I believe that lack of consistent and effective leadership during the pandemic has caused the most severe consequences, both in the economy and in health. Let's discuss leadership in this 10th, and last, installment in my series about COVID-19.
How are we doing?
The pandemic itself is the real culprit
Okay, before this goes off the rails, let's just note that the pandemic itself is the real culprit. This is a natural event, generally known to occur periodically and predicted by several to be imminent, and nobody "caused" it. (That includes China, though it would have been more helpful if they had been transparent earlier.) So, the virus is the bad actor here. Everyone is trying to respond to that microscopic antagonist -- some did better than others, but in general the vast majority of people and leaders were trying to do something.
It is important to realize that a pandemic means the world economy was going to tank and that many people would die. There are some that heavily imply that, but for government activities, the economy would be the same as in 2019. There was no reasonable scenario where that was true -- production drops and markets shrink when there is fear and uncertainty. There are some that heavily imply that, with greater lockdowns, almost nobody would have died, and that is also almost definitely false. There is still a LOT of area in the spectrum for leadership to make a difference, though ... but don't forget that it is all mitigating a bad natural event.
Some countries won a hard-fought battle
There are several countries where the virus is contained. (Note that I'm not talking about the small island countries that kept people out and so haven't had any cases; that approach was not feasible in countries with millions of inhabitants, I don't think.) I'm talking about big countries like Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, and Thailand, where sometimes they now forget there is a pandemic even going on: they go to packed concerts, theaters, and sporting events without masks, and nobody gets sick.
They got there through different means. Many Asian countries relied heavily on technology and epidemiological practices: masking, testing and contract tracing. All of them limited travel, either completely or through gate-keeper mechanisms of quarantining when coming from outside, with stiff fines (like $3,000) for any breach whatsoever.
The US did not win
By almost every reasonable metric, the US has done poorly in its response to COVID-19. The speed of getting testing in place, the number of infections, the rate of positivity of tests, the number of deaths per million, number of rural citizens wearing masks, number who believe in conspiracy theories, the quality of surveillance, the efficacy of contact tracing ... almost every one of these metrics that can be compared against other countries has the US behind other countries in the same economic footing. We are currently having more deaths per day than September 11, 2001, and have been the better part of a month. For the richest country in the world, with the greatest technical and medical schools on the planet, to be this far behind in this many key metrics is definitely, objectively, failing.
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| From Statista, as of 12/16/2020. The USA is in the top 10! Woohoo! Or ... wait. |
As I spoke about in my last blog, the level of divisiveness is out of control, and that has led to likely over a hundred thousand extra deaths, that that number may be more like a quarter of a million by the time the pandemic is contained.
To be fair, let's not forget Operation Warp Speed: The speed to getting a vaccine out was impressive -- Pfizer and Moderna broke records, and that is commendable, for sure. (I'm ignoring China and Russia, which I highly suspect did not have strong safeguards in place for ensuring safety in their vaccines.)
The difference is leadership
So, what is the difference? I think the answer is pretty obviously "leadership." Strong leaders followed the obvious "good leader" track: They listened to science, were transparent, coordinated groups responding to the crises, were decisive, and worked with international groups. Think of Germany and New Zealand, for instance. Put your scientists front and center, declare that you will defeat the virus, and update your actions as new information comes in.
This sort of "leadership by facilitation" has been the hallmark of certain female leaders. Beyond Germany's Merkel, Taiwan's Tsai, and New Zealand's Ardern, you have the non-Sweden Nordic leaders: Denmark's Frederiksen, Norway's Solberg, Finland's Marin, and Iceland's Jakobsdóttir. They all spoke with a combination of personal empathy and scientific acceptance that galvanized their countries. This isn't to say that women are intrinsically better leaders, or even better pandemic leaders, but may well have to do with the fact that a nation that has chosen a woman as its leader may have reached a higher state of inclusivity in its politics. When you have quickly changing science, having the ability and cultural value to listen to others -- to open the tent to more voices, not double down in isolationism -- could make it more likely that countries can learn quickly from the various experiences and experiments happening around the world. Or maybe gender has nothing to do with it (which I kinda already said, but this guy wants to say it all snarky, so I thought I would link to that to pre-respond to criticisms).
