Tuesday 22 December 2020

Neon Global blight upon green Glasgow site

Here's a dispiriting site to behold. The completion of two giant electronic advertising structures at a well-known green spot on Glasgow's southside. 

As previously detailed, an application by Global Media advertising for this brutal edifice was approved by Glasgow Council without any apparent local consultation or regard for its invasive environmental impact.    

It may not seem the most pressing issue right now. But it's still heart-sinking to see this corporate-imposed eyesore finally standing there, blocking out a beautiful mature tree and pristine hillside. 

Instead of an unbroken green vista, we now have this brash construct pulsing out its neon mediocrity and demanding our attention. 

And, with the COP26 eco-summit coming up in Glasgow (November 2021), isn't this just a great advert for the city's grand claims to be 'curbing' car culture and carbon-polluting consumerism?

It's the brazen enforcement of such ugliness that's so disturbing, the sense in which people's thoughts and aesthetic feelings are somehow just deemed irrelevant, all subsumed to corporate priorities. 

Imagine this kind of blight being sited near the wealthy homes and leafy locales of Global executives. 

Yet their arrogant blindness to the degradation of others' environment in the name of profit is matched only by the myopic jobsworths that pass themselves off as 'planning officers'. 

Again, it's notable that not an apparent word of concern was raised against this application by a council proclaiming its eco-principles and commitment to green urban living. 

A blot on the landscape and an embarrassment of vision. Think of these crass structures as 'monuments' to the greed, ignorance and servility of all involved.



Friday 27 November 2020

Seasonal adjustment and mindfulness

Late November. Northern climes. Dry crisp mornings and rustling floors of park leaves giving way to damp, darker days as nature's clock ticks us towards early winter. 

Our little earth rock rotating with relentless cosmic efficiency. Its less climate-trusted species, alas, now blurring the lines between once distinct meteorological seasons.    

Adjustments of the season, adjustments of the mind. For many, a disordered and difficult process. 

We lament the shortening sun, the dwindling light, but find gradual comfort in the alternative splendour of the cold starry night sky, reconstituted, for those fortunate enough, in our warm inner sanctums.

And from here we might discover some more expansive time for mindful and healing reflection.

On how to keep better pace with the rhythms of seasons and planet.

On how to soothe our troubled thoughts.  

On how to reconcile this landmark year now tilting to a close.  

Pandemic. Climate breakdown. Darkening political clouds. Deepening economic anxiety.

Beyond basic human concern, how might we find some mental retreat from all this fear, crises and dislocation?

It can seem coy to speak about the importance of mindfulness as multiple conflicts and problems rage all around. 

We may find comfort in relativising it all: things could be much worse; my worries are but a speck when set against the troubles of war-torn and broken others. 

All good, laudable thoughts. Yet anxiety and insecurity are, for most, a default part of daily life. All humans experience them in one form or another. 

Of course, extending one's concern for others doesn't mean accepting their views or condoning their actions. On the contrary, resisting wrongful and unjust conduct is a fundamental part of compassionate mindfulness. 

The idea, however, is to infuse all such thoughts with a more universal equanimity, to be more 'metta-minded'.

Meditating on extended loving kindness, showing empathy for the stresses, fears and unhappiness all humans endure, can act as an antidote to more toxic thoughts, serving our own mental wellbeing. 

It's a way of setting down, letting go, the heavy weight of conflict, discord, anger, worry.  

And as winter closes in this particular year, all such palliatives seem even more relevant. 

Increased understanding of Seasonal Affective Disorders show just how much our minds can be laid low by the 'winter blues'. Even as we embrace the beautiful shifting of the seasons, the dilution of sunlight, our natural source of vitamin D, can have a deep impact on mood and energy levels.

Extended public health restrictions will make this seasonal transition even more arduous. The social interactions that help sustain us through the lonelier winter months will be heavily curtailed, adding to an already rising mental health crisis.


Figures showed a significant surge in 'lockdown loneliness' as the clocks changed at the end of October. This includes particularly high numbers of younger, as well as older, people. Coping with long dark nights of detachment and isolation will be a new and challenging experience for many.


