Politicians must keep their heads in times of crisis. They must react sensibly to circumstances and events as they occur, and keep in mind the wide range of consequences involved in both acting and not acting. They must also realize that acting will have negative or unintended consequences. Like Augustine’s just judge, they have to fumble around in the nether world of making decisions while lacking the knowledge they need to do so.
Not only politicians must keep their heads. A pandemic brings with it renewed attention to the public sphere and the ways in which private decisions affect public goods. Especially at a time such as this, with easily attainable information and hard to come by knowledge, individual citizens may often feel paralyzed in their decision-making. They fear contracting the virus, but also fear having their lives too profoundly altered. It doesn’t help when the nation’s top public health official gives us contradictory advice. Most citizens will respond to public cues, but they will always do so with an eye toward their own well-being as well as that of their particular communities. When those cues communicate doomsday scenarios and demand enormous sacrifices, public panic is sure to follow. Our tendency will be to assume we know more than we really do, in part to reconcile ourselves to our fate. Suddenly everyone seems to fancy himself an amateur epidemiologist. A panicking public will produce bad consequences, and we are already seeing its destructive effects on our economy.
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