The Age of Entitlement – Part 2

A Failure In Outcome

Why effective goals matter

To succeed at anything you need a target. A goal. An objective. A direction of travel. Goals are incredibly important. They provide the logical framework from which everything else flows. Goals are not in themselves a guarantee of success. For example, just because you have decided to run a marathon doesn’t make it so.

Setting a goal is the critical first step. Once defined we can set about determining the strategy which in turn will dictate the actions we take and they in turn will produce an outcome. Ideally, the goal we set ourselves. Get the goal wrong and you can be doomed from the outset then.

To set an effective goal Peter Drucker is widely credited with defining what it takes in simple terms. Your goal needs to be SMART. Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.

If you want to run a marathon in under 4 hours then your goal should look something like this.

‘I’m going to run the 2021 London Marathon in under 4 hours’.

It is specific, you will know if it is achieved, it is possible to achieve, the demands to achieve it (training, diet) are not unrealistic and it is not open-ended. You’re set to move on to formulating a strategy to that end.

It’s all very obvious and simple I’m sure you’re thinking. But it’s deceptively simple. Change it slightly and you can quickly and dramatically put your intended goal in jeopardy. Let’s say the goal was changed to the following.

‘I want to run the London marathon in under 4 hours’

By removing 2021 the goal is now no longer time-bound. What strategy will now flow from this? A less optimal one almost certainly. Without the obligation to apply in 2021 will you be as motivated to enter the 2021 or any future year now you’ve given yourself some wiggle room? Probably not.

That’s not to say you won’t necessarily achieve your goal. But through this tiny change it increases the risk you won’t and it almost certainly means you won’t achieve it as quickly as you could have. Progress and success are undermined.

Goals then, or specially the detail they entail matter. They matter a great deal.

Why do we have no effective goal to guide our response to Covid?

In Part 1 I outlined that it appears a majority of people think the goal is broadly.

‘The government is to solve for Covid at no personal health or economic cost to myself’

In short, make it go away and for free.

This despite the evidence left, right and centre that such an expectation is wholly unrealistic and unachievable. Yet our sense of entitlement has meant it has persisted unchallenged in the mind of the majority.

So entrenched the delusion we also think the perfect strategy to achieve this unrealistic and unachievable goal exists. Any failure being only due to the incompetence of Governments. We can’t even accept strategy and execution are subject to failure. Again the evidence is everywhere.

Everyday in our own lives we are constantly setting goals and creating strategies to meet them. It’s something we’re generally quite bad at most of the time. We’re late to meet friends because we miss our train or we fail an exam because a topic came up we had discounted. The list is endless.

How can it be then that the majority are unable, apparently, to admit their Government may be subject to similar failures in goal and strategy while attempting to deal with an infinitely more complex problem than meeting a friend for drinks on time.

Quite the double standards. This is our problem not theirs to address. It is our sense of entitlement to confront.

Yes, governments, oppositions, academics and the media have a role to play in confronting us with this reality. A role I think they have collectively failed in and I’ll cover in part 3.

But these are our lives. They are acting on our behalf. If we demand unrealistic goals, however well motivated, then the failures in strategy and outcome that follow are just as much on us as it is on them. We can’t turnaround later and blame them for not telling us. We should have known. It is possible to know as I’ll share.

Our failure to accept these difficult truths is why I think 11 months into this pandemic I couldn’t tell you what the goal of the U.K. government, or any other government for that matter, actually is.

Take 5 minutes to think. What has your government told you the goal is? ‘Protect the NHS’, ‘Stop Covid’, ‘Unite against Covid’, ‘Save lives’ and ‘Defeat Covid’. Phrases that have adorned the platforms of our leaders the world over.

Can you spot the problem? They are nothing close to effective goals. They are PR slogans. Empty rhetoric. They sound instinctively sensible but are anything but. Isn’t it odd too just how different they all are? Especially when apparently every leader claims to be following the science. These are red flags. What is the goal?

Our media coverage and politics has focused almost universally too on questions of strategy. When to lockdown, the level of testing, financial support and what the right level of restrictions are to apply. Differences identified between countries used to suggest failures by Governments.

It’s madness. This is basic stuff. The most obvious reason strategies may differ is because you have different goals. And even if you had the same goal your strategies would likely differ and with good reason. They should be tailored to account for each nation’s unique circumstances.

The first thing anyone needs to know to make an informed judgment is what is the goal? Why has no one bothered to find out in clear terms what they indeed are?

Joe Biden just ran an entire campaign saying he had a plan for Covid. At no point did anyone bother asking him what that plan was attempting to achieve? What was the goal? If you don’t know that I’m at a loss to understand how you can even prepare a plan or assess its quality without sharing the goal. And ‘beating the virus’ is not that.