The worries we harbour over recent events, what's going on, and what's yet to come can often seem overwhelming. 


When feeling like this, it's good to avoid excess exposure to repetitive news, adversarial social media and other mind-burdening output. 


Reflect, instead, on the commonality being shown by others, the enduring support of family, the selfless friends helping to keep us going, the kindly acts of a neighbour. 


Exercise regularly, if possible, do balance and yoga-type stretches, take outdoor walks, put on background music, dance, and do any diversifying thing that promotes an easy, uplifting and positive mindset. 


Putting down some notes on feelings and emotions may help too, even writing little messages or a letter to a loved one.


Short meditations through the day and night can bring particular welcome respite and alleviation of anxiety. 


Mindful contentment can be hugely beneficial to our overall psychology, helping to boost our immune systems and general health. 


Restrictions on the festive season will also affect many this year. Yet might this be a most useful moment to take a more mindful view of the whole stressful enterprise? 


Perhaps this season's limitations on the great festival of consumption can bring a more appreciative sense of all the things we really don't need, and the true value we place in the greater gifts of good health, nature and human connection.


How much nicer to move with the slow instruction of the turning earth than the rushing dictates of the manic market.


Light some candles and mark the mystical winter solstice, as the shortest day and longest night gives gradual way to returning sunlight.


And as we watch the changing days, extend that sense of loving kindness not only from yourself and towards others, but to all species and our bountiful planet, breathing in calm, rhythmic meditation with the cycle of all its wondrous seasons. 



    

Tuesday 27 October 2020

A "dangerous fallacy unsupported by scientific evidence" - keeping safe distance from the Barrington 'herd immunity' agenda



An effective second wave of Covid-19 has seen a commensurate rise in public disquiet over government failure to suppress the virus and end the pain of repeated lockdowns. 

Perversely, it is this very failure of neoliberal-minded policies that has provided new 'second wave' openings for dangerous and scientifically specious 'herd immunity' ideas to re-emerge. 


The most notable of these is the recent Great Barrington Declaration, a set of libertarian prescriptions which advocates 'focused shielding' of the old and vulnerable, opening up all economic activity and allowing the remaining public to be exposed to the virus. 


In essence, let Covid-19 rip through the community in the 'hope' of reaching herd immunity.


The seismic implications of such a policy might not seem immediately obvious to populations already weary of lockdowns, inept government actions and no seeming resolutions.


But the effective endorsement of the Barrington agenda by the Trump administration should be ringing alarm bells over what further calamities might await countries whose own governments indulge this line of thinking.


As Gavin Yamey, Professor of Global Public Health and Public Policy, reminds us:

"For a start, no pandemic has ever been controlled by deliberately letting the infection spread unchecked in the hope that people become immune. We must do all we can to protect people from COVID-19, not let them get infected, to buy scientists time to develop vaccines and therapeutics to end the outbreak and alleviate suffering."

In a major scientific response to the Barrington Declaration, the Lancet has published the John Snow Memorandum, signed by over 6000 leading scientific and public health figures around the world.


The Memorandum makes clear that the Barrington claims have no serious scientific grounding, and that its advocates are using government failings to leverage support for their agenda:

"Although lockdowns have been disruptive, substantially affecting mental and physical health, and harming the economy, these effects have often been worse in countries that were not able to use the time during and after lockdown to establish effective pandemic control systems. In the absence of adequate provisions to manage the pandemic and its societal impacts, these countries have faced continuing restrictions. This has understandably led to widespread demoralisation and diminishing trust. The arrival of a second wave and the realisation of the challenges ahead has led to renewed interest in a so-called herd immunity approach, which suggests allowing a large uncontrolled outbreak in the low-risk population while protecting the vulnerable. Proponents suggest this would lead to the development of infection-acquired population immunity in the low-risk population, which will eventually protect the vulnerable. This is a dangerous fallacy unsupported by scientific evidence."

The Memorandum proceeds to refute the unsupportable claims of the Declaration, ethical and practical. 


Warning that Covid-19 is multiple times more infectious and dangerous than seasonal flu, it sets out the logistical problems of 'focused shielding' large and complex sections of the population, old and young, cites the complicating threats of 'long Covid', and casts serious doubts over whether such a policy could ever actually achieve mass immunity. It goes on to warn of the even deeper economic devastation such a policy would unleash.


