I’ve been thinking about just how difficult it is to be a national (or state, or city) leader in the Coronavirus era. I conclude it is basically a lose-lose proposition.
As leader, you realize most people will survive the pandemic and won’t thank you for bankrupting the society with excessive palliative measures. On the other hand, those who get really sick or the survivors of loved ones who die will say you didn’t take it seriously enough soon enough.
Meanwhile, in the absence of hard data, you are guessing about what will work, what people will put up with, and what can be done that won’t leave us homeless paupers after the disease subsides. And you know hindsight will show you guessed wrong some of the time, maybe a lot of the time.
Chances are, because it happens, as sailors say, “on your watch” you’ll be blamed by some non-trivial proportion of the survivors. All you can do is keep calm and cowboy up (mixed metaphor alert).
