by Oui
Sat Mar 21st, 2020 at 09:35:30 AM EST
I must admit, during my lifetime I've seen far more failures in leadership than succes.
In a democracy, the public is easily manipulated by PR and a non-critical media. Therefore, the popularity curve of leaders are far behind as a crisis develops. As new data is confronting the man in the street, the popularity polls catches up.
Interesting comparison I found was president Johnson's Vietnam War and George Bush in the Iraq War.
More below the fold ...
The Iraq-Vietnam Comparison | Gallup - June 2004 |
As the pandemic hasn't hit close to home one sees an inexplicable rise in popularity. We witness this in the US, UK and The Netherlands. In most western countries the preparation for a world-wide pandemic. Many alarming signals were missed and start of making CDC test kits flawed. Time lost is translated in unnecessary lives lost of loved ones.
The PR machine of politics is operating 24/7 to deceive the public for the "common good" of a unified response to battle the coronavirus.
During the Vietnam war, every American was proud of our boys going over there to fight the Communists. As the press statements continued to praise the advances of battles with the Viet Cong, true military succes remained elusive. In 1967, the number of deaths became an issue as friends, family or former high school buddies died on foreign soil. The TET offensive in February 1968 struck a cord with the American public.
As the coronavirus is still in an early phase in the States, large groups are defiant and not following essential instructions from the CDC or state governors. As the number of deaths each double, triple or quadruple, only than the pandemic will hit home.
Only today after measures were taken by the Dutch government, I noticed a remarkable change of attitude and universal social distancing is adhered to.
Because the Dutch government has a CoV-2 policy in place for limited testing, the true number of infected persons is mist like near 20,000 ... the increase in deaths the coming days will bear this out ... the elderly will have been offered on the altar of the economic option.
Invincible - the Titanic after striking an iceberg
"Indeed, oerusing the testimony, one is struck as to how invincible the passengers and crew thought the ship was -- until fairly late in the proceedings."
More data to follow ...
Leadership Failures In Organization
When negative unintended consequences occur as the result of mistakes, errors, ignorance, lack of expertise, flawed communication, and inability to lead. The unintended consequences can have a minor or major impact on the organization being led, the public being served, and the surrounding internal and external environment. In some situations, the failures can lead to death and have a long-term catastrophic impact.
Introduction
Richards and Engle (1986) offer the following definition of leadership “Leadership is about articulating visions, embodying values, and creating the environment within which things can be accomplished” (p. 206). This definition is useful for examining failures because failure is frequently associated with leaders who have not mastered communication skills, especially in conveying mission, vision, and goals, incongruent or conflicting values between leader and followers, and turbulence and conflict in ...
Political Leadership in the Time of Crises: Primum non Nocere
Long before the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the United States was already experiencing a failure of confidence between politicians and scientists, primarily focused on differences of opinion on climate extremes. This ongoing clash has culminated in an environment where politicians most often no longer listen to scientists. Importation of Ebola virus to the United States prompted an immediate political fervor over travel bans, sealing off borders and disputes over the reliability of both quarantine and treatment protocol. This demonstrated that evidenced- based scientific discourse risks taking a back seat to political hyperbole and fear.
The role of public health and medical expertise should be to ensure that cogent response strategies, based upon good science and accumulated knowledge and experience, are put in place to help inform the development of sound public policy. But in times of crisis, such reasoned expertise and experience are too often overlooked in favor of the partisan press “sound bite”, where fear and insecurity have proved to be severely counterproductive.
While scientists recognize that science cannot be entirely apolitical, the lessons from the impact of Ebola on political discourse shows that there is need for stronger engagement of the scientific community in crafting messages required for response to such events. This includes the creation of moral and ethical standards for the press, politicians and scientists, a partnership of confidence between the three that does not now exist and an “elected officials” toolbox that helps to translate scientific evidence and experience into readily acceptable policy and public communication.
“…the scary thing is that I want a leader who consults experts and thinks about all of the different sides to an issue before making statements and policies that are unfounded in science.”
— Kaci Hickox, RN a quarantined nurse, February 2015
A failure in the timing and content of the expression of risk, both immediate and long term, has always proved a critical misstep in communicating to the public. As the medical crisis appears to be coming to a tenuous closure in West Africa it is time to reflect on the response to Ebola in the United States which unfortunately resulted in a manufactured social and political crisis. It shouldn’t be this way, yet an exploration of numerous critical events over the past quarter century demonstrate that time and time again, politics trumps science.
○ Pandemic Response Team of the National Security Council – < Press Delete >
In the Battle Against Coronavirus, Humanity Lacks Leadership | TIME - Yudal Harari |
any people blame the coronavirus epidemic on globalization, and say that the only way to prevent more such outbreaks is to de-globalize the world. Build walls, restrict travel, reduce trade. However, while short-term quarantine is essential to stop epidemics, long-term isolationism will lead to economic collapse without offering any real protection against infectious diseases. Just the opposite. The real antidote to epidemic is not segregation, but rather cooperation.
…
In 1918 a particularly virulent strain of flu managed to spread within a few months to the remotest corners of the world. It infected half a billion people – more than a quarter of the human species. It is estimated that the flu killed 5% of the population of India. On the island of Tahiti 14% died. On Samoa 20%. Altogether the pandemic killed tens of millions of people – and perhaps as high as 100 million – in less than a year. More than the First World War killed in four years of brutal fighting.
In the century that passed since 1918, humankind became ever more vulnerable to epidemics, due to a combination of growing populations and better transport. A modern metropolis such as Tokyo or Mexico City offers pathogens far richer hunting grounds than medieval Florence, and the global transport network is today far faster than in 1918. A virus can make its way from Paris to Tokyo and Mexico City in less than 24 hours. We should therefore have expected to live in an infectious hell, with one deadly plague after another.
However, both the incidence and impact of epidemics have actually gone down dramatically. Despite horrendous outbreaks such as AIDS and Ebola, in the twenty-first century epidemics kill a far smaller proportion of humans than in any previous time since the Stone Age. This is because the best defense humans have against pathogens is not isolation – it is information. Humanity has been winning the war against epidemics because in the arms race between pathogens and doctors, pathogens rely on blind mutations while doctors rely on the scientific analysis of information.
My daughter became infected in 2003 when living in a rented house where later asylum seekers shared the facilities. She caught the Yersin bacil and never since recovered full health.
○ Alexandre Yersin: Discoverer of the Plague Bacillus | Mayo Clinic |
