If the Covid-19 epidemic has proved one thing, it’s that there is such a thing as society. A French opinion poll shows people valuing health and the environment far more than individualistic concerns such as spending power and law and order or that hobby horse of conventional economists, the deficit and public debt.
The epidemic is the principal worry of 76% of respondents, the health service comes second at 42% and global warming 33%.
Spending power comes next at 31%, the deficit and debt 24%, unemployment only scores 18% and the hard right’s favourite dog whistle, law and order, a mere 16%.
Of course, all this can change. There could be an orgy of self-indulgence once the first wave of the virus is over.
But there are signs that some lessons have been well implanted in the public mind. The importance of the health service seems to be solidly established. Combating the virus has shown us how interdependent we are, that if one person is infected, that is a threat to the rest of us, that we can’t afford to say “Fuck you, I’m virus-proof!” and that we must act collectively to prevent its spread.
But it remains to be seen whether people will be ready to pay for public services.
Because, frankly, if you’re applauding healthworkers every evening but voted for politicians because they promised to cut your taxes, donning sack-cloth and ashes would be a more appropriate gesture.
The right’s greatest ideological victory has been to convince large swathes of the middle and working classes that they have a community of interest with the rich in cutting taxes. They have succeeded in making this the electorally decisive question in Europe and the US.
They have done so with the complicity of the social democrats, who “realistically” took fright at being labelled tax-and-spenders and swallowed economic liberalism whole. Even the real left usually dodges the question, because it is, indeed, difficult to convince people that they should sacrifice the immediate pleasure of disposable income to the social investment in public services.
Of course, the pillaging of society by the rich – in tax dodges, soaring dividend payouts, huge CEO salaries etc – has to be reversed. But that won’t be enough. Public services can’t be maintained and expanded without ordinary people contributing to their finances. And it’s important that we all understand that these services are our common property, that we invest in. You can’t have socialism – or even welfare capitalism – without that.
Nor can we save the planet without accepting some radical changes to our daily lives.
The crazed SUV-driving hordes demonstrating against lockdown in the US will fight against this. But it is encouraging that they are a small minority. On the other hand, they have guns.
And it remains to be seen whether today’s epidemo-Keynesians will revert to free-economy form once the crisis has subsided and whether there will be popular mobilisation to prevent them doing so.
As Donald Trump suggests that people might be injected with disinfectant to fend off Covid-19, there have been disappointments in the search for a cure.
Researchers in China found the experimental antiviral drug remdesivir didn’t improve patients’ conditions or reduce the amount of virus in their bloodstream, according to the Financial Times.
And a French drugs watchdog has found 54 cases of serious heart problems due to the use of hydroxochloroquine, the anti-malaria drug championed by Marseille doctor Didier Raoult and touted as a possible cure by Trump. There were four sudden or unexplained deaths and a total of 96 cases of undesirable side-effects, the Centre régional de pharmacovigilance (CRPV) in Nice reports.
France’s Covid-19 death toll now stands at 21,856, 516 in the last 24 hours. 29,219 people are in hospital, 522 fewer than the previous day, and 5,053 are in intensive care, down 165. 42,088 people have been discharged from hospital, 1,413 of them yesterday.
