COVID-19 taught humans a lesson: In a time of pressing needs, consensus isn’t wisdom.
I think of films like Armageddon, Deep Impact, and Don’t Look Up, which demonstrate our futility in finding solutions for immediate problems or our folly in redirecting our attention to matters irrelevant to the crisis at hand. Of course, in films screenwriters are free to choose whatever kind of ending they wish: Happy, sad, or incomplete. And they can also write in characters with the wisdom of Solomon or the ignorance of a high school sophomore. But in real life where the only script writers are government officials, the pressures of finding solutions to threats like a pandemic have revealed the limits to human wisdom and the weaknesses in our emotional structure.
If I look over the reactions of government officials to the pandemic, I am not inspired to confidence that they could prudently handle an incoming comet. Sorry, screenwriters, there would be very few officials I believe I could trust to take a plan from drawing board to effective reality. And one of the reasons is the self aggrandizement I see in those people who speak for the government. More than ever, policy is a matter of style and not substance.
The vacillating comments by government officials during the pandemic have earned them distrust: No mask; one mask; two masks; six feet; no gatherings; family only gatherings; quarantine two weeks; quarantine ten days; quarantine five days; two shots; a booster shot; maybe a shot every six months; maybe a therapeutic; maybe no therapeutic; travel; don’t travel; wear a mask on a plane; in the near future no mask on a plane; mask when not eating; mask between sips…. There’s something to be said for adapting to fluid conditions, but many of the adaptations are arbitrary at best. And the misinformation compounds the distrust.
King Solomon is famous for the judgment over the disputing “mothers.” Judges, who hold lives on the balance, are ideally Solomons. And the highest court of any country is ideally a place of wisdom. Not so, it seems. And I say that because of a fragment of Heraclitus: “One can’t have wisdom without knowledge or knowledge without wisdom.” Supplant “wisdom” with “facts.”
During the arguments about mask mandates in the case National Federation of Independent Business v. OSHA, 21A244 before the Supreme Court, Justice Sotomayor said, “We have over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in serious condition, many on ventilators.” In fact, that was not the fact. And the difference between the reality (about 4,000 children with maybe 20%, or 800, on ventilators and many of the hospitalized only incidentally COVID-positive) and Sotomayor’s “fact” is astonishing. Without the “real facts,” this Justice, at the time of this writing, intends to decide.
When I see fawning reporters interview favored personalities, I conclude that the show, the performance of the moment, is more important than the logic or science behind proposed actions. Take the statement by MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace. She said, “I am a Fauci groupie, a thrice vaccinated, mask adherent.” Yet in the same TV segment, she spoke of her fears of getting the Omicron variant. She appears to be one of those who, having been told that the comet is approaching, believes the worst scenario is inevitable, and so she lives her life in fear while holding onto her sycophancy. And in New York, the most vaccinated place in the country? Well, at the turn of the year, the COVID cases are peaking, and people are panicking in lines for tests, some standing five-and-a-half-feet from others who, by the way, might have no symptoms. And among those infected with Omicron are the most vocal celebrity adherents of vaccines who are also the loudest judges to condemn the unvaccinated.
COVID has been a real concern, of course, and precautions are prudent. Although the weakest are vulnerable to an Omicron infection, the majority of infected seem to be capable of surviving the variant with OTC therapeutics. That the super-vaccinated and super careful have been infected seems to indicate that a disease goes where whimsy takes it.
Setting aside the political agenda in Don’t Look Up and considering only the ending (spoiler alert), one can see the parallel between government solutions in the movie and government solutions in the current state of affairs. Those who propose solutions are not, as they believe they are, modern day Solomons. And the many “leaders” who have hypocritically disobeyed their own mandates by feasting and partying maskless among groups demonstrate that self aggrandizement is as much a part of the decision-making process as is any set of facts.
So, like many, I have to say that much of what I hear coming from government officials seems to be unscientific and foolish. Much is style and not substance. And much of what they enact or decide has no influence on the whimsy of a virus or the trajectory of a comet.
