What an excellent piece, with valuable insights. Thank you!
Canada recently sent $1B worth of Covid vaccines to the landfill (or however pharmaceuticals are disposed of) partly because our Prime Minister had agreed to buy 9 doses for every Canadian. At the time, administering such a number of doses would have been the work of fantasy... I want to believe the decision to purchase these drugs was made in earnest. At some point, though, the PM must have realized the error in judgment (which, again, is forgivable in the fog of pandemic). But I don't believe he is capable of acknowledging any real errors he made. The psychological stakes of admitting error are simply too great for some of us. And so the error propagates and propagates until such time as we've learned nothing that helps us prepare for the next pandemic.
In retrospect we were incredible lucky that Covid infected fatality rate fell as quickly as it did. That gave us so much time to study and learn. (Like Bart Simpson's prayer for a snow day that delayed his test.:) ) And yet we squandered it. Because, it seems, the truth must submit to ideology and ego (and profit).
Thanks for the insightful description of the human difficulty to admit our errors. Being mortal, our time to learn from errors in each life cycle is ultimately limited--so hopefully we will learn to do so more efficiently and with more humility.
What an excellent piece, with valuable insights. Thank you!
Canada recently sent $1B worth of Covid vaccines to the landfill (or however pharmaceuticals are disposed of) partly because our Prime Minister had agreed to buy 9 doses for every Canadian. At the time, administering such a number of doses would have been the work of fantasy... I want to believe the decision to purchase these drugs was made in earnest. At some point, though, the PM must have realized the error in judgment (which, again, is forgivable in the fog of pandemic). But I don't believe he is capable of acknowledging any real errors he made. The psychological stakes of admitting error are simply too great for some of us. And so the error propagates and propagates until such time as we've learned nothing that helps us prepare for the next pandemic.
In retrospect we were incredible lucky that Covid infected fatality rate fell as quickly as it did. That gave us so much time to study and learn. (Like Bart Simpson's prayer for a snow day that delayed his test.:) ) And yet we squandered it. Because, it seems, the truth must submit to ideology and ego (and profit).
Thanks for the insightful description of the human difficulty to admit our errors. Being mortal, our time to learn from errors in each life cycle is ultimately limited--so hopefully we will learn to do so more efficiently and with more humility.