Among scenario planners this pandemic has come as no surprise at all. None of us knew when it would arrive, but that there would eventually be a global pandemic of some novel disease was an "inevitable surprise," predicted for years by scenario planners & public health officials.
And yet, what the last few weeks have shown is that some governments took those scenarios seriously, and planned for them, and others did not.
And the difference in performance between those governments that took the scenario seriously and those that did not has been stark.
And the difference in performance between those governments that took the scenario seriously and those that did not has been stark.
On the positive side of "taking the scenario seriously," the exemplary success story thus far has been Taiwan. Despite being more closely linked to China than any other country, Taiwan has had only 50 cases, and only one death. How did Taiwan manage this?
The answer is that, after the SARS outbreak in 2003, Taiwan did serious wargaming to prepare for the inevitable next outbreak, including occasional whole-of-country exercises. Unsurprisingly, rehearsals matter for the quality of the performance. For more: fortune.com/2020/03/15/cor….
By contrast, the countries that didn’t rehearse (including ours), which are now trying to put together the show on the fly, are facing public health and economic calamities.
Much will be made in coming months and years about the relative performance of China versus Western governments in handling the coronavirus outbreak, much of it in the service of xenophobia and self-serving (or self-excusing) politics.
But one should ignore this ideological spin. In fact the relative performance of different governments is not a testament to the relative virtues of authoritarian versus democratic states.
What does distinguish the divergent governmental performances, by contrast, is *how seriously experts were taken in terms of planning protocols.*
