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Politicians and their advisers made a number of mistakes in dealing with the coronavirus crisis that were unavoidable when the epidemic struck unexpectedly and with tremendous force in the spring of 2020, but their biggest mistake could have easily been avoided.
No one can envy the politicians who had to switch to a sudden crisis management mode due to the unexpected outbreak of the coronavirus epidemic in the spring of 2020, making decisions for which they did not have the necessary information. They made a number of engulfing mistakes as they searched for the unknown path that could get out of long-term trouble, but their biggest mistake could have easily been avoided. They shouldn’t have pretended to know more than they did (which wasn’t much), says Mervyn King, a former Bank of England (BoE) chairman, who posted his opinion on Bloomberg.
It started when, under pressure from the media, governments announced their crisis management measures with the determination of the omniscient, and then, when it became clear that they had to change course, they turned the government’s bar from their country to another part with the same certainty. After a few such zigzags, people’s trust in political leaders began to waver, the juice we drink from when we see that a significant part of them are not sure whether or not to get vaccinated to prevent coronavirus infection.
Science has arrived or not
Many governments have disguised their experience by referring to science, scientific advisers, and not a few exhibitionist scientists are willing to do so statistically with great pleasure. Before the US presidential election, Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential candidate, told himself and his opponent, comparing the reigning president, that he believed in science while Donald Trump did not. It’s that easy. According to a writer for a Bloomberg article, it’s far from that simple.
Our scientific knowledge about the coronavirus is, to put it mildly, incomplete, so science can only guess what the most effective defense against the epidemic is. In other words, crisis management is a series of political decisions, not scientific responses. Placing political action on scientific behavior only undermines people’s trust in science and makes it even harder to take action.
What?
No country in the world has found a foolproof solution to curb the epidemic. Even Taiwan and South Korea have made mistakes that seem to achieve the best results in dealing with the health crisis. In Europe, Denmark, Finland and Greece, which performed well in the spring, faced an increase in infections and deaths in the fall. France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United States are suffering. The rich countries of Europe did not pass the test that the poor Africans passed. Even the infection cannot be pinpointed because the tests are far from perfect.
In fact, in unknown circumstances like the coronavirus epidemic, the human response to the challenge can only be trial and error. Decision makers try something, if it doesn’t work, then something else until they find a solution that actually solves something. In the meantime, you can ask for scientific advice, but you don’t have to pretend that science is the answer to what you don’t know. It would have been better if the politicians had admitted that they were only trying to get answers, many of which would turn out to be a bad answer, so it should be withdrawn. In that case, it would not have been shameful to back down, it would not have undermined the people’s confidence that their leaders knew what they were doing.
Learned lessons
It seems that the best defense method, the least scientific: keep your distance from each other. On this basis, the former chairman of the Bank of England believes that we can draw two lessons, for now. One is that pandemics come and go and governments must be better prepared to deal with them. The other is that countries where a new virus appears must be hermetically sealed from the outside world immediately. In other words, they need to close their borders, which is what their own governments can do most effectively. The international community can help by providing financial support to alleviate the damage they cause.
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