Have you ever been in an executive leadership position that required you to make tough decisions? As someone who recently has entered this realm, let me tell you: most of the decisions in front of you are essentially choices between a whole bunch of options that all have one thing in common: they totally suck. You learn quickly that you are going to make harmful decisions because sometimes a good option isn’t in the hand life has dealt you. It’s the nature of the gig. A true executive leader makes a decision quickly and moves on. When they recognize they have made a bad decision (often with more data now available), they change their mind. Most bad leaders are incapable of doing this last bit. They dig in and hold their ground. The good ones just switch. They won’t even admit it because of ego (Steve Jobs is a great example outside politics of someone with this behavior).
If the US had gone into lockdown in January, the ACLU might have sued the government in court (or another civil liberties org). The UAW would have fought GM on shutting down the plants (let alone the shareholders!). College students would be protesting encroachment on civil liberties. Businesses would have been screaming. The stock market would have gone into a tailspin. People in a free society would have flouted the orders out of civil disobedience. For all this stuff to actually work in a free country, a significant percentage of the population has to believe the threat and cooperate. I’m a highly educated person with a degree in molecular biology. I know all about viral illness and epidemics. Even I did not come around on the severity of this until last week (Despite reading all the articles!). It just pattern matched against all the other pandemics that were a big deal in Asia and elsewhere, but didn’t really impact daily life in the US.
Fair enough. But you move towards the target by having leadership that says "This is serious. We need to start doing this now. I am not going to invoke war-like power to force us all to do this (yet), but we've got to understand the seriousness of the risk and start social distancing now while there's still time".
Instead, we got 2 months of "it's nothing".
One of the roles of leadership is to persuade a significant percentage of the population that threats are real and cooperate. The current US leadership utterly failed at this.
There was no need for national 'lock down' in January, what was needed was preparation.
Specifically with respect to testing, and the operations behind testing - this should have been sorted out.
There was no reason to 'lockdown' in January. The ACLU would not have sued, it would be irrelevant anyhow. College students would not be protesting en masse, and if they did, it wouldn't matter.
Once America has contained the virus, the rest of the world will need medical staff, beds, ventilators. There are 7 billion people out there, the surpluses will get used.
China was building hospitals over a 'few days' - this should have been a 'shocking moment' for everyone to start thinking about how to 'build hospitals in 2 days' or at least commandeer office towers or whatever as facilities. Knock out doors, widen entries, rip out the carpets, get backup generators, put in tbeds etc. carpenters can do a lot quickly.
There was a lot CEOs could have been doing 8 weeks ago.
Qualls N, Levitt A, Kanade N, et al. Community Mitigation Guidelines to Prevent Pandemic Influenza — United States, 2017. MMWR Recomm Rep 2017;66(No. RR-1):1–34. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.rr6601a1
If the US had gone into lockdown in January, the ACLU might have sued the government in court (or another civil liberties org). The UAW would have fought GM on shutting down the plants (let alone the shareholders!). College students would be protesting encroachment on civil liberties. Businesses would have been screaming. The stock market would have gone into a tailspin. People in a free society would have flouted the orders out of civil disobedience. For all this stuff to actually work in a free country, a significant percentage of the population has to believe the threat and cooperate. I’m a highly educated person with a degree in molecular biology. I know all about viral illness and epidemics. Even I did not come around on the severity of this until last week (Despite reading all the articles!). It just pattern matched against all the other pandemics that were a big deal in Asia and elsewhere, but didn’t really impact daily life in the US.