Decisions, Mistakes, Regrets, The Unchanging Past - a Dark and Dreary Post
In response to a request for a blog post about COVID-19, and trying very hard to keep out of politics - here goes -
People make decisions every day. They are based on the current situation, as seen by the person, past experiences, projections of the future, goals. In many situations, once a decision is made and implemented, it can't be undone.
A side note, one thing that I like about writing computer software - if I don't like the way I did something, I can, and often do, change it.
The past doesn't change - it doesn't matter how much you want it to. And we have very little input into the future government actions. So I do my best to not obsess on our current situation.
I think back on a couple of bad decisions by people in leadership positions. The first is how we handled exiting the 1970s gas crisis. As gasoline shortages became a problem, the corporate average fuel economy law was implemented, cars shrunk. But as is typical, Congress screwed it up. Instead of requiring that passenger vehicles get a minimum miles per gallon, they allowed heavier vehicles to get less mpgs. And "trucks", now known as SUVs, could get even lower mpgs. So when gasoline prices dropped, people switched to bigger, heavier, less efficient vehicles. Huge missed opportunity to cut our dependence on foreign oil. This I watched in horror, thinking - forget CAFE, just increase the gasoline tax by 25 cents a gallon every year for ten years.
(This information is from Wikipedia.) On 2001, September 11, 8:46:40am, a plane crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. There was much confusion about what was behind this crash. At 8:55 in the South Tower - "The building is secure, please return to your desks." 9:02:57, a plane crashed into the South Tower. What a stupid decision - they lost 8 minutes of evacuation time. It makes me feel sick.
People make bad decisions. It can cost lives, likely the ones that made the decision. Once it happens, it can't be changed. Many bad decisions have been made by intelligent, well meaning people.
So back to COVID-19. I don't know what happened in China, but I suspect that a lot of bad decisions were made. Around the world, various people made various decisions on how to handle it. A lot of people have criticized how it has been handled in the United States. I wish things had been handled differently. If we had recognized the threat earlier, started manufacturing good masks, and giving away masks, requesting that people wear them and avoid unnecessary contact and closeness, then I suspect that we could have avoided the need for shelter in place and shutting down business.
But is that what I would have done? Well, in mid February, it was obvious that it was just a matter of time before the stock market took a big hit. I guess I thought - well maybe it won't be too bad, I will leave my retirement investments alone. Now I wish I had pulled a big chunk of it out of stocks. So how can I say the politicians made bad choices?
Look around the world. Did we do any worse than other countries? The news keeps reporting number of deaths. But I can't remember them reporting it as a fraction of population. So I looked it up. As of May 2 -
Germany 83m 7k .008%
France 67m 25k .037%
Spain 47m 25k .053%
UK 68m 28k .041%
US 331m 68k .021%
When this is all over, I suspect that beyond a few outliers where politicians were smart or lucky or the reverse, it will turn out that the United States response was close to typical. I have a hard time suggesting that anyone would have done any better.
But the big thing that I take away from this is confirmation of my belief that the human race has built a house of cards that can collapse for many reasons - computer virus, antibiotics becoming ineffective through overuse, government or private debt causing economic collapse, global warming effects, attacks on fragile infrastructure (EMPs), computer software that is so complex that software becomes bug ridden and completely unusable, to name a few. And my best guess - mass insanity caused by yearly changes in smartphone user interfaces.
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