It’s easy enough to do. It is easy enough to fault powers-that-be for not being powers- that-do when it comes to being prepared for foreseeable trouble and acting on it. Not to excuse anything, but it is also true that the powers-that-be exhibit human geared-for-failure traits that we share. Or I know that I share.
There is the present. In the present there is this reality, global pandemic, that for decades, decades, has been predicted clearly, plainly, and loudly by highly competent and credible people. Will we humans learn from this? There will, after all, be another one.
There are other threats, so it is said. They can all be prepared for, or at least mitigated in their impact. The chance of an inadvertent nuclear exchange can be lessened if the people who can do so would pull back even a bit from their readiness for intentional insanity. Or so I hear (via Economist podcast). Some put at 50/50 in this decade the chance of solar activity that would down satellites, and fry world-wide communications and power, maybe for years. Maybe forever. Even with that, it is said, there are things that can be done to lessen the impact (though it will still be horrible).
There is, however, little will to do anything about “low probability, high impact” events, even when the probability isn’t really low, and even when the cost of doing something now is relatively cheap.
There is this human thing, isn’t there. We will ignore or deny facts until the last possible instant, and maybe not then. Instead, deny, blame, make excuses. And everyone around the denial goes down with the denier.
That podcast I referenced made mention of three simple steps we can encourage (which really might mean instilling some courage) our leaders to do to help be prepared for disaster. First scan for present and potential danger. Second, develop a plan. Third (it has to be said), have the will to enact the plan.
Those, it seems to me, are good steps for all of us when it comes to work, the organizations we are part of, family and personal matters. Scan and plan. I say this as one who knows too well the impact of my own failures in such things.
We can lift one another in such realities as, or before, they arise, with a “You can do this” kind of genuine en-couragement.