History is full of examples of how effective goals can rally whole nations to a their achievement. When President Kennedy proclaimed “we choose to go to the moon” at the Rice Stadium, Texas, in 1962 he was kind enough to furnish the American people with an effective goal.

It wasn’t an empty slogan. His speech set out a timescale of within a decade. He even went so far as detail it must include the returning safely of the astronauts. Obvious you may think but as we’ve seen detail is everything! He even estimated its cost to the public purse and made the case for why it was important over and above more obvious problems at home – joblessness, homelessness and such like.

What is our equivalent? We appear to have embarked, at huge expense, on a programme of actions in pursuit of an undefined goal. How can this be expected to yield a good outcome?

‘Defeat the virus’ means what? At any cost? It lacks all of the key characteristics to be an effective goal. It’s so vague that the use of nuclear weapons would technically meet the goal. Covid instantly defeated at the touch of a button.

Of course I’m joking but it serves to make the point again that detail matters. We lack the clarity JFK provided when he said the goal included retuning the astronauts to Earth after reaching the Moon. It isn’t enough to assume. NASA could have set about a very different course without it!

It’s not good enough to simply expect our governments will identify and pursue the best goals. We have a duty to say what it is it that we want to achieve. Or to ask what is the goal our governments think should be set and understand why.

In the U.K. I have absolutely no clue what the goal is. I can guess. But it’s not clear. Is it to save lives? Is it to protect the NHS? What do they even mean?

Are we protecting the NHS from the virus or from been buried under a huge backlog of other treatments if we solely focus on Covid? You could argue it has evolved to now be a bit of both. Who knows for sure though. Are we saving lives from Covid or from all causes? Life is complex folks, we need to be clear how we plan to deal with it.

Look no further than public debate to understand how harmful this situation is. Without an effective goal we lack any framework through which strategy can be debated, understood and agreed.
In its place we have total incoherence.

This appears to have descended to a level of sophistication that places you in one of two camps with regard to Covid. You either are against Covid and view any case and death as a failure or you are ‘pro-Covid’ and a monster. ‘Pro-Covid’ simply because you think we may have to accept some level of cases and deaths to avoid causing more harm than the virus itself could.

Each side argues what we must do to succeed. However, without a shared goal what success looks like will mean different things to both sides. We are trapped in a strategy debate of apples and pears destined to compound our failure.

What should an effective goal to combat Covid have looked like?

I would propose it should look something like the following.

‘To minimise incremental deaths to 2030 versus long term averages* in the UK, and with consideration to the wider world too. Measures taken to this end should also consider seeking to maximise broader quality of life indicators – freedom, happiness and opportunity’

*This should incorporate demographic projections. In the U.K., like lots of the developed world, the population is ageing and all things equal our death rates will rise. Our ageing demographics are why borrowing was already unsustainable in the West. A perfect storm of ageing populations and welfare entitlements await. Which is why our current borrowing is totally irresponsible. But more of that in Part 4 – Funny Money.

It’s not perfect by a long shot. Perfect isn’t possible remember. My primary concern was to define a goal that is effective and one that could be argued seeks to deliver the best societal outcome by an easily understood measure.

How is it effective? It recognises crucial realities. Firstly, most importantly, it reflects that Covid is just one way we can die. We can’t prioritise Covid deaths above all others. We were mortal before Covid. We must consider the impact of our actions. The cure can’t be worse than the disease.

Secondly, it acknowledges our focus must be on our long-term outcome. We cannot be motivated by a short-term fixation at the expense of our future. It surely must be the goal of any society to seek to maximise its long-term position at the expense of its short-term one. However, painful in the immediacy that may be.

Thirdly, death cannot be our only measure. Quality of life matters too. Condemning vast numbers to decades of suffering a materially lower quality of life in the name of minimising deaths isn’t rational. Particularly not for a virus like Covid where the vast majority of deaths are in the very old. It is a debate to be had I’m afraid. We cannot shy from it.

Finally, we cannot overlook how what we do in the developed world, the richest places on Earth, impacts those in less developed nations. Our choices have material impacts beyond our own lives as I’ll go on to show.

This goal is light years ahead of anything our Governments have communicated. It provides a logical framework within which we can set about formulating strategy. It doesn’t, as I stated at the start, guarantee success. But it’s the crucial first step.

Every measure taken by the government would have to be presented in these terms. A simple currency that we could all understand and value. Any alternative plans by academics or opposition could be presented in the same terms. It would facilitate debate not close it down.

Just as in the world of business where competing businesses cases are debated and picked from, so too we could make informed choices of alternative strategy ideas.

How badly have we failed?

My verdict? This is a monumental catastrophe.

I conclude this on the basis of our response failing two tests.

Value for money – Had we used the sums invested Covid related actions on other causes could we reasonably argue a better return existed?

Negative Externalities – Have our actions exacerbated existing problems or created new ones such that it calls into question the activity being undertaken?

