Unless you are a person that firmly believes there will be a second wave – or even that there might be a second wave –  the reactions and measures taken to the COVID-19 pandemic are starting to calm down and the world is beginning to unwind the measures that have been put in place; albeit to varying degrees and velocities and with little consistency.

On thing is for certain; this event will be studied for years to come as data is gathered, scrubbed, and harmonized so that proper analysis can take place.  Unfortunately, another thing which is as certain is that the analysis will be politicized – with, unfortunately, a priority of placing blame being a primary driver of the analysis and the outcomes. 

But it would be wise to remember; “Blame is for God and small children” – Dustin Hoffman as Louis Dega in the movie “Papillon”.

Throughout this article, I will share the names of several people and organizations who were involved in the decision-making process – not just the people who made the decisions (whatever decisions they might have been), but also those who influenced the decisions being made.  This is not to say that I am blaming anyone for any negative outcome from the decisions that were made and why, just that they were the characters involved.  So please refrain from believing any of this is a personal attack on anyone – and also refrain from looking at this through a biased lens or introducing any logical fallacies in rebuttal.

I am going to start by sharing a few major concepts that were/are in-play in the engagement of the COVID-19 pandemic and which might illuminate influencing factors in the decision-making process.

Wicked Problems;  A “wicked problem” is not a problem that is inherently evil – but rather a problem whose complexity is such that any approach to resolve it is incredibly difficult (or quite probably impossible) to formulate and deploy.  The nature of wicked problems is that they consist of a large number of requirements and variables which are contradictory, fluid, and even unknown.  Because of the complex web of interdependencies, a solution to one part of a wicked problem can result in the creation of other problems, misinterpretations, and other unintended consequences, which were previously unknown, to be revealed.

Mt. Stupid; The basis for Mt. Stupid is the Dunning-Kruger effect.  In 1999, David Dunning and Justin Kruger were two psychologists at Cornell University who released a study – of what came to be known as the “Dunning-Kruger Effect” – that proposed, for a given challenge, incompetent people (who’s incompetence is not known, even to them) will pursue a path born out of ignorance and with great confidence until it is glaringly apparent that the path is wrong – with the resultant realization setting their confidence into a deep devaluation before the process of rebuilding can occur.

OODA-Loop; Colonel John Richard Boyd, a fighter pilot in the United States Air Force, is credited with having conceived and developed the concept of the OODA-Loop in the 1950’s during the Korean War for gaining the advantage during aerial combat based on an iterative four-stage process: Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act (OODA).