The Barrington agenda is also where - backed by the libertarian American Institute for Economic Research, and funded by the Koch corporation - climate denial meets Covid-19 denial. As one key analysis notes: "It is consequently no wonder that some experts see this not as science, but as a form of predatory neoliberal economics in disguise."


It's important that people understand exactly what the Barrington network is peddling here, the right-wing/libertarian forces promoting it, and the ways in which it is being sold to a disenchanted public as the 'only answer' to lockdown.


The John Snow Memorandum also helps delineate the actual issue of lockdown restrictions. Lockdowns are no solution. They are a sign of government failure to put effective containment measures in place, most crucially comprehensive mass testing and local NHS-based find, test, trace, isolate, support (FTTIS) instruments.


The lockdown cycle we're in is merely the repeated unwillingness of government to use such opportunities for this key purpose.


Until that happens, the threat of community contagion continues, while the likelihood of public compliance diminishes.


People will only support continuing lockdown if they see some end point to it. Thus, insist Independent Sage and other leading public health bodies, any ongoing lockdowns must only be used as 'buying time' for putting meaningful suppression measures in place and driving towards zero-Covid.


Central to this task must be an emergency reconstruction of the UK government's catastrophic £12 billion test and trace system, hived-off to private corporations in a crony-political handout of epic proportions.


Lockdown fatigue only makes an already disillusioned, suspicious and conspiracy-inclined public even more susceptible to the seeming 'credibility', even 'inevitability', of herd immunity 'alternatives'.


The following articles provide a good overview of just what that scenario would involve and the multiple dangers it poses to populations, societies and economies at large.


The John Snow Memorandum


Independent Sage: A deliberate “population immunity” strategy before a vaccine:
Why it wouldn’t work and why it shouldn’t be tried 


Scientific consensus in rejection of Great Barrington 'herd immunity' agenda


Expert reaction to Barrington Declaration, an open letter arguing against lockdown policies and for ‘Focused Protection’


A Viral Theory Cited by Health Officials Draws Fire From Scientists


Climate Science Denial Network Behind Great Barrington Declaration 


Emergency six-week plan for England in response to rising cases, hospitalisations and deaths - 16 October 2020


The Great Barrington Declaration has nothing to do with epidemiology and a great deal to do with far right economics


The Dangerous Fringe Theory Behind the Great Barrington Declaration and Herd Immunity


The White House Wants to Achieve Herd Immunity by Letting the Virus Rip. That Is Dangerous and Inhumane


How the White House's Herd Immunity Strategy Would Destroy the US Economy 


Saturday 3 October 2020

Pandemic, lockdown and authoritarianism - no illumination in the vacuous world of Covid-19 denial

Covid-19 deniers are raising their pitchforks again over the latest 'lockdown' measures.

As Boris Johnson announced his 'pub curfew' and other token interventions, denier groups have intensified their calls for non-compliant insurrection.


And with this has come an even deeper descent into conspiracy claims and crass argument. 


One of the most fatuous is the 'what about other infections/diseases' line. 


With many other global infections, such as tuberculosis and malaria, alongside heart disease and cancer, resulting in multiple annual deaths, what's so special, they ask, about Covid-19?


This is a bit like saying 'road traffic deaths are massively high, so why should we be concerned to do anything about equivalent deaths from alcohol abuse or smoking'.


The effective claim here is that we must just 'accept' the 'inevitability' of yet another mass threat to human life rather than think about what can practically be done to prevent, contain and, even in time, eradicate it.


As we approach winter, deniers protest that there was never any lockdown for seasonal flu that has, in some years, lead to extensive deaths. 


The obvious difference here, of course, is that we don't yet have a vaccine for Covid-19, a much more contagious, complex, and still unknown entity than flu. The idea of reaching 'herd immunity' without a vaccine may hold some perverse 'logic' for deniers, but the alarming human cost of such has no moral or practical appeal for the mass body of ethical science.  


