How God has had a great Pandemic

 I don’t believe in God. At least I don’t believe that there is a creator, master controller and judge.

 

I do however find value in a more abstract idea of God. The idea helps me to remember just how insignificant I am and we are and at the same time how powerful.

 

We all sit at the centre of our own little worlds. Those little worlds can seem very big and very important – after all they are all we have. The reality is that I am a tiny speck in history. Viewed as God would, with an overview of all things across all time, I am insignificant. Indeed we collectively are insignificant, when we think about the span of history, the scale of the planet and the scope of possible universes.

 

Not only am I pathetically trivial, I am also hopelessly ignorant. I know nothing, compared with what there potentially is to know. I know a lot more than I did last year, but it is still nothing. That realisation is also true for humanity collectively. We are fondling around in the dark. We know orders of magnitude more than we did a century ago, but that only tells us that in a century’s time we will look back on today and scoff at our ignorance. And even in a century, or a millennium, we will still have barely started on learning what there is to learn.

 

But as well as being small I am also mighty. I am a miracle. How can all those billions of cells be configured exactly as they must be and achieve exactly what is required every second to allow me to breathe, grow, procreate, or think? I am a miracle. You are a miracle. And together we constitute a much bigger miracle and create unimaginable miracles. Indeed that is what we do, all the time, even if those miracles are a tiny fraction of what we could conceivably achieve.

 

I find this God helpful, not least because I don’t have to stretch to believe anything. When I remember this God, I can stay somewhat humble. I am more curious, and judge less. It reminds me of what really matters: love, kindness and thankfulness, as well as what is possible if we work in teams. It also helps me to accept fate and chance: this God has a wicked sense of humour.

 

The pandemic has shown this God in a good light, and also might allow for a legacy with some silver linings. It has been less good for some of those trusting in a more traditional God. If God really is a master controller, how can He cause such suffering? If God really does have a chosen race or people, how come the pandemic has afflicted everybody?

 

Humanity has become so arrogant that we can think we are immune from things like pandemics. Of course we are not. We know nothing. We experiment with the natural world day after day, year after year. Surely things will go wrong from time to time. Most of us live with fresh water out of the tap and constant electricity and phone connection: we didn’t used to have such things, they are not rights, we might lose them at any time and many people don’t have such luxuries. We must be thankful, and humble, and cautious. I am optimistic that one positive legacy of the pandemic is a greater acceptance of the risks of climate change, and more concerted action.

 

There has been some schadenfreude in observing how the pandemic has brought down the mighty from their seats. Various clerical soothsayers have been left looking rather dumb. Any nation that has declared itself beyond the pandemic has been struck down soon afterwards, especially those that claimed victory through their own brilliance. Modi is the latest victim of this. Trump would have won the election but for the pandemic, and of course it felt so fitting when he was struck down himself.

 

But Sometimes I think I know better as well, and it is good to be taught some tough lessons. It pains me to acknowledge some pandemic heroes among people I typically despise. Trump himself had two big calls to make as president. With the first, sounding the alarm in January 2020, he failed. The second call was to mobilise maximum resources behind vaccination, and he did that brilliantly, to the benefit of all Americans and ultimately of all humanity. All the rest, the behaviour we scoffed at daily, in practice made little difference. Blue states and red states were affected more or less to the same extent despite their wildly different approaches.

 

Boris Johnson, another personal victim, also made great calls about the vaccines, and I also applaud his signalled, phased reopening. That contrasts with Wallensky and Fauci over here. According to those experts, one day two weeks ago I could safely do almost nothing, and the next day I could do almost anything. Both statements could not be right. It is no surprise that we end up believing neither.

 

Finally, Netanyahu, a man not beyond starting a war to save his skin for a few months, made great calls with the vaccine and his passport programme, which served to nudge sceptics to take the shot. Why others seem so reluctant to follow his lead escapes me.

 

While on the subject of uncomfortable heroes, how about Xi Jinping? That picture of thousands frolicking in a swimming pool in Wuhan last summer is testament to a brilliant programme to control the virus, and must give pause to those of us convinced that our way is always superior. The truth is always more nuanced.

