Who Counts in Covid: Abbott and the politics of acceptable losses

 

This week Abbott delivered a speech at the Policy Exchange think tank in London in which he laid bare his ideas on the relationship between public health policy and the economy during the pandemic. It's become an increasingly pointed debate; how should the loss of lives be weighed against the crippling impact of economic downturn on lived experience? How many deaths are too many? Which types of deaths are acceptable? This is commonly positioned as a debate between capitalism and humanitarianism, with both sides claiming its approach has benefits for the other. Abbott, in typical style, was not subtle; the economy is suffering (as are young people) so let's think twice about how many elderly people really need to be protected by public health measures. His view was reported by the press as the blunt force weapon that it was.

 

Perhaps the most offensive reflection in Abbott's speech is that this generation of young people complaining about lockdown should be compared with young soldiers in World War 2 who fought for Australia's freedom.  I'm not pro war, but even I find this corollary repugnant. He suggests that young people prepared to argue against or defy lock down are defending Australia's freedoms. What Abbott fails to mention is that these very same young people are unlikely to be the sacrificial lambs of the Covid-19 war; it's the parents, grandparents, teachers, and elderly loved ones to whom they pass the disease that will make the 'ultimate sacrifice'. In the same breath, mind you, Abbott also argues that these freedom fighting young people will become conditioned to welfare, unable to function as contributing citizens. The irony is stark; and his appropriation of young people to make any point of preference, morally shallow.

 

There has been an uncomfortable and bubbling public debate around the expendability of elderly lives in the current circumstances. These debates are often dressed up as more generous public concerns; but their logic is ill formed and their motives poorly disguised. For example, we are asked, what about all the extra people committing suicide? The pandemic has certainly caused significant mental suffering; financial pressures, relationship pressures, existential pressures. Increased suicides are noted during significant financial downturns, like the Great Depression. But what is the proposition for today? That the deaths of innumerable people over 60 are warranted to prevent an increase in suicides? In this equation, is the life of an elderly person worth less than the life of someone younger who takes their own life? These kinds of either/or propositions are rendered even more irrelevant by their hypothetical nature; at least in Victoria, the suicide rate has not increased since Covid-19.

 

Defence of opening the economy up is also often underpinned by a view that elderly people suffer from co-morbidities; and that the number of deaths from Covid-19 are far exaggerated. The nuts and bolts of this argument are, old people die, maybe some of them aren't dying of Covid-19, let's open up the economy. Most elderly people have co-morbidities - so is the argument that we should count none of these? They're also arguably closer to death than people who are younger; so should they not count for this reason too? I have no doubt there are some instances where elderly people have passed away for more than one reason; however to my mind, that's not the issue at hand. Did Covid-19 take their life earlier, or cause another ailment to bring about their death earlier than otherwise might have occurred? If so, then Covid-19 is the cause of death. To me, arguing that such deaths should count 'less' smacks of the shocking eugenics arguments often levelled after series of deaths in minority communities - Aboriginal deaths in custody; African American deaths; deaths of the drug affected in the absence of safe injecting rooms or health facilities; the deaths of women and children living in remote communities; homeless deaths - 'Come on - they probably would have died anyway' or, 'they would have died eventually.'

 

For those concerned about the mental health impacts of a poor economy, spare a thought for the mental health of those who have lost loved ones to Covid-19; relatives who cannot hold loved ones, be by their sides, comfort them. For the health professionals and their families watching the suffering of the ill and dying every day; in circumstances that are being directly mediated by public lockdown policy. A final red-herring argument that gets trotted out in support of opening the economy up (and not worrying too much about the elderly death rate) is the, 'this is just like the flu/look at last year's death rates/it's not as bad as it's being made out to be' argument. Some widespread reading, and a look at the Covid-19 stats in Victoria's recent aged care infection debacle, puts to bed that argument.

 

Ultimately, what proves most difficult to reconcile in Abbott's speech is his purported 'right to life' perspective (which includes bans on contraception, abortion, and life saving stem cell research) with a view about letting elderly people 'just die'. In the US, this hypocrisy takes the particular form of supporting the death penalty and nurturing a gun rights culture. Does the church in Australia share Abbott's view that the elderly should be left to languish to Covid-19? Who knows. But Abbott's inept use of a military analogy - 'defending freedoms' - illustrates his desperation to sound like the statesman he is not; 'sacrificing' the elderly in a kind of ‘survival of the fittest’ paradigm has no place in a humanitarian society. These are the very groups we should be using our collective rights to protect.

