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Counterfactual Conditionals as Arguments in Public Debates: The Case of the COVID-19 Pandemic

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Abstract

Arguments based on counterfactual conditionals are often employed to discuss and criticize authorities' responses to various societal problems. Such arguments were prevalent during the COVID-19 pandemic and served as a potent tool to undermine justifications for the measures proposed by governments to tackle the contagion. For decades, numerous attempts have been made to formulate a successful theory on the validity conditions of counterfactual conditionals, with structural causal models playing a prominent role in recent years. The causal nature of pandemics has been the subject of an increasing number of studies, focusing on their causes (such as the probability of a spillover event), their spread (e.g., asymptomatic carriers), and their effective management (e.g., the preparedness paradox and the prevention paradox). The prevailing view is that pandemics are nonlinear phenomena characterized by numerous positive and negative feedback loops, complicating their description in terms of causes and effects. This study aims to collect a sample of arguments used in the public debate in Poland during the COVID-19 pandemic. This sample is then used to determine the frequency, typical content, and contextual use of counterfactual conditionals in the discourse of opponents of government interventions in the initial years of the pandemic. The results are compared with the literature on the causality of pandemics and with the logical theories of counterfactual statements. Our findings suggest that counterfactual argumentation is particularly attractive to individuals recognized as experts, helping them maintain their social status and public image. However, counterfactual arguments necessarily simplify the causal complexity of the COVID-19 pandemic and thus should be regarded as generally invalid as they become meaningless when applied to complex phenomena like pandemics.

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Notes

  1. Research demonstrates, for example, that consumer traffic in the USA at the pandemic’s beginning fell by 60%, but legal restrictions were responsible for only 7% of this drop [79].

  2. Similarly to the medical field, placebo measures are not supposed to be effective in the strict causal sense but rather build an image of a relevant crisis response [80,81,82]. For examples of placebo and symbolic interventions, see: Alexander & Smith, 2020; McConnell & Stark, 2021.

  3. Ironically, the placebo measures were not met with the most resistance. Instead, it was especially the requirement to wear face masks, which seemed to be quite effective and efficient for public health, that turned out to be the most controversial and most criticised intervention. Perhaps because it was easy to picture face masks as a symbol of inadequate government reactions to the pandemic.

  4. For example, from one sector of the economy to another, or from a sphere of public health to economy.

  5. Unfortunately, these voices were strengthened by the declarations of some epidemiologists and medical professionals, apparently unaware of the aforementioned bias [55].

  6. Needless to say, details of those measures also matter critically, as discussed in the literature – see: [83,84,85].

  7. More accurately, counterfactuals refer to the causal structures behind the phenomena described by those sentences, while knowledge about those structures is assumed by individuals uttering those counterfactuals.

  8. The infamous Great Barrington Declaration stated that: ‘The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at the highest risk. We call this ‘Focused Protection’.

  9. In the theory of computation, the halting problem is the name for the result by Alan Turing who proved in 1936 that there is no general rule for determining whether a computer program will finish computations and return expected results or will continue to run forever.

  10. https://www.facebook.com/Artha.Dorota.Gudaniec

  11. https://dziennikzarazypl/

  12. https://ordomedicus.org/

  13. See e.g., Milmo [86]

  14. One example is the account “Ukryte Terapie’ (Eng. Hidden Therapies) followed by almost 400,000 people which belonged to Jerzy Zięba (https://pl-pl.facebook.com/ukryteterapie) – bestselling author and promoter of pseudoscience and unconventional medicine. Another banned account very vocal in criticism of the official crisis management during COVID-19 was the profile of the far right political party “Konfederacja’ (Eng. Confederation).

  15. Worth noting is that it is also consistent with more formal approaches to understanding counterfactuality (e.g., [87]).

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Funding

This publication has been supported by a grant from the Priority Research Area FutureSoc—qLife under the Strategic Programme Excellence Initiative at Jagiellonian University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Law and Administration, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland

    Mateusz Klinowski & Karolina Szafarowicz

  2. Faculty of Pharmacy, Jagiellonian University Medical College, Kraków, Poland

    Bartek Lisowski

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  1. Mateusz Klinowski
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  2. Bartek Lisowski
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  3. Karolina Szafarowicz
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Correspondence to Mateusz Klinowski.

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Klinowski, M., Lisowski, B. & Szafarowicz, K. Counterfactual Conditionals as Arguments in Public Debates: The Case of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Int J Semiot Law 38, 1733–1761 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-025-10258-z

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