Herd Immunity and Social Darwinism

One of the interesting things that has come out of Boris Johnson having to go into intensive care is the number of Conservatives, Johnson included, who seem to think that this is a display of terrible weakness.

A choice of quotations:

"He [Johnson] has obviously worked like mad to try and get through this but it's not good enough so far." (Ian Duncan Smith)

"His [Johnson] outlook on the world is that illness is for weak people." (Sonia Purnell, Johnson's biographer)

In both of these quotations the indication is pretty clear - being ill is for the weak; the strong do not get ill. Being ill, then, is a lack of will, effort or moral character.

And this, it seems to me, goes along with the logic of that bizarre current of thought known as social Darwinism.

Social Darwinism (1) is not entirely aptly named: the main currents of the idea predate Darwin and actually originate with Herbert Spencer. The famous phrase that guides the belief 'survival of the fittest' was actually coined by Spencer some ten years before On the Origin of Species was published. Indeed, the constant conflation between Spencer's ideas and Darwin's was something that annoyed Spencer immensely in his own lifetime.

The phrase is, however, a good summary of what social Darwinism is: the essential notion is that life is a competition, the survivors of which are the 'strongest' or 'fittest' as they come through the challenges of life. This is why, of course, those who held this view opposed any programmes of poor relief - to provide aide to the 'weakest' would distort the workings of nature.

Fitness, let it be said, is a technical term in biology and basically means nothing more than the ability of an entity to leave progeny. The more it can produce the 'fitter' it is. Noticeably this doesn't tell us anything about the characteristics of the entity, or which ones are making it more fitter than others. And it is also not divorceable from the environment: obviously an entity that is the fittest in, for example, an ocean environment might not be so good in a forested environment. Fins on a fish, for example, are probably a contributing factor to its ability to leave progeny, as it helps the fish to navigate the water environment. You cannot, however, say that fins are unambiguously 'good', 'adaptive' 'fitness enhancing' as if you stuck them on a monkey it would add precisely nothing to the monkey's ability to leave progeny and could even actively harm it.

This obviously is not what the social Darwinist conception means by 'fittest'; though what exactly is meant is hard to determine. The definition is tautological: the fittest are those who survive; how do we know this? Because they have survived! But in that case fitness has little to do with any quality in the individual, but more to do with background and wealth. There are, after all, hordes of wealthy people (many of them in government) who have no conceivable talents or abilities but will 'survive'; just as their are loads of people who are very gifted, but who will struggle to develop this due to poor nutrition, lack of support in education and the various other ills associated with the misfortune of being born poor.

What is interesting here though is the way in which this believe in 'the strong survive' may well have coloured the government's Coronavirus response, particularly in the herd immunity strategy. This was, for a long time, the government's purported aim: infect a large chunk of the population as a way of building up the immunity. It seems to be premised on the very logic that social Darwinism runs with: everyone gets infected and then those that die are simply too 'weak'. This is seemingly what is to be drawn from Dominic Cummings (alleged) comment of 'herd immunity, protect the economy and if that means some pensioners die, too bad'.

The herd immunity strategy seems to then derive from the social Darwinist assumptions: the only ones who will be effected are those to weak, so it will thin out the population of the undesirables and so ultimately improve the country and economy. Those that die have simply not tried hard enough. Which has a certain resemblance with the Conservatives approach to welfare benefits and the economy. This seems to be what lies behind Johnson's turning up at hospitals and shaking hand with everyone, as well as the press's initial disdain for anyone challening the herd immunity strategy: A belief that their strength means they will not catch it.

Noticeably we have now changed track after Johnson, Hancock and Cummings all came down with it, with there even being denials that was ever a herd immunity strategy. Somehow it seems the 'survival of the fittest' becomes a less attractive strategy when you have the realization that you are not, actually, excluded from the general struggle to survive. And with that comes the realization that the 'strength' so coveted by the Conservatives is based less on anything real, than simply being able to be outside of difficulty. 

It is, after all, easy to survive when you have vast arrays of wealth and support to fall back on.

(1) There is a question as to whether social Darwinism as a definable programme ever existed: Robert Bannister's Social Darwinism: Science and Myth in Anglo-American Social Thought presents this argument. Whether it did or didn't though, I think currents of its thought certainly influence contemporary thinking.