'ON CERTAINTY' in the Coronavirus

 On Being Cock-Sure about Covid-19
by Brian Bamford

SHORTLY before he died, Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote:  "I do philosophy now like an old woman who is always mislaying something and having to look for it again: now her spectacles, now her keys."*

This humility of the philosopher contrasts with the terrifying certainty that is being thrust upon us daily by various forces from the political left and the right.
Yet it fairly describes the dilemma facing governments at the moment over the coronavirus pandemic.

Today I have had two e-mails in my in-box:   one a Special Issue (March 2020) of Labour Internationalist, containing a dramatic statement dated 24 March 2020 on the Covid-19 pandemic by the Organising Committee for the Reconstitution of the Fourth International (OCRFI), and another from 'Defend Our NHS' is now confidently declaring:  'The coronavirus letter you’ve just been sent by Johnson is a lie.'

And the Labour Internationalist with bold determined conviction in a subtitle declares:  'The failed capitalist system and the governments that serve its interests:  they are guilty and responsible for the growth of the coronavirus pandemic!'

'Wishful Thinking'

It is not only the Marxists who are brimming over with confident conclusions, in that case catostrophic conclusions, but we all like to embrace wishful thinking.  Tim Harford in his recent column in the Financial Times warned:  'Wishful thinking is a powerful thing', and he went on to write:  'When I read about a new disease modelling study from the University of Oxford, I desperately wanted to believe.  It is the most prominent exploration of the "tip of the iceberg hypothesis", which suggests that the majority of coronavirus infections are so mild as to have passed unrecorded by the authorities and perhaps even by the people infected.'

If true?  That could mean that many of us have already had the virus and have probably developed some degree of immunity to it.  'Herd Immunity' was the concept that in the earlier stages of this crisis the government seemed to be following.

Yesterday, Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, an epidemiologist Sydney, Australia, wrote an essay in ScienceAlert on this approach:
'It's hard to predict things in a pandemic.  The situation changes so much on a daily basis that everything you thought you knew last week is wrong by the end of the day.  Things are changing so fast that even the solid certainties that we thought we were sure of – the reproductive rate, the symptoms of the infection, the key to making a good quarantine – are suspect and need to be re-evaluated.'

Despite all the bluster of the cock-sure political lobbyists in the current crisis, there are still a lack of reliable facts and data to form firm conclusions.

Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz continued:
'But among all this uncertainty, I can say for sure that there is one thing that I would never have seen coming: the discussion about herd immunity. It is so out of the blue that the first time a journalist asked my opinion on whether it was effective for the coronavirus, I literally laughed out loud because I assumed they were joking.'

About 15-years ago another epidemiologist, Prof. Ioannidis, published a study entitled 'Why Most Published Research Findings Are False'.  He wrote on March 17th, this year, that Covid-19 'might be a one-in-a-century evidence fiasco', because some infections are being missed, and we have no idea how many.  Consequently we have no idea how deadly Covid-19 actually is.

Hence, there is still no certainty to how things will turn out with the pandemic.

'The will to certitude'

Wittgenstein's 'On Certainty' was a text that can plausibly be interpreted as an anthem against the human will to certitude and mastery of the world.  Most obviously, it reminds us that uncertainty is an intimate, everyday matter.  There is a personal dimension of the experience of not knowing exactly who we are, what our world is and where both we and our world are heading.  Big talk of global spikes and planetary spectres of uncertainty is one thing.  Daily living with uncertainty is another. 

This is why particularly we shouldn't be surprise if the Marxists around Labour Internationalist want to declare a forthcoming catastrophy in the making owing to capitalist government's handling of the pandemic.  Or that a lobby group for the NHS want to use the current crisis as part of its campaign strategy to get more funds.  

There’s a French proverb that runs rien n’est sûr que la chose incertaine (nothing’s certain but uncertainty).  This could easily be a motto for democracy.  Considered as a political form and as a whole way of life, democracy is like no other.  The totalitarian or authoritarian mind craves the comfort of a political line that resolve the uncertainties.

But how do the uncertainties of our age compare with the great religious turmoil of the late medieval and early modern period, masterfully analysed by Jean Delumeau: the fears of damnation and death mobilised by the church and compounded by episodes of military violence, famine, disease and the widespread belief in witchcraft and other forces of magic?

The unknown consequences of the current crisis could well give rise to political delusions or even religious expectations.  We could anticipate that uncertainty is fickle and capricious tormentor of the human condition and conviction.

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*  Nothing is forever. Uncertainty, the twin of certainty, cannot be banished from human affairs. Not even taxes and death are certain, we could say.  Although Wittgenstein doesn’t put things this way, truth claims, paradoxically, stir up doubts about truth.  Truth is a contaminant of truth.  Its yearning for certainty calls into question things that are taken for granted.  Nothing is certain but the uncertainty of the unforeseen.  Hence Wittgenstein appeals for greater humility about what we know, or suppose we know.