It is rarely heard in France, and yet Jean-Claude Dupuy is one of those facetious philosophers of science at work in abundance and protean. A cosmopolitan Polytechnician married to a Brazilian and professor of ethics at the American University of Stanford, he has published forty books on technique, economics, ecology, including For enlightened catastrophism. When the impossible is certain (Threshold). Since the early 2000s, he has been closely interested in the disasters befalling humanity. The health crisis and the comments it arouses among his colleagues in the world of ideas inspired him to write a biting essay: Disaster or life. Thoughts in times of pandemic (Threshold). Retail review.
L’Express: You feel very upset against the intellectuals “covidosceptics”, as you call them. What exactly do you blame them for?
Jean-Claude Dupuy: When you are an intellectual, you have to speak up after learning about the subject you are discussing. How can we argue, like André Comte-Sponville, whom I know and admire elsewhere, or the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, that this virus is really “not the end of the world” as we approach flu figures Spanish, constantly given in reference as one of the most killer pandemics in the history of mankind?
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In Brazil, where the current rate is 3000 deaths per day, the toll is already much more terrible than that of the 1918 pandemic. In France, we are getting closer to it – 165,000 victims – with 91,000 deaths. And in the United States, where the Spanish flu caused 675,000 deaths, we are at 538,000 victims, and 1,200 additional deaths every day! The worst thing is that we knew as early as last May that this Sars-CoV-2 was not an ordinary virus.
That is to say ?
To use an evolutionary metaphor, this virus “understood”, unlike others “less clever”, that if it killed its host, it would kill itself. So he replaced lethality – the proportion of infected people who die – with contagiousness. Hence the variants, which are not more lethal, but much more contagious. In addition, its reproduction rate, the famous R which corresponds to the number of people infected people infect, also varies enormously depending on the situation, unlike many other viruses – gatherings are particularly conducive to transmission, for example example.
“This virus ‘understood’, unlike other ‘less clever’, that if it killed its host, it would kill itself”
Finally, the disease caused by Covid-19 strongly resembles an autoimmune disease. The immune system no longer recognizes a number of organs as belonging to the same body: the lungs, the cardiovascular system and the brain. We observed this phenomenon from the start, but without understanding it. It was very quickly impossible to speak of “flu”.
In your book, you yourself ask the question: “How could a group of intelligent and cultured people have been and still can be unreasonable about this pandemic?” Did you find the answer?
The problem is not only the lack of information, but the weakness of the concepts. When André Comte-Sponville highlights the “low lethality” of the virus, between 1 and 2%, stressing that it is undoubtedly weaker if we add all the undetected cases, he commits a gross error of reasoning. Taking undiagnosed patients into account does not change the risk of dying from Covid-19. Admittedly, the case fatality rate is decreasing, but these cases show that the virus is more contagious than the figures of the infected indicate.
The risk of falling ill therefore increases in proportion. As a result, the mortality rate reported to the population, and not just to cases of infection, remains the same. Speaking of the “lethality or contagiousness” of a virus, in general, makes no more sense than asking a student: “How old is Napoleon?”, Without further clarification.
We would be there in front of a repetition of the “fallacy of the year 2000”, according to your formula. What happened at the time?
In 1999, the computer scientists realized that the coding of the computers was not adapted to the number 2000, and that all risked to bug with the passage of the third millennium. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent around the world to avert disaster. As it did not take place, critics have not failed to say that we had squandered money for nothing. But if the danger did not materialize, it is precisely because we had put in the financial means to prevent it! I remember that Lionel Jospin, who was Prime Minister at the time, had to justify before the National Assembly the enormous sums released by EDF and France Telecom. “It is not because there is no epidemic that we must do without vaccines”, he had said in substance, in a metaphorical and premonitory way.
“The ‘covidosceptics’ deny the causal link. If the disease is not more deadly, it is precisely because we have implemented strict sanitary measures.”
We are in exactly the same situation today. Those who minimize the pandemic and consider that we are investing inordinate means sacrificing our economies and our individual freedoms forget that, if the disease is not more deadly, it is precisely because we have implemented strict health measures. Logically, they deny the causal link. The measurements taken should be compared, not to the resulting state, but to the variation in the resulting state, in other words to what would have happened if nothing had been done.
But how do you know, since the situation you want to prevent has not happened, precisely?
Of course, but to stop there would mean that the method of comparing the costs and benefits of each situation is considered null and void. In addition, with regard to the Covid, we have a large number of statistical elements at the global level. Just look at the countries that have limited health controls to preserve the economy. In Brazil or in Great Britain, the result was a health carnage and the activity was not saved for all that. Quite simply because we do not preserve the economy in a cemetery!
Recognize, however, that older people contribute less to GDP growth than younger people …
Have you heard of the statement released last summer by the American Institute for Economic Research, a hotbed of American libertarianism funded by the Koch brothers, supporters of Donald Trump? Experts from this institute advocated “focused protection” of the most vulnerable: for the elderly, total confinement; to others, normal life. Once collective immunity was achieved, the elderly could return to the living.
In France, the president of the National Consultative Ethics Committee, Jean-François Delfraissy, is exactly on this line. A few weeks ago, he published with six of his colleagues from the scientific council an article resuming this doctrine in the English medical journal The Lancet. I find this position scandalous.
Why ?
From a medical point of view, it is absurd. The R, this famous virus reproduction rate – that is to say the average number of people infected by another person – is very low, except in nursing homes. The R of young people is very high. However, it is the circulation of the virus that poses a problem. It also means that the contamination goes from young to old. From an ethical standpoint, why should older individuals be in debt to subsequent generations? If someone hurts me and then decides to stop because they’ve been persuaded to do so, am I in debt to them? Obviously, no. This person had only to do no harm to me.
Worst of all, it is these intellectuals who justify the generational targeting by saying that they themselves would be ready to “sacrifice” themselves, as if this intention proved the ethical correctness of their position. The 9/11 terrorists, too, have “sacrificed” themselves. Would it be said that their acts were in conformity with the good? This is not to say that lives are equal, but to remember that they are immeasurable: we do not have the right to say that one is more important than the other. As for those who complain about the end of freedoms or the economic crisis, it’s a safe bet that, if they all sat around a table to discuss the measures to be taken, they would imagine the same ones as the state imposes on them.
Have European states tied their hands with the precautionary principle by temporarily suspending the distribution of the AstraZeneca vaccine because of its possible side effects?
The true precautionary principle has nothing to do with this matter. It only applies to cases where the risks are unknown. For example, does hepatitis B vaccine produce multiple sclerosis or not? In such a configuration, the political power which follows the precautionary principle takes a decision without waiting for the opinion of the experts. But here, the risk – thrombosis – is perfectly identified, and it is tiny: 50 cases for 5 million vaccinated.
“There is only one remedy, wrote Vladimir Jankélévitch: ‘The joyful consent of man in the future, in the future'”
Governments have fallen into the paralogism “B follows A, so A is the cause of B.” It reminds me of the joke of the man who throws gunpowder out the window of his commuter train car every day to scare away elephants. “But there are no elephants on the tracks,” a passenger told him. “You can see that my powder is working!” The guy replies. Suppose that in a few days there are still no elephants on the track, or more thrombosis from AstraZeneca. The damage will be done.
This pandemic would therefore also act as a powerful revealer of our cognitive distortions …
Exactly. We are faced with the very human logic of collective phenomena, but on a planetary scale. This historic moment reminds me of a reflection by the philosopher Vladimir Jankélévitch. To combat the irreversible nature of death, there is only one remedy, he wrote: “the joyful consent of man to the future, to the future”.