Until a mass immunisation programme is in place, there has to be ongoing measures to contain a virus that has already seen over 33 million confirmed cases and wiped out over 1 million people across the globe in under a year. And these figures are almost certain to be underestimates.


Elementary public health thinking, you might imagine. Not, it seems, for those denying that there even is a pandemic.


One such fanatical voice likens the scientific presentation for this second set of measures to the '45 minutes' deceit that led us to war in Iraq. 


Aside from the scientific vacuousness of such 'comparisons', there's something deeply disturbing about invoking the loss of a million lives and mass devastation of a country in order to protest the shutting down of British pubs at ten o'clock.


Denier grievances, including from some proclaimed 'leftists', are riddled with this individual libertarianism. 


'Freedom', in this rallying call, is the 'right' to enter a shop or board a bus without a face mask. 'We shall never succumb to social distancing', they proclaim. Yet such 'liberty-seekers' are really liberty-takers in their failure to consider the collective health rights of others. Whatever else this is, it's nothing to do with cohesive leftism.  


Delusional 'theorising' 


Deniers see lockdown as a conspiratorial plot to suppress the public, whereas it should be understood as a sign of systemic government failure to protect that population.


As in February/March, the latest measures announced by Johnson fall well short of what's needed to break the rising rates of transmission.


And as Devi Sridhar laments, lockdown itself has been a massively wasted containment opportunity:

"The only alternative to more restrictions and modifying our own behaviour is a functioning test-and-trace system. Lockdown just presses pause on the spread of the virus. Once restrictions are lifted and governments have pressed play, it will start spreading again. The key objective of lockdown should be to carry out mass testing and tracing in order to aggressively seek out and eliminate community transmission of the virus (like China, Taiwan, Vietnam, New Zealand and South Korea have done). This also buys time for science to develop solutions (such as dexamethasone), and to build healthcare capacity. Simply to lock down for two weeks would be less effective: it is kicking the can down the road."

For Sridhar, UK government efforts are all too darkly laughable:

"Nine months after South Korea and Senegal started building diagnostic capacity, it is comically depressing that the UK government, one of the richest in the world, does not have a functional testing system that returns results within 24 hours."

Richard Horton offers similar condemnatory warnings:




Fringe science


In seeking 'validation', denier platforms often invoke a particular set of 'sceptical scientific voices' on infection rates, mortality figures and the need for containment.


In a forensic investigation, Nafeez Ahmed shows how the same authors of a highly-publicised letter at the right-wing Spectator downplaying Covid-19 numbers and effectively arguing for 'herd immunity' are in fact a "fringe group":

"The main authors of that letter are Professor Sunetra Gupta (a theoretical epidemiologist at Oxford University), Professor Carl Heneghan (director of Oxford University’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine), Professor Karol Sikora (consultant oncologist at the University of Buckingham) and Sam Williams (director and co-founder of the Economic Insight consultancy)."

Seemingly impressive credentials. Yet, contrary to media-generated impressions of 'two contending scientific sides', these authors, Ahmed shows, have no serious collective standing or peer-reviewed track record, with some also linked to various right-wing/libertarian lobbying groups in the US and UK:

"Worse, this group’s claims about the Coronavirus have no basis in peer-reviewed scientific literature. Instead, it represents what one top British epidemiologist has described as “a fringe group of scientists”, out of sync with “most of the public health experts in the world.”"

Yet, despite their lack of scientific credibility, these figures have been given direct access to Boris Johnson himself:

"Indeed, there is unambiguous evidence that someone at the highest levels among the Prime Minister’s advisors is actively seeking to influence his thinking by leveraging this pseudoscience. Hours before Professor Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance held their Government press conference this week on the new COVID-19 measures, Gupta and Heneghan had gone to Downing Street to brief Boris Johnson personally about how to respond to the rise in recorded cases."

And why, asks Anthony Costello, was a PR firm with links to the Number 10 'Nudge Unit' apparently involved in promoting this group's policy ideas?


It's darkly ironic that the very denier platforms castigating Johnson over lockdown are the same ones endorsing 'scientific' figures with such close access to him. 


Late and reluctant lockdown 


Yet the paradox says much more about the desperate drift and expedient calculations of government, as well as the stark confusions of Covid deniers. 


