Denmark’s “Live With It” COVID-19 Approach

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Now, the coronavirus pandemic is showing no sign of easing in Hong Kong, which today reported a record 4,000 new cases. Overwhelmed hospitals are setting up outdoor wards as they reach capacity. But elsewhere, there is a different story. Denmark has become the first country in the European Union to lift all pandemic restrictions. And our next guest, Michael Bang Petersen, advises the Danish government on COVID policy, and he tells Walter Isaacson how they reached their decision.

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WALTER ISAACSON: Thank you, Christiane. And, Michael Bang Petersen, welcome to the show.

MICHAEL BANG PETERSEN, POLITICAL SCIENCE PROFESSOR, AARHUS UNIVERSITY: It’s great to be here.

ISAACSON: You’re a great expert on what Denmark is doing. You have helped advise the government. Earlier this month, almost all restrictions involving COVID were lifted. Tell me what happened.

PETERSEN: The basic decision was to lift restrictions because the pressure on the hospitals were no longer there. We still have very high case numbers, but we are not seeing the same pressure on the hospitals because of this combination of Omicron and then a very high vaccine coverage in Denmark. At this point, we have seen a small uptick in cases among young people, but it’s not something that we are really seeing in the hospitalization numbers yet.

ISAACSON: It was supported by the Danish people. Is it partly a political decision you made, especially as you see the backlash around the world against mask mandates and vaccine mandates?

PETERSEN: You can say it’s a political decision in the sense that it formally is the politicians who are making their decision and it’s very clearly described as a political decision or a political responsibility within the legal framework that regulates the pandemic response here in Denmark. But it was based on a recommendation from the health authorities. But I do think that often when you say it’s a political decision, then it’s sort of casts in a negative light, but actually, I do think that in the end, tough decision during a pandemic need to be made by politicians because they are the ones who are accountable to votes and they are the only ones who are able to make those complex tradeoffs that are involved in the pandemic between health, the economy, democratic rights, well-being and so on.

ISAACSON: You say you can’t fight a pandemic without public support. That, I’ve read your papers, all requires public trust as well. People have to trust the government. They have to trust each other. How does Denmark get to the point where it is where more than most nations it has public support and public trust together?

PETERSEN: I think that there are two main factors. One is a set of historical factors. So, we are a country with low corruption, high degrees of equality. We also are a small ethnically homogenous country, which helps. And all those factors means that we move into the pandemic in a privileged position with historical levels of trust. But it’s also important what societies do when they actually are in the crisis, it’s crucial that authorities and politicians that they communicate transparently, both about the good things and the bad things that they are willing to acknowledge errors, complexities, uncertainties. And essentially, that means that what is crucial for the public’s trust in the authorities is the extent to which authorities they have to trust the public. It is, if you as, an authority, sort of believe that the public can handle the unpleasant truth and that you don’t need to hide away complexities and uncertainties, then it’s way easier for the public to come and place trust in you. That is something that we see very, very clearly in the research that we have been doing on communication during the pandemic.

ISAACSON: People resent having to get a vaccine or being mandated to get vaccine, and they have a resentment when it comes being mandated to wear masks, even if they decide they want to wear a mask or they want to have a vaccine. To what extent is this backlash something to deal with the sort of personal empowerment in a sense, which I can understand, that whether being Canadian truckers or people here in the United States or around the world feel that they’re being disempowered somehow by government and elites?

PETERSEN: That plays a huge role. So, what we can see in the data that we have been gathering over the pandemic is that there is a decrease in trust in the political system across Western democracies as a result of the pandemic. And that decrease in trust is really fueled by exactly what you are describing, that people feel that they are losing control, they are losing the power to make decisions over their own lives, and it is really fundamental parts of their own lives, like who are they seeing? How do they go out being dressed with masks and so on? So, it’s affecting people’s or personal lives to a large extent. And that sense of losing control generates frustration. That frustration is not directed against a faceless virus. It’s directed against the authorities and it creates distrust. It creates beliefs in conspiracy theories. And we have seen in some of the research that it creates support for political activism and political violence.

ISAACSON: Your description of what reactions we’ve had to the virus ties into your wonderful research, which I find fascinating. On the role of social media and media, in general, in sort of (INAUDIBLE) up resentments or maybe just reflecting our resentments. Tell me about how this all plays into what social media does to us?

PETERSEN: Yes. So, there is a lot of focus on social media during the pandemic about the misinformation that’s being circulated, about the hostility of the debates about COVID policies. What we have found in the research that we have been doing is that what happens on social media is not so much caused by social media, but is really a window into frustrations that are rooted in people’s offline lives. So, this has the consequence that the people who are hostile on social media, it turns out that they are basically just hostile to people everywhere, including if you interacting with them face-to-face.

ISAACSON: But don’t you think that social media can amplify the most hostile amongst us?

