Thread by @AlisonBlunt

The Prognosis: Looking the consequences in the eye
by David Cayley (October 2020)

"Science, in other words, has become a political myth — a myth quite at odds with the messy, contingent work of actual scientists."
reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2020/…

"Whether these harms outweigh the benefits of flattening the curve is a moral question, not a scientific one. It would remain a moral question even if the Imperial College wizards had had an infallible crystal ball and could have given us an accurate forecast." David Cayley

"How can one even compare the flu‑like illness that will be suffered by most of the people affected by COVID‑19 with the ravages of cholera or the devastating impact of smallpox on Indigenous communities? Yet the prime minister’s hyperbole attracted little comment." David Cayley

"The prime minister, hopelessly impaled by contradictions that his sunny ways had failed to overcome, became once again a healer, a generous and resolute friend, a stern father. “Enough is enough,” he reprimanded his wayward children." David Cayley

"Hospitals, for example, regularly praise their “champions” who “stop at nothing” in their exercise of “relentless care.” These effusions are a kind of blackmail that sets policy beyond the reach of careful thought by investing it with unimpeachable feeling."

"All this works to turn life into a definite thing. In the discourses of life, what had been, for secular society, a quality or condition and, for the person of faith, an expression of God’s sustaining will has become a discreet quantum for which “we” feel ourselves responsible."

"At the very least, the governor’s remark must be understood as a religious statement, since as a political statement it is almost criminally irresponsible."

"The most terrible aspect of the obsession with saving lives, for me, has been the way the old have been left to die alone during these past few months. This is unconditionally wrong."

"Experience shows that all of these new powers, once assumed, will not be readily relinquished. Habits of compliance, developed in the heady days when we were “all in this together,” may prove equally durable."

"We are seeing the beginnings of a thoroughgoing virtualization of civic life, not all of which will end with the pandemic. Writing in The Intercept, Naomi Klein wittily called this development the Screen New Deal."

"So this is the heritage: the possibility that the deaths averted by lockdowns will be offset by the deaths caused by them; spectacularly indebted governments whose deficits may threaten basic state functions; increased surveillance; reduced civil liberty; lost jobs and..'

"ruined careers; a frightened, more pliable citizenry; and an economy that has shrunk in the worst possible way by casting off the poorest and the weakest — a terrible irony for long-time advocates of degrowth, including me."

"We’ve had plenty of Churchillian rhetoric, lots of flattery, cheerleading, and sentimentality, but little that I would call debate over policy."

"And, finally, the almost instant willingness to accept that “everything has changed” has opened the door to far worse evils in future. Perhaps we have been afraid of the wrong things."
reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2020/…