Johnson and Cummings may be 'indulging' this "fringe", but they also follow the more immediate rules of political survival.  


From the outset of this crisis, denier outlets have peddled gross distortions about the motivations behind government lockdown policy, failing to see either its core purpose or its stumbling implementation. 


As previously discusssed, despite some variations in the Johnson and Trump administrations' handling of Covid-19, both have been marked by an early denial of the virus emergency, a strong reluctance to take swift precautionary action, and ongoing prevarication in maintaining adequate public health protections.


Both leaders resisted lockdowns and other public health measures until forced otherwise by pressing scientific evidence, public health warnings and escalating political pressures. 


Despite emergency economic measures, big business interests have remained predominant, sustained neoliberal priorities which has led to social dislocation, public suffering and major loss of avoidable life.


And as Trump follows Johnson and Bolsonaro as a Covid-19 statistic, we see the most prominent illustration of what happens under neoliberal, business-first policies when late, careless and ad hoc responses fail to protect. 


While early containment-conscious countries have managed to avoid further waves of the virus, and enjoyed some sense of 'normality', the leading neoliberal states are seeing renewed lockdown and the continuing penalties of free market individualism.


Yet, for all their criminal failings there is not the remotest evidence here, as claimed by denier platforms, that Johnson, Trump and others have been party to some 'grand plan' or pre-fashioned agenda to impose lockdown measures for purely authoritarian purposes.


Again, one has to ask, what political benefits capitalist-serving political elites would derive from deliberately plunging profit-driven economies into crisis?


The political class want 'open', not locked-down, economies - even where the pandemic serves particular elements of capital or those deriving increased crony rewards. 


They want passive citizens and active consumers. They want, in short, 'functioning' capitalism.


And it's important, again, to remember that lockdowns are actually a last resort consequence of failed government responsibilities to have proper prevention and containment measures in place. 


Beyond that early and ongoing failure, the continuing use of lockdowns, for any ruling political-business class, is to get the virus 'under control', people out spending/consuming again and 'normal' service resumed.


On what rational level would capitalist-serving, election-seeking politicians like Trump and Johnson be acting otherwise?


There's simply nothing here to indicate that lockdown has been specifically deployed as an authoritarian instrument. And relentless, nonsensical denier claims to that effect have only served to disguise real elite malfeasance.


Authoritarian signs


But what of the apparent rise in reactionary enforcement? 


As the pandemic intensifies, it is increasingly evident that certain states and governments around the world have adopted harsh policing and controlling measures. Cases of police intimidation across Australia are cited as key examples. 


This may, indeed, be seen as an indication of the unfolding pandemic situation being used to extend already existing authoritarian state-based powers.


But this is substantively different from denier claims of a 'global plan' to impose lockdowns in order to secure deeper authoritarian controls. 


As Caitlin Johnstone argues - in an excellent defence of Julian Assange and his role in exposing elite criminality - much of this "wild theorising" is the product of failed accountability, leading to rightful suspicion of the powerful:

"If we had transparency for the powerful as we ought, there wouldn’t be any wild theorizing about what they’re up to behind the walls of secrecy. Indeed, the various agendas that are doubtless being schemed toward by oligarchs and unaccountable government agencies wouldn’t even exist, because people only plot such evils when they are out of the public eye. Whatever’s going on with this virus would be clear as day, and the fact that people are paranoid and distrustful of authority figures about the matter is solely the fault of those authority figures’ refusal to have transparency and accountability."

Yet, for Johnstone, there still has to be coherent and credible evidence of any such 'global power grab':

"For months I’ve been getting many people telling me every day that I need to be sounding the alarm about this virus giving cover for an authoritarian power grab that will thrust us into a dystopia from which we will never recover. Few of them can agree on exactly what form this power grab is taking, and none can lucidly explain in their own words exactly what they know and how they know it when I ask them to, but they want me to write essays defending their viewpoint. It’s not that they’re wrong to be suspicious; again, it’s a guarantee that authoritarians and plutocrats are at the very least opportunistically shoring up power and wealth for themselves in a whole host of ways amid the confusing upheavals of 2020. It’s just that I can’t write essays which I can competently defend about things I cannot see. The level of evidence and argumentation that I apply to the rest of my work simply is not there at this time. I’ve been looking at this thing from every angle, and a powerful evidence-based argument for any kind of centralized monolithic global power grab in relation to this virus just isn’t forthcoming." (Emphasis added.)