PETERSEN: What it does is that it provides a sort of a loud speaker for those who are hostile. Social media are these large open networks, which means that if are you a hostile person, then you can go in and become extremely invisible, and that means that while these people also are hostile or quickly hostile in their offline lives, we wouldn’t be exposed to them. But here, they have a tool whereby they can make themselves extremely visible and, therefore, also derail a lot of discussions that otherwise would have been more constructive.

ISAACSON: To what extent has social media specifically and more generally, I’ll call it, alternative media, you know, podcasts or blogs or these things are not a part of the mainstream of media, to what extent have these alternative avenues to facts helped cause the disenchantment and also, the misinformation we see in this pandemic?

PETERSEN: So, the way that I see it, then the major issue with social media is that there are symptoms. They are not a disease in themselves, so to speak. But they are symptoms of something much worse, which is declining trust in the political system, greater polarization, and that is something that has been building, for example, in the United States over the last maybe 40 years. So, that’s some very, very deep structural processes going on linked to rising inequality, for example, that creates massive tensions in Western democracies. And we are getting a clear window into those frustrations on social media. Then, of course, social media can amplify some of these processes, because you could — back in the days, you could have a conspiracy theorist in each village, and they could sit there and be conspiracy theorists on their own. But now, they have a possibility of finding each other and creating echo chambers, whereby they reenforce these beliefs. So, yes, social media doesn’t make it better, but I think that the major issue is that they are this symptom of problems that are pretty big.

ISAACSON: You say that’s a symptom of problems that are deeper. What are the deeper issues that have caused the populist backlash of the past 20 years, 25 years, throughout Europe and the United States?

PETERSEN: So, in a way, I think we, as social scientists, have failed a bit here because a lot of me, myself and my colleagues have been focusing on the symptoms and we have invested less in understanding the actual disease itself. But when we look at the research that has been done, then rising inequality is crucial. Globalization has also helped facilitate some of these processes that if you are in the working class, then your jobs are disappearing, and that is creating frustration, and it is something — or it is some frustrations that we need to remedy, if we are to get societies back on track.

ISAACSON: But there is another component that seems to be a resentment, a distrust, even an anger at experts, at elites, at the power structure, at government, in general. What’s causing that?

PETERSEN: That is a very good question. And I think everyone who is involved in the pandemic response as a scientist or as an expert are really feeling the anger and the frustration that you are describing here. And I think, psychologically, what happens is that those people who are frustrated, they think in a very sort of binary way, they think either people are a part of the system or they are outside of the system. And the system then becomes the government, the authorities, the media, the scientific community. It’s all sort of seen as the same kind of thing. And that means that people don’t differentiate their anger. You don’t have people who love the media but hate the politicians or love scientists or hate media. It is essentially seen as one big oppressive system that they essentially want to tear down.

ISAACSON: And how do we fix that?

PETERSEN: So, that’s why we, in the end, need to identify the root causes. And I think social inequality is a major part of it and then, remedy those problems. So, I think it’s very important to acknowledge that the problems we are facing will not be solved by a little bit of fact-checking on social media or some crisis in digital education like its deep-rooted problems within society itself.

ISAACSON: And one of the problems deep rooted in society that’s caused resentment is this feeling of disempowerment, that everything from free trade to automation has disempowered us. And the experts have disempowered us. And we’re not allowed to even decide whether to put on a mask or to get a vaccine. Do you think we’re now at the point when this feeling of disempowerment is so dangerous, that in some ways we should say, let’s treat this pandemic in the future differently by trying to just empower people, by giving them information but saying, you get to make your own decisions?

PETERSEN: Well, that’s a very, very difficult question. Because the issue is that the behavior of one person is obviously affecting other people in a pandemic like this. So, how a person behaves will influence the epidemic curve, which will, in fact, affect others. At the same time, I do think that we need to take these things into account, that at a certain point, we need to say, OK, if we are going down the path of voluntary vaccines, then at a certain point, we need to accept not everyone becomes vaccinated. And if we are not willing to accept that, then we only have mandates left and they will be met with quite a bit of resistance among those who are subjected to it. So, we really need to think carefully about tradeoffs. Pandemic management is all about tradeoffs. It is about, well, what are the health benefits of this strategy and what are the costs of it? And there are costs of using force, of using mandates. Those costs are, for example, in terms of lower trust in the political system in the health authorities and we need to carefully think about, is it worse — worth the costs? And if we say, well, it is worth the costs, then we need to think carefully about how can we sort of remedy some of the costs. For example, what we have seen in some of the European countries that have moved towards a more mandate-oriented approach is that not only are they imposing mandates, but they’re also using extremely moralizing and shaming rhetoric. And I think if you are using mandates, then it’s not something you should do with moralistic triumph, it’s something you should do with sorrow, and say, we need to do this because of the health benefits, not because we want, it’s not in order to punish you, it is because we need to do it from the perspectives of the health situation.

ISAACSON: Michael Bang Peterson, thank you so much for joining us.

PETERSEN: Oh, thank you. It was a pleasure.