sold to the World Health Organization, that he is listening to people.
The result was an attempt to control people and to please organized pressure groups, which was anything but “carefully calibrated.” People can’t walk the streets after 9 a.m., but they can buy clothes. They cannot leave their homes, but they can cross provincial borders. The government also cannot enforce big plans: hungry people queue for food in large quantities, smokers use illegal products, and a mining union must go to court to ensure mines have a plan to keep their workers safe .
His brand of science also reflects this mix. The science of AIDS was much clearer than that of Covid-19. There were medications that could prevent people from dying, and it was much easier to control the spread. Covid-19 has no cure and scientists acknowledge that there is much they don’t know about it.
And yet science is presented as fact. Karim’s evident experience and the difference between his rational vision and those of Donald Trump or Jair Bolsonaro ensure that he is never challenged. But not everything he says is beyond doubt. He repeatedly insists that this country cannot avoid a “severe” outbreak. He bases this on the claim that all other countries have experienced one and that we are not unique. To underline this, he urges us to be prepared for widespread grief.
This greatly breaks the link between what we do to protect ourselves and whether we can stop the disease. The restrictions that have put millions into poverty are not intended to keep people from getting sick, but to make sure they do when the health system is ready. We are told to fight the virus, and that we are doomed to lose. This should terrify people who know they can die of the disease no matter how well prepared the health system is.
Hiding behind the obfuscation
This view is also based on the claim that everything and nothing can be controlled, and can tread on dangerous ground. When asked about opening the schools, Karim told an interviewer that the virus would not go away anytime soon, implying that it didn’t matter much when the schools opened.
But a “severe epidemic” is not the experience of all countries. South Korea, Vietnam, and New Zealand have dramatically reduced cases and deaths. In all three, new infections have been reduced to almost none. They may experience new waves, but so far they have avoided what they tell us is inevitable.
Karim obviously knows this, so, could it be that he really means, but cannot say, that some countries can prevent a severe epidemic and that he believes that we are not one of them because our government has little control over doing so?
A comment by Commerce and Industry Minister Ebrahim Patel shows where the strange official mix of fatalism, which assumes disaster is inevitable, and the belief that the government has supernatural powers can lead. Official projections first said the epidemic would peak in June or July. This has been changed to September. Patel said in a briefing that since the flu season was mid-year, the government had decided to postpone the peak to September. Thus, the virus is so powerful that we cannot stop it, but it can also be made to delay its peak on the orders of the Coronavirus National Command Council.
Health Minister Zweli Mkhize offered a more plausible version of the delay. The models of medical scientists, he said, had the virus at its peak in July, but with the blockade it was expected to delay it for five weeks so that it would not arrive in the flu season. This seemingly slight change managed to avoid both false claims of certainty and the view that nothing can be done.
The government can affirm the certainty of science, but many closure measures are harsh precisely because it knows that it has weak roots in the municipalities and therefore fears that it can only make them behave if it uses a crude mallet. The high modernist concept is sold that it is acting on certain knowledge because it hopes that this silences the citizens who can show their insecurities.
We need a common sense of purpose to confront Covid-19. The virus is a killer, and we need the social distancing, testing, and tracing that are bound by what scientists know. But that does not mean accepting anything we hear from a government whose claim to control everything reveals a fear that it can control very little.
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