This doesn't mean, for Johnstone, that governments, corporations and other elites aren't organising in various reactionary ways to the pandemic. 


But, she insists, we still need much clearer understanding of such shifts. And, she concludes, we find no serious clarity in denier claims. 


In short, "there's no evidence for a monolithic global power grab."


Such realities are reinforced by Jonathan Cook in a pointed call-out of 'cynical leftists' and their failure to demonstrate any coherent take on the situation: 

Covid-19 does not appear to be one of those weak points in the western narrative, not least because it is very hard to discern any meaningful western narrative about the virus other than an agreement that it is a dangerous disease for some sections of the population and that its rapid spread could overwhelm most countries’ health services...To challenge and disrupt that narrative, one would need either to persuade the public that the disease is not dangerous at all or that health systems can easily cope with large numbers of people getting sick. Even if I believed that were true, which I don’t, my chances of persuading anyone – outside of the small circle of believers among the cynical left – that I should be listened to over a majority of epidemiologists would be close to zero. 

And if there was credible evidence that this was all some orchestrated hoax or deception, people would be acting on impulses other than the most obvious ones:   

If it is a hoax, if there is no danger, if lockdown is entirely unnecessary, the truth of that will eventually become evident to ordinary people without the intervention of pundits like me. People do not want to be locked up. Fear, for themselves or their loved ones, is what makes them compliant.

Bigging-up Big Pharma 


Similar superficial and diversionary claims abound in 'left' denier circles about the power of major pharmaceutical corporations and individuals like Bill Gates.


Now, Gates most certainly does have considerable levels of undue power and influence. His super-wealth is a scandal, as is the very idea that billionaires should exist at all, or be in such positions to dispense wealth as charitable gifts. 


Human life and wellbeing is a right, not something dependent on charitable dispensation from an ultra-wealthy few. 


The Gates Foundation, like so many other expressions of 'philanthropic capitalism', is actually a major impediment to humanitarian rights and economic justice. 


Gates's connections with Big Pharma should also be critically questioned in this regard, as should his reach across major political, media and other public institutions.


Yet, at this useful investigative juncture, denier 'analysis' again collapses into facile conspiracy.


Denier narratives use Gates as another gateway to illogical theorising about 'grand impositions', 'mass-medicalised controls' and so on. 


The idea that Gates is 'running' some kind of 'global vaccine plot' 'on behalf' of Big Pharma, or/and at the behest of the World Health Organisation (WHO), is, again, without any credible evidence. 


Not only does it fail logical examination, it feeds a whole further set of outlandish claims. Thus, any serious challenge to Gates and his activities is only undermined by such spurious output.


For example, as Tim Anderson notes, any potential profits that might accrue to Big Pharma from a marketable Covid-19 vaccine are minuscule compared to the profits from potential treatments for the virus. 


More particularly, notes Anderson, Big Pharma itself is but one nominal part of the total corporate economy. Why would it alone be able to direct a 'global pandemic economics' just for its own benefit?


The recent 'revelation' that Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government Sir Patrick Vallance has a £600,000 shareholding stake in a major vaccine-producing company has also been seized upon by deniers and anti-vaxers as 'smoking-gun' proof of Big Pharma's all-controlling agenda. 


Yet, Vallance's past pharma background with Glaxo-Smith-Kline is already well known. This is, indeed, an obvious conflict of interest, but it's just one small part of a whole world of political-corporate largesse and revolving-door appointments.


Again, disreputable as such practices are, these linkages and influences offer no sound evidence of either Big Pharma's unique power or any serious case against mass vaccinations.        


Situating 'left' Covid-19 deniers


As Anderson points out here, many deniers pushing such claims as purported leftists are not actually producing left arguments at all. They are, rather, peddling "populist" narratives. 


