Flexibility

One of the main takeaways I'm having from watching the Coronavirus pandemic unfold is that a major failing of the world, especially the United States, is a feeling of entitlement, and an inability to be flexible to change. Emotional flexibility was tested prior to this pandemic through things like changing dinner plans or moving to a different town. Today, emotional flexibility is put through much tougher tests, and much of the public is showing that they're not there yet. 

Proactivity versus reactivity. When driving down a road, it's much safer to drive proactively than it is to drive reactively. Similarly, it's much more comfortable for anyone in your car. This is true as well to our response to global crises. Responding with preventative measures, after a crisis gets worse again isn't productive for the governing bodies, and it also but a great deal of stress upon the public. Emotional flexibility is tough to teach, and not many people have it in large quantities, so it's best for the general public's mental health if the amount of change can be limited. Thus having a multi-phase plan is effective only if the government decides to move on to the next phase when they are sure that they won't have to move back.

People like being free to do whatever they want to do. During the first shutdown due to COVID-19, the level of distress was noticeably high, people couldn't cope with the idea of not being able to do everything they wanted to do, whenever they wanted to do it. A building only does its job when it's built sturdily. Structure is only effective when it sets rules in place, gives reasons for setting those rules, and sticks to those rules. The phase-based culture we're building for ourselves isn't effective when we go forth into phases with looser regulations before we should. People's mental health would be much greater if they were told "here are some guidelines that we're going to follow for the next few years." Blind optimism isn't a good plan for a country's rebuilding process, but many of our elected leaders seem to think that it's a good one.

Responsibility is another trait that many people are missing right now and is harming our country as a whole. A democrat saying "We haven't been responding to this crisis as well as we should be, what do you think we should do?" to a republican is a lot more effective than saying "The Right has failed this country and deserve to be voted out"

Patience comes from understanding. A lot of people don't understand how change comes. Nothing changes overnight, especially things that are deeply rooted in our society. Working for change is great, but no matter how hard we work, change is never a fast thing. History tells us that.

Our response to the Coronavirus pandemic seems a bit like someone trying to insert a screw into a board with a hammer. At first, when they hit it it goes in a bit, but then it stops going in, and more hits from the hammer only serve to mangle the board and the screw. So what do they do? They tell themselves "Oh it worked before, It'll work now."

I think a good approach would involve setting an overarching rule such as the following. Anything done to open up society that is followed by a rise in daily cases will be resuspended immediately. We're so fixated on getting things "back to normal" that we lose sight of our values. What do we value more, the health and wellbeing of a significant portion of our world's population, or getting to eat inside restaurants. We forget that one day we'll be the ones who are at risk, and it'll be much easier to get the virus under control now, and to build a society where everyone is safe than it will be to convince our kids and our kids' kids that they should do what we didn't want to do to protect us.