What is pretty obvious, though, is that the countries that have lower death rates and higher population happiness rates (when you ignore totalitarian regimes that are probably lying, like North Korea, China, Iran, and Russia, among others) have strong leaders that follow the science. When you look at the countries that are doing really poorly, you have populist and divisive leaders that go it alone and do not follow the science.
What was needed in the United States was someone that could state the case and get buy-in. If you wanted to do the conservative economic pathway of avoiding shutdowns, cool -- get PSAs out every day on the importance of masking, washing hands, and social distancing while building a strong testing and contact tracing infrastructure and putting money and political capital in making sure everyone knows we are in this together. Show the impacts to philanthropic missions, get the governors to band together to move forward in specific ways, put together a Manhattan project on solving it. Every day, have calm, consistent discussions with the American people, other national and NGO leaders. Be the face of decisive leadership while putting scientists and celebrities as the spokespeople to get buy-in across a wide swath of the electorate. Empathize with the people on the front lines and with the people dying, explain how we all want to work together, and make it obvious you are putting humanity over partisan politics, and science over short-term convenience.
What does this accomplish? Markets would have less fear and more predictability. People wouldn't feel that they were isolated and had to personally weigh all these factors to decide when it would be safe to get a loan or a new job, etc., because the majority of people would be on the same page. (We don't have to guess; look at the numbers and realize there wasn't a trade-off.) There would be an organized and effective approach to helping people understand telecommuting and tele-education, to testing and contact tracing, and to all the simple-but-somehow-misunderstood ways that this is worse than the flu.
But we didn't get that. We got disjointed partisan bickering starting at the top in the White House by the most divisive President in US history, and frequently answered in kind by leaders on the left. Leaders on the right were faced with impossible political choices where following the advice of healthcare experts during a worldwide pandemic was perceived as somehow weak, and the very real possibility that bucking that trend would not result in things getting better because their bully pulpits weren't powerful enough.
Heck, it could have even been "don't wear a mask" -- that would be silly, given the recent science, but some countries that practice better social distancing and other approaches achieved it. The point is less about the substance and more about getting buy-in and consistent behavior from other influences and leaders. That would have stabilized the markets and allowed for coordinated efforts.
But we didn't get that. We got more divisiveness, undercutting of science, public feuds with other leaders, and in general no attempt to be a leader of everyone. This wasn't surprising, as President Trump was the most unpopular President since they started gathering data on popularity, and never got close to having strong approval from anyone but Republicans. In a situation where what was needed was an empathetic collaborator and lover of science, we had exactly the wrong President in office.
So, the best most of us can do is sit around try not to judge social media posts. Why is that snowflake wearing a mask? Why does that kid want to kill me by being in a group photo at a bar? What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?! (24 mph.)
It has all been too much. Good leadership would have had us feeling like we were weathering the storm together; bad leadership had us blaming the "other side," which shouldn't exist in a storm or a pandemic. In what should have been the easiest political softball to hit since President George W. Bush's bullhorn speech after 9/11 ... our leadership struck out.
Where does that leave us?
Well, we do have vaccines landing now, and again, US leadership did succeed there. So we will hopefully all take one of these miracles of science (well, two doses) and develop true herd immunity without needing another million Americans to die first. We have a changing of the guard in the White House, which we can at least hope will mean more coordination and letting science lead.
But we don't have to wait for politicians: WE can use more empathy. We can love one another, and realize that the virus is the true enemy. We can recognize the important humanity of every person, realizing that they are likely truly doing the best they know how even when their decisions don't make sense to us. We can work to build bridges.
That's probably a weird thing to say after what is probably the most inflammatory of my COVID blog posts, but I think that having an informed discussion on leadership should not be a bad thing, and I sincerely hope that people on the "other side" wish me as much warmth as I wish them. Indeed, I hope we can discuss enough to realize that the other person IS a person, with values and beliefs that come from a place of human kindness and love, but has found different answers. I hope that good discussion leads us to empathy, not to enmity.
And I hope this was a good discussion. Thanks for making it all the way through. I wish you and yours love, safety, and blessings as we move forward into 2021. Live long and prosper!
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