Many, if not all, veer towards right-wing notions of 'individual freedom' rather than socialist collectivism. 


Many embrace, overtly or implicitly, deeply fanciful and unsubstantiated 'New World Order' notions, typically involving UN-directed 'One World Government'. 


Denier claims are virtually all steeped in hyperbolic, inflammatory language: 'muzzles', 'face nappies', 'lockdown tyranny', 'the New Battle of Britain', 'the new abnormal' and so on. 


And denier narratives are also, essentially, anti-science. Even where they claim to be offering 'competing' scientific evidence, there is general and ignorant disdain for a wealth of proven scientific practices, public health measures and respected practical analysis, typically tied into conspiratorial conjecture about the WHO's 'malevolent global health agenda'.


Anderson provides a further excellent take-down of such misguided 'discourse' in his prior study, How the Pandemic Defrocked Hegemonic Neoliberalism.


The ways in which neoliberalism, corporate greed and attacks on the natural environment has shaped this pandemic should be the principal focus of left analysis and challenges. Yet 'left' conspiratorial denial is only masking and limiting that task. 


As Cook also concludes:

"I see the cynical left not only as misguided and ineffectual but as ultimately a brake on progressive change. They risk contributing to the worst trends in our increasingly polarised and dysfunctional societies."

It's also no coincidence that those figures and platforms peddling Covid denial are likely to be exponents or facilitators of climate denial. 


As with climate change, a vast and overwhelming consensus on the causes and effects of the pandemic is being treated with vacuous contempt.


In front of deniers stands a mountain of scientific and public health evidence, all summarily dismissed as false, irrelevant or conspiratorially construed. 


Again, what useful insights might one derive from people who openly say 'there is no pandemic'?


And it's that very irrationality which should preclude placing any trust in denier accounts of why and how authoritarianism may be spreading. 


Lockdown or suppression


Denier platforms are fanatically focused on lockdown as an authoritarian instrument. But the term itself is really a useless and divisive misnomer. What do we really mean by the term 'lockdown'? 


Why has it come to be used as a synonym for social imprisonment? 


Why is the focus on 'locking down' people rather than the suppression of a virus?   


Are we really being 'held' in our homes against our wills, rather than partaking in a collectively understood public health exercise? 


And, even if we are being subject to extra forms of authoritarian policing, where does that stand against other forms of authoritarian enforcement? 


What does 'lockdown' usefully tell us about the actual prevalence and rise of authoritarianism? 


Are we to understand that states, governments, armies and other martial forces have not already been subjecting whole swathes of humanity to truly deep forms of authoritarian lockdown? 


Is neoliberalism itself not already a form of mass ideological lockdown? 


Is the brutality that's been going on for generations against black people in the US not a systematic racist and class lockdown? 


Is Israel's siege of Gaza not the very example of an open prison lockdown? 


For black Americans, as for occupied Palestinians, real daily lockdown is being held to the ground with a knee on your neck.


Those on the left who do consistently challenge such authoritarianism, but have also bought into denier 'theory', should be thinking much more deeply about where they place Covid lockdown on that authoritarian scale.  


The harsh policing of Covid 'violations' is certainly concerning. But where does it sit within the wider sphere of corporate control, military enforcement and other deathly authoritarianism? 


Why does this particular expression of authoritarian policing assume such vital significance for Covid deniers?   


The pandemic may be providing new cover for extra-state powers. But the kind of fascist-type lurch we're seeing, most particularly in the US, exists within a much more complex terrain of political-capitalist crisis, including, of course the deepening spectre of climate collapse. 


Why would we even try to confront such massive, existential questions from the narrow issue of Covid lockdown?        


Critical left vigilance is needed over official information, power-grabbing elites and authority at large.


There is, indeed, a vital and fascinating discussion to be had right now about the perilous state of capitalism, whether or how it can survive this crisis moment, and the role of the Davos set in seeking to save it. 


And a key part of such discussion concerns the increasing potential for state repression as failing political elites struggle to offset economic and social dislocation. 


Yet, any searching and informative understanding of such capitalist disorder and authoritarian trends are certainly not coming from the crude and misguided ranks of Covid-deniers.