On March 23rd, 2020 a relatively redundant word, save outside of the confines of high-security prisons, became mainstream: Lockdown. This new phenomenon led the majority of the sixty-seven million inhabitants of the United Kingdom to self-isolate at home to mitigate the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many businesses went into stasis and an anxious resignation gripped the nation. Nine months later, and in true Hollywood fashion, we have entered Lockdown three: The Misery. The dramatic subtext has been extrapolated from a comment by Deputy Chief Medical Officer Professor Jonathan Van Tam who sombrely declared, “Unfortunately it is a pretty grim and depressing picture at the moment.” Generally speaking, the commencement of the current Lockdown trilogy was met with overwhelming compliance. However, the resultant timeline has seen submission wane.
Although the majority of my primary data is drawn from reliable sources the anecdotal evidence is equally as damning, making me struggle to comprehend the effect it is having on my mental wellbeing. My life has become one of unhappiness caused by endlessly treading water, waiting for vaccination, and experiencing the nightmare scenario that I originally laughed at when I first watched the character Phil (played so brilliantly by Bill Murray) negotiate the same day over and over again in the 1993 film Groundhog Day.
This uneasy state of mind has made it crystal clear that I consider life not to be principally about longevity but one of experience. I miss doing what I took for granted and have a pent-up urge to overindulge when this shitstorm is finally over. But before you reach for the fiddle and play a benevolent melody, compared to many others I am pretty fortunate. Nonetheless this current chaos continues to throw up so many questions. However, as an ex-law enforcement officer and criminal justice academic I was keen to explore why some people just ignore the coronavirus laws even in the face of dire and repetitive health warnings. In an attempt to unravel some of the potential drivers I decided to acknowledge the psychology both from a criminal point of view and a more general humanistic viewpoint, incorporating some field data drawn from those currently living under the same restrictions.
Laying my cards on the table I believe that COVID-19 is real, came into existence by natural means and presents a genuine health hazard. In the past I have been drawn to the often-dazzling conspiracy theories with 9-11 being my personal tipping point whereupon I decided to delve deeper into this persuasive phenomenon. The book, ‘Voodoo Histories: How conspiracy theory has shaped modern history’ by the acclaimed author David Aaronovitch was the final and most convincing cure to such thoughts. Conspiracy theories only need to show an element of coincidence and rely on significant numbers of human beings remaining tight lipped forever. Personally, I don’t buy the COVID myths and legends doing the rounds on that great bastion of truth, social media. Surprisingly, a shade under twenty five percent of my acquaintances disagreed with my position.
It is arguable that the robust denunciation of illegal acts has become as popular as other forms of media punditry. Heads of State and politicians often trip over themselves in an effort to outdo one another in the battle of the sound bites. The following examples followed a car bomb attack in Beirut, Lebanon which killed anti-Syria MP and journalist Gibran Tueni on December 12th, 2005. “The EU is deeply concerned at this latest in a series of attacks against supporters of Lebanese democracy. We reject all acts of political violence. Those who seek to destabilise Lebanon and the region through such cowardly attacks will not succeed. I reaffirm the importance of bringing the perpetrators of this and all the preceding attacks to justice,” (by the then United Kingdom Foreign Secretary of State Jack Straw, holding the EU Presidency). “Syria denounces this crime that claimed the lives of Lebanese, irrespective of their political stances.” (Syrian Information Minister Mahid Dakhl-Allah).
Condemnation of crime alone is little more than a reflex action. A litter of clever, moralistic words that appear to offer much but deliver little in terms of cohesive deterrents. Denunciation does little to develop an understanding of the key issues necessary to develop dynamic solutions. As Oscar Wilde once mused, “I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.”
I was unsurprised that my cohort of active participants, drawn as is usual from my social media contacts, were angered at the behaviour of those people who disobeyed the emergency laws. Yet, all of them admitted to knowing individuals who had broken them, suggesting that many of the wrongdoers were close friends, relatives or dare I say themselves. Kneejerk reactions offer a quick, if flawed, resolution to unsettling news and have the habit of identifying a convenient patsy. That is why conspiracy theories are so damn compelling. Eric Berne, a Canadian psychiatrist, in his theory of Transactional Analysis contended that verbal communication is at the centre of all human social relationships and interactions. In a nutshell if I do something to you, inevitably you will respond in a particular way. In identifying three principal ego states which we all oscillate between, depending on the stimulus, of Parent, Adult and Child he suggested that dialogue could often be predicted. The Parent state, essentially our core values based on our collective life experiences (whether they are right or wrong) wrestles with our emotional inner Child and our Adult logic base, and vice versa. Thus, when someone, of whatever age, does something against the rules and seemingly rebellious (e.g., not wearing a face mask) our Parent simply barks out a judgemental finding of immediate guilt. Alas, that still doesn’t entirely solve the problem and has miserably failed to halt widespread insubordination.