Value for Money

According to the IMF the world has so far undertaken actions totally $20 trillion in response to Covid. About $12 trillion in direct fiscal measures (Government spending and loans) and almost
$8tn in monetary measures by central banks (https://www.imf.org/en/About/FAQ/imf-response-to-covid-19#Q2 ).

As context for $20 trillion we could have written off the debt of low and middle income countries at least twice over with plenty of change.

These are huge sums. Towards an undefined goal. The vast majority spent in developed nations to allow vast swathes of their populations to sit on the couch. A point literally made by the German government’s own advert (https://youtu.be/FS1DDn2eklU).

Ignoring the wider global impacts of our actions even within the context of our own countries more and more people have started to question if this zero tolerance to Covid may be a huge and costly mistake. This less than a year after it begun!

That it still took until October 4th for the first major challenge to be articulated in the form of the Great Barrington Declaration (https://gbdeclaration.org) is surprising. What we knew in October we knew in March and April (I’ve published my own ‘Exit Plan’ that I wrote in April on the blog)

The declaration though was widely dismissed and ridiculed despite the weight of real expertise that endorsed it. This largely by individuals and organisations who have made clear any Covid deaths are unacceptable. No cost too great to ‘defeat the virus’. In the U.K. this group is populated predominantly by left of centre ‘progressive’ figures. People who think they are morally superior to the monsters.

Which is why what follows may come as a surprise to these people. It may illustrate how little thought they have undertaken to consider the consequences of the actions they advocate.

We have spent £300 billion in the U.K so far. This will be far lower than the total sum. With lower tax revenues as a consequence of our depressed economy future borrowing will be required to maintain pre-Covid levels of public spending for years to come. That’s before any further stimulus needs.

What has this delivered? A future decade of higher taxes and lower public spending for one. Yes, perhaps we have prevented some deaths but only to replace them with new ones. Those in the most vulnerable groups were in their twilight years by and large. They will still die in the near term.

We have spent a fortune to achieve the equivalent of pushing a cyclist out of the path of a bus but only into the path of car. Can we justify this? Was this the best use of our collective wealth? Our future income – given we’re paying for this on the credit card and not out of savings.

This debate isn’t new. NICE (National Institute for Clinical Excellence) has had to make these difficult choices on a smaller scale for years. It decides which drugs the NHS will offer / fund. That means at times denying funding to drugs that may extend and save lives on a value for money basis.

Again, this isn’t to say we should do nothing or abandon the vulnerable groups. Far from it. It is merely to ask given other options existed, as the Great Barrington Declaration shows, whether similar or better outcomes were possible for the same or less cost. I think the answer is most certainly yes. This is the first time in history we have quarantined the healthy and given up our liberty to allow it. This is the best option? Really?

For example, the young already have a vaccine in their immune system response. It’s more effective too! It would have been far cheaper, more certain to end the pandemic quicker and saved more lives had we proactively infected them in controlled circumstances. It is not the young catching Covid that is our concern. A point repeatedly made by scientists and politicians alike. It is the risk they go on to infect the at risk groups. Controlled infection offered a way to do this. Just like a controlled burn can stop forest fires.

We could have paid the young to become ill voluntarily in isolation from the wiser population. University halls inadvertently became such a system. Unbelievably, though not surprisingly, the media chose to focus on their effective incarceration through a lens of hardship. Mental health, food supplies, value for money on their fees. Staring them in the face was a low cost vaccine system we’ve had available for months.

Given it is the young who present most transmission risk (due to their higher social mobility) it is, why counter-intuitive as it seems, some are now suggesting they are vaccinated first. It they who are the biggest transmission risk to the old and vulnerable. Folks, we had a vaccine all along.

Another factor to consider in assessing value for money is whether our huge investment will provide any future benefits? Again the evidence would suggest we’ve made a mistake. Unlike flood defences that once built remain long after the flood subsides to protect against the next event, Covid investment does no such thing.

Should this virus mutate or another completely new pandemic emerge our investment has done little to protect us from the same risk. South Korea shows this. It has been lauded for its preparations and readiness with its low cases and deaths. A readiness greatly helped by its exposure to MERS (a warning shot Europe didn’t have). What is not shared though is that it still has borrowed more in response to Covid than it did in Asian financial crisis. Hardly a success.

A future pandemic is very likely too. In the last 20 years we have had avian & swine flu, SARS and MERS all emerge and threaten to become what Covid has. This suggests far from being a once in a century event – a line used by the New Zealand government to defend their vast borrowing – they will be far more frequent in the future.

Our response then and it’s cost is unsustainable in this context. Should we face the same threat we won’t be able repeat the investment. We simply can’t afford it. So how can we justify it today on this basis? You can’t. The scale of the investment demands long-term benefits. In the UK £300 billion could have revolutionised education or our transport and technology infrastructure with growth defining long-term benefits.