George Floyd, race, and Australia: The need for urgent change

The image of George Floyd gasping for breath is devastatingly brutal; it is frightening in its casual and public execution. Where do we start in articulating the number of repulsive elements to this murder? First, that a white police officer felt such a sense of impunity as to brazenly murder an already restrained man of color in public. Equally disturbing is that three of the officer’s colleagues participated. Floyd was dying slowly and at no point did anyone intervene. The public has generally expressed outrage at the video and consider the officer was in the wrong; they agree that racism is wrong and literally killing people. However it is our understandings of racism, and how to confront it, that causes a divergence in views. Some believe there are only a limited number of really hardcore racists, and that while we should weed them out, #notallwhitepeople are bad. This view holds that racism is limited to a number of abhorrent, overt, occasional acts perpetrated by a few ‘bad apples’. This way of thinking absolves most white people from the uncomfortable truths of racism. It is also extraordinarily self-serving for white people to believe that Floyd’s murder – and the murders of millions of other people of color – can be consigned to the actions of a few ‘bad apples’.

Racism discriminates against particular skin color and identities; it rewards some and punishes others. It is present in things we say and think; in systems of government; in community organisations. Racism is a system that operates in small and large ways across all facets of society. The small ways count just as much as the big ways, because the small ways are often invisible; cumulative; pervasive; and inflict death by a thousand cuts. It is experienced by people of color in their interactions with health systems, schools, social welfare, and democracy. It is expressed in comments of hate, behaviours of avoidance and exclusion, and through placing cumulative and irrational barriers in front of people of color. Racism is a form of systemic gaslighting that causes those who are its targets to believe that somehow they need to try harder, be less problematic; that they should reduce themselves and not make a ‘fuss’.

Racism is not some intangible experience that cannot be pinned down. It is lived and it is real. In the US, currently more than100,000 people have died from Covid-19, a disproportionate number of whom are African American, LatinX and other people of color. These are people whose suffocation from Covid-19 has been enabled by the broader system of suffocation in which they live; people whose health indicators and access to health care are worse than for the general population. People who work disproportionately in service industries and who are at the front lines of exposure, with less opportunity to self-protect. People who are more likely to be incarcerated, unemployed, undereducated, and homeless as a consequence of systemic racism. While George Floyd was suffocated to death in a matter of minutes by a representative of law ‘enforcement’, tens of thousands of people of color are literally suffocating from the arm of racism that exposes them to poverty, ill health, and now – under a President who does not consider Covid-19 to be a national emergency – death by pandemic.

It is interesting to observe some Australians looking across the Pacific, and opining that our race politics is not like ‘theirs’. However the color blindness of white privilege is not limited to the US. Australia has failed to act on almost all of the 330 odd recommendations from two commissions into Aboriginal deaths in custody (1987 and 1991). According to the Guardian Australia, nearly 40% of deaths in custody between August 2018 and 2019 arose from a lack of medical care being provided. David Dungay’s death – and his words, ‘I can’t breathe’ – are a chilling reminder that our own race politics bear a harrowing resemblance in some ways to those of the US.

There are still very strong taboos against calling out racism in white Australia. The booing tirade against Adam Goodes is an excellent case in point. In speaking about ‘The Final Quarter’, a documentary about Goodes’ treatment as a footballer, commentator Waleed Aly noted, ‘Australia is very generally a tolerant society, until its minorities demonstrate that they don’t know their place. And the moment someone acts as though they’re not a mere supplicant, then we lose our minds’. As Goodes matured in his football career, he embarked on a journey to discover more about his Aboriginal history, his sense of identity, and the operations of racism in Australia. His sin was to call out the racist comments of a young white girl attending the football, despite explaining that it wasn’t her fault and that her license to speak such words had been shaped by institutions around her. However large segments of the football attending public would only tolerate a version of Goodes that kept his place, kept his identity separate from his world of work, and who didn’t commit the ultimate sin in Australia; of ‘politicising’ football by bringing identity politics onto the field.

Floyd’s murder is utterly confronting, however bringing to justice the ‘bad apple’ police is only one aspect of the solution. What kind of police force enables and empowers four men to perpetrate this act? It’s the same kind of attitude that enabled New Yorker Amy Cooper to call the police on an unarmed and unthreatening black man in Central Park, believing she could act with impunity. It is the same kind of culture where more than 400 Aboriginal deaths in custody since 1991 have resulted in zero charges ever being laid against police officers in Australia. For people of color and indigenous peoples, racism is constant, ever present, around every corner. And while it may be predictable in its presence, the random nature with which it asserts and inserts itself in everyday lives, as it did to George Floyd, wreaks a perpetual state of trauma, havoc, and self preservation. As white people, we have an obligation to think critically, to examine our actions (and inactions) in an ongoing way, and to check our privilege; it’s a poison tree that grows bad apples, and we are responsible for the rot at its foundations.