Photo by Tom Chen on Unsplash
One blindingly obvious reason for the rule breaking is that most humans have a thing called choice. In liberal democracies, such as the United Kingdom, these enshrined rights provide the fuel required to ignite the notion of right-wing criminology. Drilling down to the core concept, people generally choose to do something if the benefits of what they undertake are greater than the costs or expelled effort. Without effective deterrents don’t be surprised if some people will simply do what they do best, begging the adult question, is Government policy therefore defective, and not the people? Only twenty-five percent of my sample group held Government accountable, with one parking the blame with the Conservative party, priding itself as the guardian of law and order, arguing that decades of stripping back on essential public services coupled with the fact that many had to leave home to work in order to simply make ends meet was a major factor in the abject failure of lockdowns. The rest blamed everyone else: neighbours, fellow citizens, the person in the street. The very group from which they had been plucked. Was it that straightforward? Surprisingly, my people’s jury struggled with the question of whether lockdowns worked with a near fifty-fifty split, acknowledging the fact that simple slide rules of blame were agonisingly problematic. One thing my gang of social observers agreed upon was that their mental health had suffered as the subsequent lockdowns were called. A reduction of over twenty-two percent in emotional wellbeing between Lockdown 1 and Lockdown 3.
By and large Lockdown 1 was a significant success with levels of obedience even surprising the Police. My serving contacts, from the frontline to the most senior echelons, expressed a consistent voice that the public had done good. Then a trip to a hitherto little-known Castle in County Durham changed the tone. Dominic Cummings, senior advisor to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, broke lockdown law. A University College London study, referred to as the ‘Dominic Cummings effect’, concluded that trust in the Government had fallen by nearly twenty five percent. The Office for National Statistics supported this notion stating that national unity had been significantly harmed. Notwithstanding the absurd defence that he was ‘testing his eyesight’ whilst feeling ill and driving a car containing his family he was robustly defended by the Premier. This irreplaceable cog within the highest level of Government was shown the exit seven months later. Professor Paul Hunter, from the University of East Anglia’s Norwich Medical School, succinctly captured this mood: “I think the most confusing message was that it’s okay for political advisers to go on days out to Barnard Castle, but not for the rest of us. The public’s attitude to lockdown does seem to have changed as a result of that. One of the most depressing things was how the chief medical officer in Scotland, one of the senior scientists on Sage and a senior adviser to the Prime Minister who also attended Sage, didn’t think that the policies applied to them. That, in my view, will be a low point in the way that the Government interacted with the British population.”
Photo by Tom Chen on Unsplash
Transgressions by those around us: our friends, neighbours and those everyday folks that represent the vast majority of us undeniably cause friction, fear and the apportion of fault. That is the Parent reaction, and was the overwhelming viewpoint of my gang of lockdown class. However, the Adult response has to engage with greater analysis. Reactance, a notion first proposed by the American psychologist Jack Brehm in 1966, has led behavioural scientists to conclude that when individual freedoms are curtailed people tend to be more inclined to regain what they have lost. In essence, instruct someone not to do something and a compelling need to rebel kicks in. At one extreme, mass gatherings of ‘anti-vaxxers’, and at the other, and perhaps even more harmful, the many who apply their own definitions of ‘essential’ with a huge dollop of ‘common sense’ ultimately bending the rules on a more regular basis.
Liberty is a force of nature. Thus, when legislators themselves ignore the law we should not be surprised that this force is unleashed with gusto, even in the face of determined calls from epidemiologists to follow the rules and save lives. The humiliation of ‘experts’ during the BREXIT referendum debate hardly helped the public discourse either, especially when social media will frequently provide a contrary, and often bizarre and wholly unsubstantiated, viewpoint. The mobile transport app ‘Citymapper’ provides a glimpse into the abyss: collecting data on journeys undertaken in London, Birmingham, and Manchester (apart from car travel) shows a near one hundred percent uplift from Lockdown 1 levels.
Could the Government have done any better? A tad over thirty percent believed they had done their best during an unprecedented time. Yet, how exceptional is COVID-19? Should we have seen it coming and therefore been better prepared? All incoming administrations are briefed on the primary domestic threat. Nuclear war? No. Terrorism? No. Cyber-attack? No. Pandemic? Yes. In the twentieth century there have been four influenza pandemics: 1918 (H1N1), 1957-1958 (H2N2 – Asian flu), 1968 (H3N2) and the H1N1 pandemic in 2009 (commonly referred to as swine flu). Furthermore, in ‘following the science’, the mantra extolled throughout the UK’s response to the pandemic, did it do what it said on the tin? Did the lack of recognition of how us humans actually behave and how trust can be lost in the blink of an eye ultimately and dramatically overshadow and interfere with the herculean efforts of our National Health Service, so brilliantly supported by our emergency services?
One day in the not-too-distant future this pandemic will be over, and we can commence a new normal, after that is we collectively do the stuff we presently yearn for. For my group of COVID commentators, family and friends were top of the list with one demure lady excitedly looking forward to associating with her gang and enjoying this experience whilst going off with a bang, or words to that effect!
Stay safe, and I look forward to seeing you all on the other side!
© Ian Kirke 2021
Title photo by Emily Wang on Unsplash