Why politics is such a lousy way of doing anything

We are looking at the rubble of the global economy caused by a pandemic. Allow us at least some rhetorical hyperbole here. We also know that the effect of the disease itself seems to vary over human genotypes. We’d like to know why.

We do know that Vitamin D is linked to the human immune response. We also know that Vitamin D production is linked to the melanin content of the skin and the amount of sunshine (more strictly, UV light) upon it. Pale skin wouldn’t have developed in northern climes (the equivalent latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere generally not being land) if this were not true according to our current understanding.

Unfortunately politics rather gets in the way here:

Public health officials are urgently reviewing the potential ability of vitamin D to reduce the risk of coronavirus.

It comes amid growing concern over the disproportionate number of black, Asian and minority ethnic people contracting and dying from the disease, including a reported 94% of all doctors killed by the virus.

A delayed Public Health England review into the reasons why BAME people are disproportionately affected, which pointed to historical racism, did not review the role of diet and vitamin D.

Some large portion of the politically engaged insist, for their own reasons, that the cause is that structural racism. Thus that’s the first answer that politics reaches, that it is structural racism.

This is rather what Hayek was talking about in The Road to Serfdom. Not that the existence of the National Health Service would make us all serfs. But that directing health care through politics would give political power over health care. Thus health, and its care, would be directed by the political fascinations of those who rule us rather than being offered on the basis of what actually works in improving our health and its care.

This current example does not exactly disprove his contention.

In terms of what’s really happening we’re entirely open about this. If it’s structural racism causing the problem so be it and let’s go and deal with it. If it’s Vitamin D then so too there. The important thing is that we want to know. For only then can we work out what to do. There would be little point in overturning society if the cure were actually to advise the melanin enhanced to go sit in the park for 30 minutes each afternoon.

All of which is why politics is such a lousy way of getting things done. Answers proffered tend to be politically determined. Even the questions asked are so. Which isn’t how we do get to understand reality and what to do about it.

For look at what politics has managed with health care so far in this pandemic. They’ve not, as yet, even asked the right question and yet they’re already proffering that answer. This just isn’t the way to do things.