[This post is from a series written during the first weeks of the COVID crisis.]
It seems we can’t process more than one idea at a time.
First, we had “shelter-in-place,” so we sheltered.*
Now, we have “reopening,” and no one knows what to do.
People are walking around in a daze of unconsciousness, “Is it over?” Are we done?”
Left to their own devices, they simply do not know what to do, and leaders who chronically misunderstand the problem are reducing it to a binary two-step: “Do it,” Don’t do it,” “Do it, “Don’t do it...”
“Hurry up.”
“You’re not doing it fast enough.”
Reducing the situation to a faucet does nothing to focus on the merits or the realities of the situation, like sufficient testing, PPE, and the latest pandemic pie-in-the-sky, contact tracing.
(That’s sufficient testing, PPE, and contact tracing.)
A binary approach shirks every responsibility and is for people who don’t know how to do something more productive.
It avoids the helpful questions: who, why, when, and how, and leaves us leaderless and to our own devices.
Chaos through ignorance.
The clarity is, X exposures to COVID equal X+ more exposures in a unit of time.
Let’s find our way to clarity before chaos sinks in again.