Negative Externalities

Covid isn’t the world’s only problem. Have our actions exacerbated existing problems or created new ones such that it calls into question the activity being undertaken?

This is absolutely the case. Our actions are a monumental failure when you consider them in the context of the wider world.

Covid isn’t even a global problem. It’s a first world one by and large. How so? Well Africa has a population of 1.3bn. It is the poorest continent on earth. Yet, as I write it’s official Covid deaths total less than 50,000. Less than the UK’s total.

That Africa has recorded so few deaths from Covid is not the product of a lack of testing to confirm its fingerprints as you may think. No.

It’s simply that the vulnerable populations Covid can kill don’t exist in large numbers in most countries. It is no exaggeration to say that in many nations their populations don’t live long enough to join the ‘covid club’. Quite a sobering thought.

Don’t believe me? According to Statista the average life expectancy for the continent of Africa is 62 in Males and 65 in Females. To date over 90% of UK deaths from Covid have occurred in those aged 65 and over.

Our hysteria then relates to a virus that billions of people will be lucky to reach the age at which it becomes a material risk to life.

Even deaths in those <65 the fatality rate is a material risk to those only in populations with pre-existing conditions. Populations that again in less developed world don’t exist in the same proportions as our own societies because their healthcare systems don’t yet sustain them like we have succeeded in the West.

Not forgetting too that obesity levels tend not to be a problem outside of wealthier developed nations. Funny that.

In short then we’ve spent $20 trillion to attempt to insulate ourselves from a virus that can only kill in any great number because of our relative success. Our position of privilege has actually exposed us to a risk others, by and large, won’t face.

The rest of the world faces far more real and substantial issues though. They face risks day in day out that dwarf Covid. For example, in the world’s less developed nations maternal mortality rates are such that a female faces a lifetime risk of maternal death equivalent to 1 in 56, or 1.8%. For context, the maternal mortality rates in Australia and New Zealand are 1 in 7800. Covid by comparison looks like it has a case fatality risk of <1% as an average across all age groups.

Consider hunger too. The UN estimates approximately 25,000 people die everyday from hunger. 10,000 of which are children. That means Covid, which has so far killed 1.5m people in 2020, is currently trailing hunger by a margin in the region of 7m people. Since 2000 it is reasonable to estimate 150m have died from hunger. A entirely preventable outcome.

The Food & Agriculture Organisation of the UN in its 2019 Food security report estimates 2bn people face moderate to severe food security. Over 800m face the most severe insecurity. It is these populations that suffer the 25,000 deaths a day.

Economic growth is crucial to alleviate this problem. Their current economies are vital to ensuring that things do not get worse. But our actions against Covid have resulted in a global economic slowdown. As we borrow they can’t afford to. In those countries hundreds of millions are living barely hand to mouth.

There is a phrase in economics that ‘when America sneezes the world catches a cold’. It refers to how what happens in the American economy infects the wider global economy. If they enter a recession, more often than not so did the world. For Covid it should simply read ‘When we sit on our sofa people will die’.

Less developed nations are uniquely exposed to economic slowdowns. As our economic activity has declined one of the most immediate and obvious impacts is on the prices of commodities. Take Oil for example. As we stayed home the demand fell globally and with it the price.

The problem is that of the ‘resource curse’. The poorest and least economically developed nations are more reliant on commodity exports as a share of their economy. Two thirds of developing countries are depended on commodity exports for more than 60% of their trading income. The income they service their debt, pay for public services and much more.

We have chosen in our Covid response to create a global recession that with total certainty will now increase deaths around the world in a way that was entirely foreseeable. An increase in far greater scale than the deaths Covid could ever cause. Cheers to that from the sofa.

This being the tip of the iceberg too given that for each death many more will now be impoverished to new extremes and for large portions of their adult life versus had we done nothing. It wouldn’t be surprising to see the 800m facing severe food shortages swell dramatically to over a billion. Hundreds of millions facing adverse long term reductions – critical reductions – in their access to food. This is all as a direct consequence of the actions taken by our governments on our behalf.

How can we justify what we are doing? Faced with a problem largely of privilege we have undertaken actions that will exacerbate the far worse problems faced by far more people around the world that existed before Covid existed. And it hasn’t even delivered a good outcome at home.

Viewed through this lens I don’t see how we can defend what we’ve done. Surely we could have saved more lives, helped more people, by spending differently. Acting differently. By having an effective goal.

How ironic that this has all occurred in societies where ‘progressives’ increasingly tell us to ‘check our privilege’. The same progressives who are most vocal in their demand for the most stringent actions to fight Covid. Well, Checkmate.

It’s time now to ask if what we have done is so bad why our Governments, opposition and media have failed to confront us with this reality.

Part 3 – Beware Bad Actors