Navigating the Curve Together

More than a month into our nation’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic – the stay at home measures, increased emphasis on proper hygiene and physical distancing, regular media briefings and updates, and a rise in the use of virtual channels to do everything from schooling and work to banking/commerce and interacting – one can’t help but wonder: Where are we in the course of turning the tide in our favour? Have we done all that we can to achieve the desired outcomes? Have we made all the right calls?

Let me preface these questions by saying that no one can predict the future and hindsight is always 20/20.

I use this disclaimer because, at no point in what we’re going to look at today, am I criticising or condemning any of the actions taken.

One of the hallmarks of effective leadership may be making the tough decisions without fear of reprisal or criticism but in the same breath is that basic understanding that those decisions had to be made. Regardless of outcomes, leadership calls for decisive action.

When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

As clichéd as that statement is, it bears a great deal of meaning as we travel along this entire path (so far) from the outbreak’s first days to present time. And it has been a tough month.

As expected, along the way, decisions have been made, mistakes have also been made, and most importantly, lessons have been learned. Lessons for all – not just as leaders but more so as societies and a human species confronting a difficult challenge.

I don’t want to dwell on the leadership decision or mistakes. Nor do I want to pare away and drill down into the various lessons. Primarily because these lessons are constantly being learned with each new development and the decisions and mistakes, one way of another, ultimately serve us better as necessary stepping stones toward shaping the outcome we want.

However, there is one issue that I want to touch on because it is one that I have come back to time and time again in my thoughts about the pandemic and our response – as groups and individuals.

It is an issue that has led me along multiple paths of thinking as I (and countless others, here and around the globe) mull over all that has happened, has been happening, and can be expected to happen over time.

COVID-19 came out of the blue and has hit the entire world for six, as we say.

In the time since the initial diagnoses and fatalities to present day, the world has been swept by radical change on an unprecedented level. It’s safe to say that this most recent pandemic, in bringing us face to face with how we live, has also forced us to examine concepts, such as personal freedom and the common good versus the individual good.

My question is: How has COVID-19 singlehandedly jumpstarted the conversation about the (necessary?) trade-off between looking after the welfare of a society and looking after the welfare of the individual members of that society?

“The Needs of the Many Outweigh the Needs of the Few…Or the One.”

That quote from Spock in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan gets to the heart of the matter.

Utilitarian philosophy notwithstanding, with the quarantine measures brought about by the pandemic and the already large numbers of people affected, many people have begun to question whether such measures taken are an infringement of the rights of individuals living in a free nation or is the common good of preventing the spread of infection more important?

We’ve seen the news of protests in various countries and states by people adamantly opposed to the continued restrictions. Do they have a point? I suppose they do.

But my interest lies in using what is happening to tease out a productive discussion on whether the individual rights versus the common good debate helps us understand some of the ideological tension behind the current pandemic?

There is absolutely no doubt that solving this current crisis (as much as we can) mandates replacing the prevailing ethic of individual rights with an ethic of the common good.

This is a topic that has pervaded much of the 21st Century. It has surfaced in discussions of business' social responsibilities, sustainable investment in environmental protections, education standards, and national security…you name it.

And in almost every discussion, it is reasonably argued that our most fundamental social problems stem from a widespread lack of commitment to the common good and an equally widespread pursuit of individual interests.

Now a pandemic has come along and the discussion has surfaced again.

I take heart in what the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago has repeatedly said: “We are all in this together.”

Therefore, should we not act as if we are?

How Good is the Common Good?

On the one hand, the common good calls for a society having the right social systems, institutions and environments functioning in a way that benefits everyone within society. This includes having access to an affordable public healthcare system, among many others. But it also calls for having the right attitude about why they are necessary.

These right functioning systems and attitudes have such a powerful impact on a society’s wellbeing that it is not surprising that their absence or dysfunction, in one way or another, leads to how strong or weak a society is. More pertinently, to how well a society is able to respond to threats and crises.

Understandably, building and sustaining the common good do not just happen overnight. Something only counts as a common good only to the extent that it is a good to which all have access.

Establishing and maintaining the common good, therefore, requires cooperative effort. It requires sacrifice, investment, and sustained effort. In short, it requires us actively wanting to see the bigger picture more than just seeing it. It takes hard work because it is worth it.

You would think that since all members in society benefit from the common good, we would all willingly be on board with any measures to produce that good. But, here we are, face to face with a significant number of obstacles that hinder us from successfully doing so.

But why? We all want to get back to our lives so why not take the steps to achieve that?

“Everyone thinks of changing the world. No one thinks of changing himself.” – Leo Tolstoy

Societal welfare versus individual welfare. Can the two be reconciled effectively?

Looking at the reactions currently underway, obviously caused by this entire lockdown syndrome that the world is currently in, there is much that we can take away from just how difficult it has become to reconcile the two.

In my own thoughts I have vacillated between which should take precedence – greater good or individual good?

What I have realised is that the reason I am so undecided about it is because I had never really established any principles that would govern such a decision (I am guessing that neither had those charged with the responsibility of making it). In other words, I never thought too much about it because it wasn’t top of mind.

A crisis has come along and brought us face to face with the difficult.

A true leader admits their shortcomings. More importantly, the best leaders work on surmounting them.

Using retrospection to guide us for the future, I think there should be some principles that are established and these should be built around protecting the most vulnerable in society.

It therefore has to start with a definition of “most vulnerable” and that shouldn’t only be based on health or age but also socio-economic state. For example, if we had a chance of redoing our response to the crisis, would we seek to protect the elderly by putting limitations on what they could do (for their own sake); protect the less fortunate (based on some definition) by preserving the businesses in which they are employed; and offer voluntary protection to other “at risk” groups?

In other words, would we have stood a better chance of dealing with COVID-19 had we, as a people, identified the individuals most in danger and then made the necessary sacrifices as a whole to protect them? Or would we be better served by treating the crisis as a blanket one and applying wholesale measures to protect everyone equally?

In seeking to change the future, we needed to change the present – our thoughts, our attitudes, our actions, ourselves.

We needed to understand the needs of both the many and the few and make the hard calls for both the greater good and the individual good.

It’s a tricky situation to be sure. But it is not too late. There is still time to look at the way things are and do what we can to make them the things we all want.

One thing is for certain: “We are all in this together.”

What do you think? Share your thoughts and of course, be safe and stay healthy.