Over here in Europe, we have heard American presidents use such expressions since the 1960s, as in “the war on poverty” or the “war on drugs” or “the war on terrorism” or more recently in “the war on climate change.” Odd language of this sort seemed to be one of America’s many eccentricities. It also did not escape our notice that none of these would-be wars have ever been won.

The right thing to do now is to abandon these policies swiftly and entirely. The citizens of free countries are able to protect themselves. They can act individually and collectively. They cannot act well when they are locked down. They will greet any honest and competent advice on what they can and should do, upon which they will proceed responsibly, whether alone or in coordination with others.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/04/jrg-guido-hlsmann/a-protest-from-france/

After WWI, the distinguished British economist, Edwin Cannan was asked, somewhat reproachfully, what he did during the terrible war years. He replied: “I protested.” The present article is a similar protest against the current lockdown policies put into place, in most countries of the western world, to confront the current coronavirus pandemic.

Here in France, where I live and work, President Macron had announced on Thursday, March 12^th that all schools and universities would be shut down on the following Monday. On that Monday, then, he appeared on TV again and announced that the entire population would be confined, starting the very next day. The only exceptions would be “necessary” activities, especially medical services, energy production, security, and food production and food distribution. This policy response was apparently coordinated with other European governments. Italy, Germany, Spain, and have applied essentially the same measures.

I think that these policies are understandable and well-intentioned. Like many other commentators, I also think that they are wrongheaded, harmful, and potentially disastrous. An old French proverb says that the way to hell is plastered with good intentions. Unfortunately, it seems as though the present policies are no exception.

My protest concerns the basic ideas that have motivated these policies. They were clearly enunciated by President Macron in his TV address of March 12^th. Here he made three claims that I found most intriguing.

The first one was that his government was going to apply drastic measures to “save lives” because the country was “at war” with the Covid19 virus. He repeatedly used the phrase “we are at war” (nous sommes en guerre) throughout his talk.

Secondly, he insisted right at the very beginning that it was imperative to heed the advice of “the experts.” Monsieur Macron literally said that we all should have to listen and follow the advice of the people “who know” – meaning who know the problem and who know how best to deal with it.

His third major point was this emergency situation had revealed how important it was to enjoy a state-run system of public healthcare. How lucky are we to have such a system and to be able to rely on it, now, in the heat of the war against the virus! Unsurprisingly, the president insinuated that this system would be reinforced in the future.

Now, these are not the private ideas of Monsieur Macron. They are shared by all major governments in the EU and by many governments in other parts of the world. They are also shared by all major political parties here in France, as well as by President Macron’s predecessors. Therefore, the purpose of the following remarks is not to criticise the president of this beautiful country, or his government, or any person in particular. The purpose is to criticise the ideas on which the current policy is based.

I do not have any epidemiological knowledge or expertise. But I do have some acquaintance with questions of social organisation, and I am also intimately familiar with scientific research and with the organisation of scientific research. My protest does not concern the medical assessment of the Covid19 virus and of its propagation. It concerns the public policies designed to confront this problem.

As far as I can see, these policies are based on one extraordinary claim and two fundamental errors. I will discuss them in turn.

An extraordinary claim

The extraordinary claim is that war-time measures such as confinement and shut-downs of commercial activity are justified by the objective to “save lives” which are at risk because of the burgeoning coronavirus pandemic.

Over here in Europe, we have heard American presidents use such expressions since the 1960s, as in “the war on poverty” or the “war on drugs” or “the war on terrorism” or more recently in “the war on climate change.” Odd language of this sort seemed to be one of America’s many eccentricities. It also did not escape our notice that none of these would-be wars have ever been won. Despite the great sums of money that the US government has spent to fight them, despite the new state institutions that were put in place, and despite the great and growing infringements on the economic and civil liberties of ordinary Americans, the problems themselves never went away. Quite to the opposite, they were perpetuated and aggravated.

Most of the European governments have now joined ranks with the Americans and consider that they, too, are at war, with a virus. It is therefore appropriate to insist that this is metaphorical language. A war is a military conflict designed to protect the state – and thus of the very institution that is commonly held to guarantee the lives and liberties of the citizens – against malicious attack from an outside power, usually another state. In a war, the very existence of the state is under attack. Clearly, this is not so in the present case.

Moreover, there can be no war with a virus, simply because a virus does not act. At most, therefore, the word “war” can be used here metaphorically. It then serves as a cover and justification of infringements of the very civil and economic liberties that the state is supposed to protect.

Now, in the traditional conception, the state is supposed to protect and promote the common good. Protecting the lives of the citizens might therefore, arguably, justify massive state interventions. But then the very first questions should be: how many lives are at stake? Government epidemiologists, in their most dire estimates – the factual basis is still not solidly established – have considered that about ten percent of the infected persons might be in need of hospital care and that a large part of those would die. It was also known, by mid-March already, that this mortal threat in the great majority of cases concerned very old people, the average Covid19 victim being around 80 years of age.

The claim that wartime measures, which threaten the economic livelihood of the great majority of the population and also the lives of the poorest and most fragile people of the world economy – a point on which I will say more below – in order to save the lives of a few, most of whom are close to death anyway, is an extraordinary claim, to say the least. Read the rest of this entry »