This originally appeared on my political blog at https://politicalmusingsofkayleen.blogspot.com/2021/10/extraordinary-devaluation-of-human-life.html.
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Recently a school Principal in my state was suspended for refusing to comply with a COVID-19 pandemic management directive to adopt only home schooling - he offered both home schooling and at the school for some situations. His reasoning was concern for the mental health of the students - which is a valid concern. However, it also clearly underestimated the risk of COVID-19, and led to an outbreak that put lives at risk, and helped to keep us in lockdown - which is damaging to other people's mental health.
Yes, he had genuine concern for his students wellbeing, but I consider he was too focused on mental health and didn't realise (or didn't accept) the extent of the actual risks to physical health of the pandemic.
COVID-denying conspiracy fantasists could also have contributed to that. In turn, those fantasists may be genuine in their fantasies, but they are deluded, and are actively putting lives at risk - as is shown by the infections amongst police and union officials who were affected by the fantasists' sometimes violent protests (including the CHILDREN of those who had to attend).
They do not have ANY offsetting concerns about anything, as the school Principal does.
And now we come to the federal neoliberal government, who seem to have been, IMO, resisting taking adequate action on managing the pandemic because they want to force the economy to reopen. They know that the modelling predicts will occur, but they seem to have a war time mentality, where lives will be sacrificed "for the greater good" (e.g., taking/holding territory, or ensuring supplies get through, or to repel an invader).
The economy is NOT a war. (This is a bloody stupidity I have found often in economic and management circles - that it is all about violence.)
The economy is about making lives better - ALL lives, not just those lives directly affected by the profits of (large) companies. Thinking there is a trade-off in PREVENTABLE deaths is unacceptable - both economically, as higher death rates have been shown to have greater harm to the economy, and morally.
Despite that, the national neolibs are ending support that keeps people alive, albeit at home, and refusing to help hospitals prepare for predicted increased loads.
Why? Why are they making this error?
Is it a lack of empathy - a problem they have acknowledged and tried to deal with in the past?
Is it being ideologically focused on the economy?
Is it a desire for good "numbers" to boost their chances of re-election?
I hope it is not the latter, but, in any case, it seems to me to show a low valuation of life, and possibly a limited understanding that there are real human beings behind those COVID deaths, just as there are real human beings behind the smaller group of other deaths caused by pandemic management measures.
The neoliberals are also, IMO, failing on the maths of all this, in that the costs of opening up will be greater than any economic benefits.
To use economic wording, they are devaluing human life against economic return.
And that, morally, is extraordinarily appalling.