 

There have been many other heroes it has been more comfortable to get behind. Dr. Leana Wen has been clear and brave throughout, including recently when she berated the CDC for their slow relaxation of advice. Tsai Ing Wen and her Taiwanese leadership team were the only ones who really reacted quickly enough at the start. Adar Poonawalla of India’s Serum Institute worked on vaccines before he had funding, to the benefit of all of us.

 

The Economist, bless its heart, has been outstanding throughout, including last week when it published a credible model for the true scale of the pandemic. That recalled an interview at the start of the pandemic with Bill Gates. Gates calmly predicted that the pandemic would probably kill 10 million or more, over 3-5 years, concentrated in the poor world. He was spot on, but few listened, and those who listened and could have acted did nothing helpful. Do we learn? Gates recently published a book with a practical plan to alleviate climate change. The Guardian, amongst others, was rather scathing, its main complaint being that Gates is rich.

 

Gates’ foundation shows the sort of miracles humanity is capable if we only pull together. The pandemic has also spurred wonderful innovation, not least via the vaccines. It is wonderful, but also sad, that it took a pandemic in the rich world to accelerate development of a malaria vaccine. We have all changed behaviour, and have tamed the flu as a result. 

 

The pandemic also accelerated advances in telemedicine and IT enabled education. It has also been partly responsible for a significant positive shift in prevailing economic policy, finally casting aside the damaging Thatcher/Reagan era.

 

So my God has achieved many miracles at the level of humanity over the time of the pandemic. But the personal miracles are wonderful as well. Who has not woken up one or more days of the last fifteen months with a tell tale deep cough, and wondered if the end might be nigh? I certainly did, and, horrible though that experience is, it does help me to remember to love and be kind (at least occasionally), to be thankful, and to savour all the miracles offered in my life, taking nothing for granted ever again (until I do). Last Saturday I sang once again in public performance while not wearing a mask. What a joy that was.

Learning Discernment

 I am still sometimes troubled by the 70 million conundrum, namely that last November 70 million American adults voted for Donald Trump to be their president, despite the overwhelming evidence of his rank unsuitability for the role. It is discomforting to consider that so many could be so misled; 70 million is not a small number of human beings, a cadre that will largely have completed a high school education and have a lot of influence over the functioning of an effective society.

 

The classic argument is that the nation has divided into bubbles that are almost mutually exclusive. Some of us read the New York Times, watch PBS and have a Facebook feed populated by thoughts from similar people to ourselves. Others read the New York Post, watch Fox News and reside in a wholly different bubble.

 

This helps, but it is not enough. How can so many people fall for such nonsense? True, they don’t all believe all of it. In congress, nobody believes the election was stolen. Heck, Trump does not believe it himself. But Liz Cheney shows what happens if you tell the truth. In the same way, not all of the 70 million think that most Mexicans are rapists and all the other claptrap. Some accept the nonsense as part of an overall package that feels better than the alternative.

 

But quite a few believe it all. Whatever bubble they are living in, how can they so lack any discernment?

 

My sister, as often happens, said something interesting last week when I posed this question. She said that perhaps it was not surprising when there is so much else we are expected to believe. Her reference point was God.

 

From an early age most of us are led to believe that the world has a single creator, and that this creator will judge all of us at the end of our lives and send us either to paradise or hell. In some religions we will be reincarnated, moving up or down a perpetual league table each time. Various ancient books have been bequeathed by an unlikely series of prophets, not just telling us what is right and wrong, but more dangerous stuff about one race being chosen over another and the need to treat clergy as if representatives of the divine. The pope is infallible and a descendent of St. Peter. That wafer I am handed on a Sunday morning really is the body of Christ. Heck, God even appointed the Queen.

 

St Thomas on Fifth Avenue not only offers wonderful music, but I also enjoy many of the homilies. I remember one from Christmastime a few years ago. A rather honest homilist shared that many times he had doubted the literal truth of the virgin birth. He added that the logic he used to assuage his doubt was to consider everything else that he believed. Against all of this, a virgin birth feels not just possible but almost humdrum.

 

My sister is on to something. Set against typical religious beliefs, conspiracy theories are eminently believable. If Moses and his army really did walk across the red sea, surely a few thousand officials could easily conspire to steal an election, and a paedophile ring probably is being operated by the Clintons from a Washington pizza joint.

