03-09-2020, 09:22 AM
I find it interesting that there are so many people here who know exactly what needs to be done in a situation that is really quite unique. History is replete with examples of "the scientists" giving advice that turned out not to be so good when all the facts were in. They did the best they could with what they knew at the time, but they had no opportunity to run years of testing before they made a recommendation.
A similar situation is the quote "War is too important a decision to be left to the generals". In theory, we elect people who can make good, reasoned decisions based on all the facts and the trade-offs in whatever actions they choose to take or not take. Unfortunately, the electorate has in many cases selected people on other basis, which results in "the public" not really trusting the decision makers. A clever 1 minute sound bite in November doesn't equate to a good tough decision in February. It has been a while, IMHO, since the voters were aware of that. We are fortunate that our federated system has allowed the state and local institutions to participate in making many of the decisions and providing in some cases better answers than the government in Washington did. This is not to say these institutions are perfect either, but having more minds on the problem means we aren't totally reliant on an overwhelmed CDC to solve all the problems.
We will never know what the "optimal" set of actions to combat this problem is, because we can't do the experiment of all possible sets of actions. We collectively get one shot at it. Hopefully, what "we" do will be "good enough".
A similar situation is the quote "War is too important a decision to be left to the generals". In theory, we elect people who can make good, reasoned decisions based on all the facts and the trade-offs in whatever actions they choose to take or not take. Unfortunately, the electorate has in many cases selected people on other basis, which results in "the public" not really trusting the decision makers. A clever 1 minute sound bite in November doesn't equate to a good tough decision in February. It has been a while, IMHO, since the voters were aware of that. We are fortunate that our federated system has allowed the state and local institutions to participate in making many of the decisions and providing in some cases better answers than the government in Washington did. This is not to say these institutions are perfect either, but having more minds on the problem means we aren't totally reliant on an overwhelmed CDC to solve all the problems.
We will never know what the "optimal" set of actions to combat this problem is, because we can't do the experiment of all possible sets of actions. We collectively get one shot at it. Hopefully, what "we" do will be "good enough".