After COVID, scholars suggest society is caught in a ‘death spiral’
Daniel Nuccio
Stanford epidemiologist John Ioannidis was one of COVID policy’s earliest Cassandras, warning in a March 2020 article published by the health and medicine site STAT, “We don’t know how long social distancing measures and lockdowns can be maintained without major consequences to the economy, society, and mental health. Unpredictable evolutions may ensue, including financial crisis, unrest, civil strife, war, and a meltdown of the social fabric.”
Since then, we’ve seen a summer of riots, increased crime, worsening mental and physical health, disrupted supply chains, inflation, civil strife, war, and a meltdown of the social fabric.
If Ioannidis hasn’t been batting a thousand, he’s been pretty close. And, for those wondering what his thoughts are about the current state of the world, the title of a recent preprint paper he coauthored says it all: “Is Society caught up in a Death Spiral? Modelling Societal Demise and its Reversal.”
In the preprint, Ioannidis and a pair of Dutch scholars, Michaela Schippers from Erasmus University Rotterdam’s Department of Technology and Operations Management and philosopher Matthias Luijks from the University of Groningen, draw on concepts from fields ranging from biology and psychology to management theory as they develop their concept of the “death spiral effect,” describing it as “a vicious cycle of self-reinforcing dysfunctional behavior, characterized by continuous flawed decision making, myopic single-minded focus on one (set of) solution(s), resource loss, denial, distrust, and micromanagement, dogmatic thinking and learned helplessness.”
“The death spiral,” they note, “is often initiated by an external or internal event (e.g., crisis) causing a trauma or emotional response.”
“On a societal level,” they add, “this spiral results in increasing gap between elite and masses, and massive resource loss.”
Some signs one’s society might be in a death spiral, according to the trio, include initial denial, suboptimal decision-making in which leaders repeatedly turn to the same ineffective solutions, engagement in counterproductive coping mechanisms such as turf-protection and passivity, a “worsening of the situation, and a continuous (series of) crises,” and an inability to escape the cycle of poor decision-making.
As the death spiral continues, an atmosphere of distrust and negativity may develop, the scholars note, while leaders may increasingly focus on adherence to a long list of rules instead of solving actual problems and censor challenges to the official narrative.
If this sounds like a pretty apt summary of our society these past few years, you’re in good company.
According to the three authors of the preprint, driven by groupthink, action bias, and unreliable metrics, many of our leaders not only overreacted to COVID-19 with grandiose solutions that didn’t work but repeated those failed solutions as they escalated their commitment to becoming the victors in an unwinnable war if for no other reason than that they had wagered too much on their failed policies to change course.
The ultimate outcome was an increased gap between the elites and the masses and a greater comfort with authoritarianism. The authors note although trends related to these outcomes may have predated COVID, the reaction of our leaders to COVID certainly accelerated them.
With that stated, the authors of the preprint also offer some hope, putting forth several steps that can be taken for our society to escape its current death spiral: namely, acknowledging the death spiral and developing a plan to break it.
However, with the continued absence of any official acknowledgment by many leaders that COVID policy was a massive failure, the COVID-era fixation on misinformation showing no signs of abating, and a contingent of leaders appearing ready for a COVID-style war in the name of climate, it would seem our societal death spiral will continue apace.
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Daniel Nuccio is a Ph.D. student in biology and a regular contributor to the College Fix and the Brownstone Institute.