Dear Editor:
Recent surveys of public opinion, as published in the Wellington Advertiser, place the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic by politicians mostly in the non-approval column. This should come as no surprise, since far too many politicians work in the reactive mode instead of the pro-active mode.
In times of peace, the best defence against war is preparedness, and that requires planning. Unlike former times when there was no computer modelling capacity, most modern Western governments now have the ability to model reasonable impacts of crises, which in turn, gives information about how to prepare for disasters.
One might ask, at this point, why elected politicians appear not to have chosen to consider the use of such technology? Could it be that, as a group, “they” are simply not up to the task of planning in order to protect and serve the communities that elected them?
COVID-19 appears to have “produced” unfavourable opinions of politicians across the country. Of course, it does not help when decisions of one day are changed on the next day or that decisions that should have been made weeks ago are now ramped up as though there is urgency. Had the country been prepared for a pandemic through proper analysis over past years, we would not be in the mess in which we find ourselves. That, of course, is easy to say! But the truth of the matter is that government agencies (federal and provincial), that should have been ahead of the game, were obviously not. They were, as is often the case in peacetime, complacent.
Complacency is a failure to reach a higher standard, brought about in part, through a sense on non-accountability. Politicians, some but not all, rest on their comfort-zone knowledge that there will be no election for four years, and therefore no direct challenge on their performance. This is a failure of the current election system and ought to be addressed through the right to recall any politician who does not serve his/her constituents suitably. It is not a simple matter, and it would take much thought to establish good performance standards and measurements before a politician should be recalled or made to step aside.
We cannot go forward to the next pandemic without proper analysis and evaluation of scenarios via computer modelling technology being done now, for it will be far too late to play catch-up if another COVID-like virus should happen to emerge.
This is not written with alarmist intent, but with the hope that we never have to go through periods of being locked down or periods when we have to wait for vaccinations … or periods when pharmaceutical companies vie for the biggest share while people are dying.
For that matter, none of us want to see vaccine nationalism emerge while the world suffers; one would hope that genuine humanity would rule the day and that all people would be cared for, equally.
Dr. Alaric Woodrow,
Fergus