Hunches, Hubris, and Responsibility: Lessons from COVID19
On February 26, President Trump said about the coronavirus that "the 15 [cases], within a couple of days, is going to be down to close to zero." On March 13, he declared a national emergency.
It would be easy, but not helpful, to focus just on the president for the belated federal response to COVID19. The underlying problem is deeper. It has to do with character more than competence. The president may be among the bitter fruit of the tree of our mistakes but its roots are the bigger problem.
For decades, we have allowed our society to be overly anchored in hunches, hubris, and irresponsibility.
When COVID19 broke out in China, the president’s initial hunches were that scary projections were overblown, it was like the flu, and it was OK to go to work and school. A vaccine would be ready soon and “that, in April, when it gets warm — historically, that has been able to kill the virus.” Lottery players have hunches about numbers to play, but hunches are guesses. They may prove correct, but that is luck not science. Science, now being embraced by the president, is essential because it is anchored in facts.
As a nation we have been playing hunches, individually and collectively, for a long time. In this century alone, we’ve had hunches about real estate – buying homes we could not afford and expecting to flip homes for great profit. We’ve had hunches about stocks continuing to rise. We’ve believed that tax cuts would lift all boats and pay for themselves. We’ve convinced ourselves that we could continue to distrust and weaken government but that it would still respond perfectly in a crisis. Hunches are immensely satisfying, until they are met with reality.
On March 9, the president said: “So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!” Faced with figures that belied his own February 26 assertion, the president still projected extreme faith in his reasoning. Responding to concerns of climate scientists, for example, he once said "I have a gut, and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody's brain can ever tell me. I don’t believe it.” This type of pride is what the Greeks labeled hubris. In the COVID19 crisis, it delayed the initial response and, tragically, still leads many Americans to think the whole thing is overblown and a media concoction.
The way we continue to degrade the natural environment, assume that technology will save us from every ill – and quickly - and believe that America is somehow immune from the laws of nature and nations far pre-dates today. Democrats and Republicans, filling with the hubris of ideology - believe they have a lock on wisdom. They fail to acknowledge that uncertainty and openness to rethinking their core beliefs are signs of the humility that is the best antidote to hubris.
“I don’t take responsibility at all” for delays in coronavirus testing, the president stated during the March 13 press conference. He has frequently blamed the previous administration. Yet, more than three years into his stewardship, he could have reversed prior decisions by now. He said, himself, at least in a November 8, 2013 tweet: “Leadership: Whatever happens, you're responsible.”
Irresponsibility is not new – and not confined to presidents. We have had pandemics and studied the potential dangers and needed planning, yet government policy, preparation and funding have not responded to what we knew was coming. We stockpile weapons of war but not sufficient numbers of ventilators and hospital masks. The military simulates and rehearses during war games but we don’t adequately respond or train on how to scale up testing, hospital beds, medical responses and economic measures to combat a pandemic, even when, as last year, a “pandemic simulation” was run..
Irresponsibility surfaces not only in the Congressional failure to pass budgets that support emergency health care preparedness but in failing on infrastructure improvement, paying down the national debt, strengthening the health care system, shoring up the Social Security Trust Fund, and ensuring such measures as national paid sick leave that can cushion national health care crises. Nor can we excuse ourselves as citizens. We love and expect tax cuts, not the increases responsible governance requires. We consistently prioritize near-term benefits over long-term investment, sacrificing tomorrow for today.
At some point, this virus will abate. Hindsight will then be in full flower. If the human toll is less than feared, some will claim the president was right all along. If that happens, however, it will only mean he got lucky. Success will instead be due to steps urged by public health experts aided by science and taken by institutions of various kinds. Science, prudence and responsible action will have succeeded, not hunches, hubris or irresponsibility.
We have a chance to learn from the COVID19 crisis. Crises offer us that, if not much else. But will we?
Photo Credit: National Institute for Infectious Diseases
