What Happened?

decisions a day—what to eat, where to walk, what to say, none of which have a lasting impact. Even big decisions—what car to buy, where to live, what job to take—feel major in the moment but generally don’t register with too much command in our life story. Who to marry, what degree to study, whether to join the armed forces, whether to have a child—these typically represent our most lasting decisions, those we consider crucial. In today’s world of instant everything, most things are less permanent. !erefore, crucial decisions are less and less frequent. Where do we see them? When leaders are making decisions in complex situations.

Back to coronavirus in 2020, did we save lives? !is is a di#- cult question. A3er all, every one of us will eventually pass away. If by “save lives” we mean certain lives were extended, then yes, some were. However, what if another group of lives were shortened? When all is said and done, I believe the data will reveal this is exactly what happened. In other words, some lives were positively impacted while others were crushed, and as a society the net gain in terms of lifespan was negligible. At the same time, the economic, emotional, and mental toil of the times has been some of the worst in history. It seems that, at best, we spent trillions of dollars to prolong a small number of lives for a short time (on average). By contrast, we could have directed one tenth of those resources to improve and extend the lives of ten times as many people. More on this, shortly.

But how did we decide to prioritize these people with this extraordinary sum of money for a relatively small return? Simply put, our processes for making these crucial decisions were outdated. Leaders across the business and political spectrum were put in impossible positions, asked to make gut calls reacting to input from a small group of people, based on an incomplete set of data. !is led to conclusions that drove uncertainty, not reliability.

What Happened?

“It seemed sensible enough. A3er we started hearing about coronavirus, it appeared that we might be facing huge

problems—massive amount of sickness, high fatality rates, and overloading our healthcare system. We had to do something. !e public demanded it.”

Who said this? I have paraphrased, but virtually every elected o#cial in the United States has echoed these words. You can look up quotes from across the country as states and cities were closing down. What prompted them to make this statement? Someone asked a question like, “Why did you make the decision to shut down everything?”

In retrospect, it’s amazing how quickly everything happened. On December 31, 2019, the local government in Wuhan, China, con"rmed publicly that a large number of pneumonia cases being experienced in the city were actually the e$ects of a new strain of coronavirus. Eleven days later, the "rst death was reported. Ten days a3er that, cases began to be reported across the world, with one case in Washington state, where a man had returned from Wuhan. Finally, by the end of January, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global health emergency. !irty days passed from the "rst reports in China to the recognition of a global pandemic.

Over the next month, reports began to pour in. !e "rst death outside of China was reported in the Philippines. Cruise ships were quarantined. !e disease was titled COVID-19 by the WHO. !e "rst major wave outside of China occurred in Italy and then Iran. Cases were reported across Europe. !e "rst US death was reported on February 29, 2020. By the middle of March, most schools in the country were closed until further notice. And Venezuela and France were the "rst countries to impose nationwide lockdowns. March 19 was the "rst day China reported no new reported infections, then on March 26, the US became the largest coronavirus victim, with 81,321 cases. !rough April, more cases were reported across the world and the United States. In response, state and federal government imposed restrictions and lockdowns, becoming more and more strict by the day. Job losses in the United States reached epic proportions.