The Black plague

When it comes to governments' response to the COVID pandemic, there is plenty of scope for civil disagreement. We can all come up with ways that our local jurisdiction, whether at the national or sub-national level, could have done a better job. With the benefit of hindsight, we might conclude that an earlier, much tougher but very short lockdown would have arrested the spread of the disease, allowing us to rely on localized measures and shielding the vulnerable once the peak had passed. You might have a different view, but it should be something we can address rationally.

What we probably can't discuss civilly, however, is the whole idea that the pandemic is some kind of a hoax or giant conspiracy -- the "scamdemic".  Conspiracy theories are always hard to credit because it is an observable fact that people are terrible at keeping secrets: someone is always going to blurt the story out, usually for personal gain or glory. In the particular case of COVID, there is the added question of cui bono?  If there is a giant conspiracy under way, who is benefiting from it? 

All of which brings us to this article from Conrad Black, which manages in remarkable fashion to combine reasoned discussion of policy alternatives with a fully-fleshed out version of the conspiracy theory, including an answer to the cui bono question. 

Black's cavalier treatment of the statistics related to the pandemic is bizarre: if you don't believe that all the deaths reported as being caused by COVID are in fact virus related, then to what do you attribute the hundreds of thousands of "excess deaths" being reported around the world? The latest figure for "excess deaths" in the US is actually larger than the number of deaths attributed to COVID, which seems to suggest the virus death toll is actually being under-counted.  That said, however, Black's preference for targeted measures to protect the vulnerable, together with mandatory mask wearing, is clearly a better policy choice than a full lockdown. 

So far so good, but now Black goes full-on conspiracy theorist. Let's hear it in his own words:

The incumbent administration was practically certain of re-election prior to the outbreak of the COVID-19 crisis. The Democratic opposition saw a path to victory by agitating for a gigantic economic shutdown, which would lead to an economic recession that could then be portrayed as a needless depression generated by incompetent public-health management on the part of the Trump administration, even though the administration was following its opponents’ advice in shutting down, and is bringing the nation back to work more quickly than had been thought possible. The U.S. economic growth rate was 32 per cent in the third quarter and the United States has vastly outperformed all other advanced countries in the world since coming out of lockdown.

So much is factually wrong there. Opinion polls prior to the pandemic certainly did not suggest that Trump was "practically certain of re-election". The administration has never followed its opponents' advice in shutting down -- to the extent that there has been any effective response to the virus in the US, it has been at the State and local level. Lastly, despite Black's attempt to exaggerate the recovery by annualizing the third quarter growth rate*, it simply is not true that the US economy has "vastly outperformed". Since he now lives in Canada, you might think that Black would know that the True North has recouped a significantly larger proportion of the jobs lost in the early stages of the pandemic than the US has.

Still, at least we now know, courtesy of Conrad Black, the answer to that maddening cui bono question. It's the Democratic Party, of course!  Anyone surprised? 

* Actually he has done more than annualize it!  The advance estimate for this measure is not due for release until October 29, so it is not clear what number His Lordship is using here. Would that be "fake news"?