Getting Ready for the Next Pandemic. Will We?

With vaccines on the way, it looks like we may be able to see the end of the pandemic.  It is still a ways off, but, unlike in April and May, we can see an end coming.  The question is, though: What about the next one?  Will we be prepared for it?  I talked about this in April.  I won’t repeat what I said there, other than to quote from my conclusion:

“Robustness.  Resiliency.  Nimbleness.  These are what we need if we are to be ready for the emergencies and disasters that will happen, though we don’t know which ones or when.” 

I also talked about the leaders we need who will not only help us achieve these things but also help us understand they aren’t free.  Building robustness, resiliency, and nimbleness into our systems and our countries, and maintaining them over time, will cost money, a lot of it.  We need leaders who can convince us to spend the money.  That shouldn’t be too hard now, while we are still in the pandemic, or for the next couple of years, while we remember it.  But after that, who’s going to be willing to tell people we can’t cut taxes, or we have to raise them, so we can be ready for the next pandemic (or whatever the emergency is).  Because it’s going to look like we are wasting money.  And the easy thing will be cut back a little on being ready.  After all. we’d still be mostly ready; and we could spend that extra money on something more immediate, that people want now and that will get votes now.  The problem is, as the memory of the pandemic fades, we’ll keep cutting back – until we are back where we were when this one started.

While I talked about this back in April, I remembered it again when I read an interview with New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.  New Zealand deservedly gets a lot of publicity for their elimination of the virus.  They locked down – and they got rid of it.  The “team of five million,” Prime Minister Ardern called it.  And it was very impressive.

But what was interesting, and which gets to point of this post, was why New Zealand decided to go for elimination of the virus instead of just flattening the curve like many other countries have done.  From the Associated Press article on its interview with Prime Minister Ardern:

“When the virus began hitting Europe early in the year, Ardern said, the only two options countries were considering were herd immunity or flattening the curve.  She opted for the latter.

‘Originally, that’s where we started, because there just simply wasn’t really much of a view that elimination was possible,’ she said.

But her thinking quickly changed.

‘I remember my chief science adviser bringing me a graph that showed me what flattening the curve would look like for New Zealand.  And where our hospital and health capacity was.  And the curve wasn’t sitting under that line.  So we knew that flattening the curve wasn’t sufficient for us.’”

If New Zealand really had to go for elimination because they didn’t have the health system capacity to flatten the curve, then New Zealand has an issue: It needs to upgrade its health care system – now.  Because next time they may not have the option to eliminate the virus.  Flattening the curve, or the equivalent of flattening the curve (depending on what the emergency is), might be the only option.  If that happens, New Zealand will need a health system that can deal with it.  Which means spending money now to build spare capacity into the health system – and then spending money each year to maintain that spare capacity; even though it’s not being used and even though people – and opposition politicians – will complain that the government is wasting money, money that could be spent on other needs or returned to the taxpayers. 

Which is the problem with robustness, resiliency, and nimbleness.  They aren’t cheap.  They cost money, and once the memory of the pandemic fades, it will be hard to keep spending the money to maintain them.  In some ways, it can be harder to convince people to prepare for an emergency that might not even come than it is to lead them through an emergency once it has happened.  

But leadership is not just matter of doing what people already want.  It means building support to do what is necessary, even if people would rather not do it.  It means educating voters as to what is necessary.  Explaining it to them.  Convincing them to do it.  It brings up one of my favorites quotes from Paul Ryan, one that I have mentioned before: “The way I look at things is if you want to be good at this kind of job, you have to be willing to lose it.”

Government also has to be competent, and that isn’t easy, either.  Too many people in government think they have solved a problem by spending money on it.  But solving a problem isn’t merely spending money; it’s getting results.  It’s not, for example, just passing a law to buy more personal protective equipment.  It’s following up to make sure the program is actually working and the stock of PPE is kept adequate and current.  I think of my own state, Illinois.  I have no doubt that, no matter now much money the politicians in Illinois appropriated to buy PPE, the government wouldn’t get the job done.  The money would go to friends or contributors.  Much of it would be wasted, and after a few years, the PPE wouldn’t be there when we needed it.

Finally, to get prepared for the next pandemic or emergency, whatever it is, the people have to be smart, too.  We have to vote for politicians who are willing to do the hard work of getting ready, who are willing to go out on a limb to do what is necessary, even if it doesn’t do well in the polls.  Because even if there are politicians who are willing to lose their job in order to do what’s needed, if we don’t elect them, then we won’t be ready.  Leaders are important, but even more important is supporting – and electing – those leaders. 

If we are going to be ready for the next emergency, we need robustness, resiliency, and nimbleness.  To get those, we need good and competent leaders.  But to get good and competent leaders, we, the people, have to elect them.