 

Think about the reasons we choose to believe our various religious doctrines. People we respect, starting with our parents, taught us to. Most of our friends believe. We want to fit in, and don’t want to be discriminated against. It is too much hassle to change. It makes us feel good. We don’t believe all of it but the overall package seems better than the alternative. Lots of the other tenets that help us live our lives might fall apart if we challenged this belief.

 

I think the list above is very similar to the list of reasons in the heads of the 70 million. If we think about it this way, perhaps it is easier to understand how the 70 million came about.

 

It also engenders other humble thoughts. If I lived in Wyoming, I would probably be among the 70 million. If I had lived in Germany in the 1930’s I would probably have been a Nazi. If I lived in Mississippi and had money in the 19^thcentury I would probably have employed slaves. If I needed a house in a nice area in the 1950’s I certainly would not have condemned redlining.

 

It also makes me think of other things we are led to take on trust. Do nuclear weapons really keep us safer, and is it justifiable to go to war to stop one country developing them when our own country has them already and some of our allies have too even if treaties say they should not? Is lifetime heterosexual marriage and the nuclear family the natural way of things, even now we live for forty years after our kids have grown up? Is maximising work a good goal for humanity? Is it defensible that I could move to live relatively easily almost anywhere, but that most of humanity could not choose to live in my country? Do I really deserve my status, even though 90% of it came from having wealthy, white parents in a developed country and 90% of the rest because I happened to inherit an intelligent brain and few physical disabilities? Did most Russians really want to destroy me, is communism an ideology seeking to rule the world, is capitalism and what passes for democracy always better, and is it unreasonable for the Chinese to challenge a “rules based” world order when others define all the “rules”? Is euthanasia such a terrible idea, given that 50% of all health care resources are spent keeping very old people alive?

 

Functioning society seems to rely on many other doubtful premises. Can I trust my bank? Should I hoard gasoline because a pipeline went down? How can it be that yesterday it was unsafe for me to sing without a mask and being far from others and in an airy space, whereas today I can blast away without any such limitations?

 

Viewed this way it becomes easier to understand the 70 million. I can also understand how I can act as a part of the smug elite, imposing dubious beliefs on others while pretending I am more enlightened.

 

We can also see how far humanity has still to travel. Than be an optimistic realisation, since surely with education and global thinking we can unlock so many possibilities. Or it can be depressing, when we realise just how inadequate our education has been to prepare us for life.

 

I can see a space for a high school course on the subject of discernment. In the olden days posh kids studied classics and philosophy – this would be a more practical approach to those subjects. Modules could be designed to cover estimation, causation, research and media, scepticism and dialectics.

 

It is interesting to note that the only societies to have made meaningful progress down this path are in Scandinavia and perhaps the Netherlands. These tend to be small, rich countries where the church has little influence. Here is it harder to build feelings of being a chosen people or a militaristic philosophy.

 

It is also easy to see the barriers to such a radical education. Society needs collective assumptions to be stable. Who would lose if basic tenets were challenged? I could start with the wealthy, the church, the military and others with power to defend. Those are the groups that tend to set the agenda.        

The Future of Work

 A recent special in The Economist painted a notably optimistic picture about the future of work. Largely limited in its scope to developed countries, it pointed to a number of trends and data points to support a theory that before the pandemic things were getting better for most workers and that the pandemic, while disastrous for many, might accelerate some even more beneficial changes. By and large I found the report quite compelling, and a few of its insights very helpful.

 

One starting point of the report was to look at employment trends in the years immediately before the pandemic. In most industrialised countries unemployment was low and falling, real wages were rising at all levels but especially at the bottom of the wage ladder, and job satisfaction was increasing.

 

While this is true and encouraging, one of my main problems with the report is its choice of starting point, a favourite trick of all statisticians wishing to make an argument. Inequality was indeed falling in 2016-19, but this can be as a minor correction after years of rising inequality. Whether you start around the financial crisis or go back as far as 1980, it becomes less tenable to point to a gain of a percent or two as a triumph for unbridled capitalism and trickle down theory.

 

Even so, we on the left have to acknowledge that capitalism is the force that creates innovation that leads to opportunity for many and the chance for more fulfilling lives for most of us. It is galling to admit the truth that the best recent years for the low-waged came under Trump and May/Johnson and despite regressive tax policies.

 

To its credit, the report does acknowledge that leftist policies may have played a part in the revival, notably minimum wages, long derided as job killers on the right but now accepted as smart by all but the most rabid.

