At the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, I tried to explain to my daughter (and to myself) the rationale behind the draconic measures the governments take to fight with the crisis. One rationalization that I found was an analogy of a person that falls into the water. In this situation, the person needs to act FAST to stabilize the situation. Only than, he or she can start planning their steps.
I have been very vocal criticizing the dramatic measures that many governments took in the beginning of this crisis. It looks like these measures were more-or-less correct, and that the countries that didn’t implement them are now in a much worse situation, compared to the countries that did impose severe limitations. But even if in the retrospective it will turn out that one could do much better without the many “hammers,” I tend to think that those hammers were inevitable.
The conclusion? One day or another, we will all need to act very fast. This means that we need to be prepared, have plan B’s work on resilience, and maybe perform emergency drills.
Boris Gorelik 