Monday, March 16, 2020

Go watch this video (gov reactions to covid)

Everyone should go watch this video by CGP Grey: Rules for Rulers

It will help you understand government reactions to Covid. 

To oversimplify, in a Democracy, your "keys" are your voters.

That means, for Justin Trudeau, his "keys" are the 5.9 million people who voted for the Liberal Party of Canada. For Doug Ford, it is the 2.3 million who voted for the Ontario PC Party. For Donald Trump it is the 63 million who voted for him to become President. 

Keep in mind that this is all in the context of government reactions to covid. These may not be the "keys" in other contexts, but in this context, it is. 

Remember that voters of all sorts vote for candidates of all sorts. Trump had a roughly 10 point advantage among senior citizens, but that means million upon millions of senior citizens voted for his opponent. Poor people, Rich people, Men, Women, The Old, The Young, Single people, Parents, Minorities, Immigrants, Catholics, Hindu voters, etc etc etc, all end up voting for all candidates in differing amounts. You may end up with only a small portion of these voters, but, your voters will include some of all of them.

And it is to their voters that these politicians speak.

When Boris Johnson does a press conference on Covid, he is speaking primarily to the 14 million people who voted for him. The reason he can do this, is simply, that while their priorities may differ, those 14 million do indeed represent the full population, but, not in the same quantities. 

This is why an announcement from Trump will sound very different than an announcement from Trudeau. Both will suggest the same things - IE wash your hands, social distancing, do not hoard - but they'll phrase it very differently. Neither is wrong, or right, they are simply both speaking to their voters. 

Beyond that, keep this in mind:

All governments are listening to the experts right now.

That is why the UCP's Jason Kenny, the NDP's John Horgan, the CAQ's Francois Legault, the PC Party's, Doug Ford, and the Liberal's Stephen McNeil, all are telling their voters and thus their citizens to do very similar things. 

No man rules alone. All around the democratic world, experts are making the big decisions with the approval of elected representatives. The only difference here is that because different voter bases have different priorities, the reactions, while similar, will still differ in specific ways. Many asian countries, for example, are explicitly limiting families to having only one person allowed out a day, while western countries have not done much of this.

Opposition parties around the world are doing the exact same thing; generally supporting the government's plan, but also offering some soft criticism of things they feel the government isn't quite getting right. This includes opposition parties from all across the spectrum, responding to governments from all across the spectrum. It is simply the nature of politics. 

In short, everything that's happening is happening for a reason, and it's impossible to say, right now, who has got it "wrong" and who has got it "right". Different countries are reacting at different speeds with different methods. The curve of cases and infections in Japan is drastically different from that in South Korea, and both are drastically different from China; and these are three countries with - compared to the west - similar cultures, and which - compared to the US and EU - border one another. Once this is all said and done we'll be able to see who did what right, and, in hindsight, it will be clear who should have acted but failed to. 

Simply; this is not the time for politics. There will be plenty of time for politics later.

No comments:

Post a Comment