 

The Economist report discusses automation extensively, referring to the many times in history that pessimists have predicted the collapse of employment prospects owing to various technological advances, most recently AI and robots. We are reminded that new generations machines do indeed remove jobs, but that so far new jobs have been created elsewhere in the economy to compensate. Sometimes the new jobs are made possible by the machines. Usually the new jobs are more fulfilling than the jobs they replace.

 

If we were not so wedded to the idea of work as always a good thing and full employment a key policy goal, then I think we would be able to celebrate automation even more. Who wants to spend forty hours of every week flipping burgers or stacking boxes? In earlier days, a lot of work was downright unhealthy, such as mining, and led generations to early graves.

 

The only reason people flip burgers is to earn enough money to live a decent life. Well, can we not let a machine flip the burgers and either find different work, divide the remaining work more equally or find alternative compensation for those displaced?

 

The same argument can be used to defend offshoring. Trade is all about specialisation. If workers in a less developed country can improve their life with work that is no longer viable in a developed one, then everybody can gain.

 

The report is clear that the pandemic has been a catastrophe in any aspects of work. Many lost good jobs and are still out of work. Some are fearful of returning to work or have been partially disabled by long covid. Many others have been forced to continue working at great risk to their health, and indeed many have died.

 

There is also a widened cleavage in society between those forced to work at dangerous jobs and those now able to be well paid working safely in their homes, many of whom now rarely see their less fortunate brethren. Historically such shifts have presaged civil unrest.

 

But the report finds evidence that the good jobs have improved. People are saved commutes and many like a hybrid experience. The trend for improving job satisfaction has accelerated. A hypothesis is that the pandemic have forced manages to do a better job, being more diligent about communication and engagement. Seeing each other in our homes may have humanised us too.

 

Taking a longer perspective, I would also argue that many lower paid jobs have improved as well. On the left we love to hate Amazon, with its pay by the hour and defined expectations. But Amazon pays fairly and clear expectations are good. Keeping a job with Amazon does not require accepting leers from peers or other abuse from a boss or having to do the well-connected long-serving guy’s shift for him, or accepting cash so the bosses can fiddle the taxman.

 

Another radical shift I would advocate is that all jobs be like gig jobs. We can all negotiate our hours week-by-week and year by year. We would not have any tenure, but could also have more autonomy over our careers. This would help people build families and be better for women and working pensioners.

 

A gig approach would also be a great way to engineer mobility. One issue in today’s economy is that people struggle to move quickly enough where the jobs are. People will not risk moving when in a unionised, tenured, protected job, but are in the wrong place with the wrong skills when that job vanishes. The report highlights Denmark, where a tough regime with low employee tenure is matched by generous support for the jobless seeking new work.

 

The Economist reportalso comments on public policy. Even in the few weeks since publication, its main claim has been vindicated. The claim is that the pandemic has opened up possibilities that had been closed for forty years. The vindication has come in the series of transformative policies now with a chance of progress in the US congress. The cash payments and the infrastructure plans have drawn most comment and are welcome enough, but for me the biggest news is elsewhere. The child tax credit, family leave and subsidised childcare and boost for carers would move the US at least some of the way towards European good practice and might signal a welcome new normal in family and welfare policy.

 

Excited as I am about this, part of me wonders why Clinton and Obama did so little. With one party committed to an absence of government, the inaction of Clinton and Obama has led to forty years of regression. The pandemic is part of the answer, because it has awakened the general population and spurred innovation by economists. But another enabler has been the era of ultra-low interest rates, making debt less of a constraint to central bankers. It is neat, because in a way the corporates and bankers have been hoist by their own petard. Having created a debt-lenient environment for their own benefit, central bankers have belatedly caught up.

 

I do wish the Biden team were rather more imaginative. To be fair, they probably only have two years to make a difference. But old-fashioned protectionism, support for restrictive unions and hurling cash at sectors is not ideal. Much of the cash for the care sector may be wasted or purloined by suppliers. I still believe Reimbursement for Care would work better. It would target precisely the same goals, but use the market and individual incentive to drive radically improved outcomes.

 

Despite my reservations, I was encouraged by the Economistreport. Perhaps the generation entering the workforce really do have fulfilling careers to look forward to, and not just the privileged few who can saunter through college and into protected professions. Such progress is not before time.