Why we suck at dealing with this virus
It's all politics and staying in power. And I'm not talking Republican and Democrat politics in this case, personal politics.
I can think of four main cases to consider:
- Needing a quarantine and implementing one.
- Not needing a quarantine and implementing one.
- Not needing a quarantine and not having one.
- Needing a quarantine and not having one.
If you had 100% foresight options 1 and 3 are correct and give the most bang for the buck.
Option 2, having a senseless quarantine, as long as everyone is doing the same, is still safe. You get to play with the pack mentality of everyone and you took the "safe" option.
Option 4, on the other hand, is really bad that gets people killed. You do that, you don't get reelected.
Option 3, despite it being safe and optimal, can get the media hyped up and claiming that you just want people to die. There's a good chance that's what people will remember and bam, you don't get reelected.
Basically 1 and 2 are a way of protecting your position.
Everything that I've researched is that what we've needed from the start is basically phase 2 or 3 from the mayor's slides. That's with the benefit of hindsight, however.
I realize the need to flatten the curve to ensure adequate capacity from the hospitals while we were less sure how this is going to play out. But once you have a better grasp of the situation, you need to pivot to the plan that really can work.
So many people started off chanting "flatten the curve" at the start, rightly so. So many of those people think that what we need to do now is get the curve to zero. That won't happen because the virus is now endemic and simply can't be eliminated. We also know that this isn't as deadly as first assumed. Most everyone is going to get this, we just need to manage our resources to cover treating people that need treatment, and that's basically it in my opinion.