The COVID-19 pandemic is a kind of “slow-motion hurricane”, and lessons from past hurricane disasters can help guide us through it, according to a seasoned expert in extreme weather events. What’s needed is calm, non-partisan leadership that takes decisive, expertise-based action, emphasizes collective protection of the vulnerable, and tries to pre-empt both foolish and selfish behaviours.
“If we are to be as collectively-minded as this slow-motion disaster calls for, we need our leaders to show, in their actions and their words, that they have all of our best interests at heart,” writes Columbia University atmospheric scientist Adam Sobel, in a recent op ed for the New York Times. And he points to a relatively recent example that shows what any country’s response—to a weather disaster or the pandemic—should look like.
In preparing a disaster plan for Hurricane Sandy, President Barack Obama and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie put aside profound ideological differences, “shook hands, and agreed to work together, without rancour and to the best of their ability, putting the well-being of their constituents above any political calculus,” Sobel recalls. “Besides enabling their staffs to work together better, this also publicly communicated the gravity of the situation and modelled the spirit of unqualified cooperation that the recovery would require.”
Such communication and cooperation is urgently needed now, he adds. “We may be extremely divided politically, but we share physical, biological, and economic space, and that makes us all connected by this virus.”
Key to New York’s ability to handle Hurricane Sandy when the storm made landfall in 2012 was that leaders at all levels of government turned to the experts. Today, the knowledge of experts in health and disease transmission is needed if we are to have any hope of “getting ahead of the curve.” In 2012, New York State was fortunate that “the challenges of a potential major hurricane landfall in the New York metro area had been studied by experts for decades,” notes Sobel. “That knowledge base, and the seasoned professionals leading and serving key agencies—from the New York City Office of Emergency Management to the National Weather Service and [the Federal Emergency Management Agency]—gave state and local leaders the lead time that decades of improvement in weather forecasting had bought.”
Following the advice of solid expert guidance, city officials closed transit systems and ordered evacuations a day ahead of the hurricane’s landfall, giving residents the time and urging they needed to get to safety. But no such respect for expertise animated Washington’s initial response to the current pandemic.
“In the United States, there has been an increasing realization that our government wasted the time that scientific prediction—and the experiences of China, Italy, and other countries—bought us,” Sobel writes.
Even so, “disasters can bring out the best in people,” and there is still time to learn from that particular lesson. Just as any country must do in extreme weather, “we will need to rely on each other, on a much larger scale and for a much longer time than any of us are accustomed to,” says Sobel. From young and healthy people taking “all possible measures not to get the virus—even at possible cost to themselves,” to those whose livelihoods are not imperiled by social isolation giving support to those whose incomes have been reduced or lost, acting in the collective for the greater good is an imperative now.
Finally, clear-sighted leaders will anticipate that “not everyone will make wise choices.” Some will underreact to warnings about virus transmission, just as some ignored warnings to evacuate during Hurricane Sandy, and died as a result. And, adds Sobel, “other people will overreact, or react in counterproductive ways—such as buying all the hand sanitizer in stores to resell at a premium.” Recalling how Gary Szatkowski, a lead weather forecaster in New Jersey, “issued a stark, emotional warning to convince people to evacuate from the barrier islands before Sandy hit, inviting anyone who felt he was overhyping the danger to call him and ‘yell at me all you want,’” Sobel observes that, while completely preventing foolish or selfish behaviours is impossible, “authority figures addressing people directly and personally can help.”
That the Trump administration has failed to demonstrate the kind of leadership that enabled New York City to emerge relatively unscathed from Sandy is a cause for some mourning, concludes Sobel. But other authorities and communities are moving to fill the gap. “Earlier this month, in the absence of either widespread testing or guidance from the top on social distancing measures, state and local governments, as well as the private sector and individuals, stepped up and began to take actions on their own.”
Still, Sobel adds, the U.S. needs more. “Only the federal government can muster the kind of large-scale coordination—and resources—that a slow-motion hurricane, simultaneously striking everywhere, demands.”