I think of films like Armageddon, Deep Impact, and Don’t Look Up, which demonstrate our futility in finding solutions for immediate problems or our folly in redirecting our attention to matters irrelevant to the crisis at hand. Of course, in films screenwriters are free to choose whatever kind of ending they wish: Happy, sad, or incomplete. And they can also write in characters with the wisdom of Solomon or the ignorance of a high school sophomore. But in real life where the only script writers are government officials, the pressures of finding solutions to threats like a pandemic have revealed the limits to human wisdom and the weaknesses in our emotional structure.
If I look over the reactions of government officials to the pandemic, I am not inspired to confidence that they could prudently handle an incoming comet. Sorry, screenwriters, there would be very few officials I believe I could trust to take a plan from drawing board to effective reality. And one of the reasons is the self aggrandizement I see in those people who speak for the government. More than ever, policy is a matter of style and not substance.
The vacillating comments by government officials during the pandemic have earned them distrust: No mask; one mask; two masks; six feet; no gatherings; family only gatherings; quarantine two weeks; quarantine ten days; quarantine five days; two shots; a booster shot; maybe a shot every six months; maybe a therapeutic; maybe no therapeutic; travel; don’t travel; wear a mask on a plane; in the near future no mask on a plane; mask when not eating; mask between sips…. There’s something to be said for adapting to fluid conditions, but many of the adaptations are arbitrary at best. And the misinformation compounds the distrust.
King Solomon is famous for the judgment over the disputing “mothers.” Judges, who hold lives on the balance, are ideally Solomons. And the highest court of any country is ideally a place of wisdom. Not so, it seems. And I say that because of a fragment of Heraclitus: “One can’t have wisdom without knowledge or knowledge without wisdom.” Supplant “wisdom” with “facts.”
During the arguments about mask mandates in the case National Federation of Independent Business v. OSHA, 21A244 before the Supreme Court, Justice Sotomayor said, “We have over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in serious condition, many on ventilators.” In fact, that was not the fact. And the difference between the reality (about 4,000 children with maybe 20%, or 800, on ventilators and many of the hospitalized only incidentally COVID-positive) and Sotomayor’s “fact” is astonishing. Without the “real facts,” this Justice, at the time of this writing, intends to decide.
When I see fawning reporters interview favored personalities, I conclude that the show, the performance of the moment, is more important than the logic or science behind proposed actions. Take the statement by MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace. She said, “I am a Fauci groupie, a thrice vaccinated, mask adherent.” Yet in the same TV segment, she spoke of her fears of getting the Omicron variant. She appears to be one of those who, having been told that the comet is approaching, believes the worst scenario is inevitable, and so she lives her life in fear while holding onto her sycophancy. And in New York, the most vaccinated place in the country? Well, at the turn of the year, the COVID cases are peaking, and people are panicking in lines for tests, some standing five-and-a-half-feet from others who, by the way, might have no symptoms. And among those infected with Omicron are the most vocal celebrity adherents of vaccines who are also the loudest judges to condemn the unvaccinated.
COVID has been a real concern, of course, and precautions are prudent. Although the weakest are vulnerable to an Omicron infection, the majority of infected seem to be capable of surviving the variant with OTC therapeutics. That the super-vaccinated and super careful have been infected seems to indicate that a disease goes where whimsy takes it.
Setting aside the political agenda in Don’t Look Up and considering only the ending (spoiler alert), one can see the parallel between government solutions in the movie and government solutions in the current state of affairs. Those who propose solutions are not, as they believe they are, modern day Solomons. And the many “leaders” who have hypocritically disobeyed their own mandates by feasting and partying maskless among groups demonstrate that self aggrandizement is as much a part of the decision-making process as is any set of facts.
So, like many, I have to say that much of what I hear coming from government officials seems to be unscientific and foolish. Much is style and not substance. And much of what they enact or decide has no influence on the whimsy of a virus or the trajectory of a comet.
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