Three failures of the Pandemic - Philosophic, Economic and Governance

We are still getting to ground zero of the whys and wherefores of the Government failed response to the Covid-19 Pandemic but at this point we can see the broad outlines of three separate but interdependent sources of failure -1) Philosophical failure, 2) Epistemic failure, and 3) Governance failure.  The first fueled the second two.

The current Administration mindlessly parrots the cry for diversity without articulating what that actually means.  They are, in fact, quite incoherent and that incoherence informed the Pandemic failure.

As any thinking and accomplished person knows, there is no a priori "right" degree of diversity, however diversity might be defined.  For dynamic, evolving, chaotic, complex systems (such as public health), there is a Goldilocks zone.  You need some minimum amount of diversity in the system to enable evolution through random change and selection.  On the other hand, you don't want too much variance in the system as that reduces efficiency and wastes resources.  There is a sweet spot of diversity in any system which is between not too much (allowing for efficiency) and not too little (allowing for dynamic evolution).  What that sweet spot is always depends on the circumstances and context.  It may be more diversity than you have, it may be less, it might be just right.  

The amount of diversity cannot be predetermined in terms of either nature or degree beyond what is demanded by the circumstances.  The cri de coeur that "Diversity is our strength" is merely energetic emotionalism uncontaminated by thought, experience, or reality.  

This administration is usually using the words of diversity as a mask for institutional racism.  That is both a moral shame and an operational failing.  Race is rarely a relevant issue other than when it might be correlated with something which is actually important such as health or education or experience or cultural values or domain expertise, etc.  

With an exogenous shock such as the emergence of Covid-19, initially of unknown origin, nature, or lethality, our governmental institutions, especially our public health policy institutions such as the FDA, CDC, and NIH, all needed that Goldilocks sweet spot of diverse thinking, knowledge and experience. 

We needed diverse thinking, knowledge and experience.  The government was nominally philosophically committed to diversity.  Yet, when it was needed most, the government failed to accept diversity at all.  In fact, they did their best to drive out diversity, suppressing speech and research in the process.  They rejected diversity when it was most needed.  

This philosophical failure led to the epistemic failure.  

At the beginning, in January 2020, we had already-established protocols and standards for responding to an unknown new viral outbreak.  We should have implemented those protocols and at the same time instituted teams for developing an understanding of the origins, the lethality, and the nature of the new virus and each of those teams needed epistemic diversity in terms of established knowledge versus frontier knowledge, people with a diversity of public health experience, people with a diversity of domain knowledge (public health, change management, project management, economics, communications, etc.), a diversity of ideologies, a diversity of culture and class, etc..

Instead, we ignored our previously established protocols.  The teams which were formed tended to be limited in terms of diversity of knowledge and experience.  They demonstrated rigid doctrinaire belief systems based on conviction and interest rather than evidence.  As crucially, they also were steeped in neophobia.  They were not only limited in their knowledge and experience but were fearful to the point of repression of new knowledge and ideas.  

Just when they needed real diversity of thinking, knowledge and experience, they were the most opposed to those conditions.  

So the first, and foundational failure, was a philosophical failure which led to an epistemic failure.  The Administration championed diversity but at the moment when they really most needed epistemic diversity, they retreated into a chamber of limited knowledge and experience.

We needed sufficient epistemic and experiential diversity to arrive at an effective and workable solution.  We did not have that diversity and the US Public Health apparatus was insular and opposed to a diversity of information and interpretations.  Consequently it almost consistently came up with public health policy solutions on the fly which were expensive, ineffective and often damaging to public health, the national economy, and to individual well-being as well as being inconsistent with the natural rights laid out in the Bill of Rights.

The third failure was a governance failure.  Ironically, again, this Administration professes deep commitment to the Environmental, Social and Governance movement but chose to ignore the fundamentals of good governance (consent of the governed) and relied on failing policies of coercion and authoritarianism.  In fact,  the Administration explicitly failed to seek the consent of the governed.  Further, the governance process was secretive and a closed system precluding contrary epistemic evidence.  This closed system ensured that failed policies would continue to be implemented despite evidence from both within the US and internationally as to alternative superior policies.  

Not only was there a lack of diversity on the epistemic side in the search for appropriate public health policy answers.  There was also a closed governance process which excluded the public and their representatives from policy setting.

Overall, the Covid-19 Public Health response failure was three-fold.  Despite its stated philosophical commitment to (epistemic) diversity and good governance (consent of the governed via participative representation), the Administration rejected epistemic diversity and relied on authoritarian coercion.  

The epistemic failure was comprehensive and catastrophic.  Policies were implemented without supporting evidence, logic or reason.  Worse, the Administration both ignored available information and sought to suppress both the creation of new and useful information, sought through law and technology to suppress the circulation of useful information and finally, illegally sought to restrict people's right to free speech.  

Finally, the governance failure was self-aggravating and made a bad situation worse.  By relying on authoritarianism and coercion to force people to do things they thought to be both wrong (morally and legally) and ineffective, the Administration badly degraded public health policy.  

Across these three failures of philosophy, epistemology, and governance, the Administration managed to implement a pandemic response which was expensive, wasteful, ineffective and damaging.  The consequences will be a long time unfolding.  

At a time of increasing complexity and speed of change, a time when competency needs to be demonstrated and trust earned, the Administration managed to lay the foundation for a justifiable decrease in both expectation of competency and reduced willingness to trust government to legitimately pursue the common good.