Pandemic — The meeting point of 3 imperfect sciences.

Life is interconnected. Sciences are interconnected. Some are interconnected more with others than, well, others. Politics is connected with almost everything, while cutting edge research on life in other planets, on the other hand, not so much.

So let’s start with politics. There are books, many many books. Many many thoughts. Many many opinions. But when something has many many points of view, it probably means that none of them are right. Right?

Politics is so difficult because of the range of emotions, rights, responsibilities and ethics that need to taken care of. Just the spectrum makes it impossible to get it right all the time. Somewhere, someone’s right is going to get trampled upon. Successful are those who keep it to the minimum.

Or successful are those who create a following. Another way to be successful in politics, if you’re not out to make everyone’s life the best it can be, is to bank on leadership. Or persona. Or potraying self as the protector against a common enemy — real or created. Because fear is powerful uniter.

Why is fear powerful? That is out of scope of this article, a short note on what it is, is in this Medium Series https://medium.com/series/covid-question-why-dont-these-people-get-it-aeb95a3a703f

So, there are many ways to be successful in politics. Without doing an ounce of good for people. Let’s leave politics aside and move to another poorly understood science.

Economics.

Well, you could argue that Economics has been around long enough. And there are a million experts. But have we been able to find solutions to economic problems? Nope. Have you read anything about Economics before?

Most Economists will put out theories followed by a caveat, that is usually the same — all else remaining equal.

Prices would go up, gives all else remains the same.

Crime will go up, if all else remains the same.

Non communicable disease will be a huge burden on the economy. Well, Hello Corona!

Economics is, like most other things in life, a work-in-progress.

Unlike Economics, and more like Politics, another imperfect science that is poorly understood because of the wide range of impact is Behavioural Science. One of the toughest sciences to venture into is the study of behaviour. Especially, since each person is going behave differently to the same situation. And studying every single person is going to be different, but a single person can cause sufficient damage.

School shootings. Rapists. Terrorists. These are problems with behaviour. How they create fear, how they recruit, how they act on their own, why death sentences haven’t reduced rapes. There are no answers. There are more questions.

Also, what creates fear for one, doesn’t for the other. Climate Change is worrying for a group of people and they urge us make changes. We don’t care. Corona comes along and we then urge people to make changes to their lives and we get angry when they don’t do it. Hello?

Since so much of behaviour boils down to our genes, our upbringing, our environment, our state of mind at a particular time, and a million more permutations, this is a difficult science to perfect.

Healthcare is an amalgamation of these three sciences. Who should pay for healthcare? Government? Insurance? The person who falls sick?

Throughout history, that answer has been remarkably unchanged.

There has been no confusion in the answer to that question.

The answer has always been, “Not me.”

Enter Politics. Governments says reluctantly, OK, me, if you elect me.

Enter capitalism, and insurances say, OK, me, but everyone pay me enough to pay for those who fall sick and make enough money to buy a few villas.

Enter Behaviours and people say, If someone else is paying, that it is my right to get the care!

Who should pay for healthcare? “Not me!”

Enter the Pandemic and it all comes to a standstill. Because pandemics are few and far between, everyone deals with an invisible enemy, one that is hard to predict. It exposes the holes in the system. And the chinks of these sciences are glaring.

Politics — Damned if you do, damned if you don’t

Economics — Life or livelihood?

Behaviours — Keep me safe AND keep my livelihood.

But then, every problem, is also an opportunity. So, politics will do what is best to retain power. Or get to power, depending on which side we talk about. Economics does what it does best — plot a few numbers assuming all else remains equal. Behaviour does its part — question whatever is being done while continuing to do what it wants.

Every problem is an opportunity. A pandemic is no different.

Healthcare, unfortunately, bears the brunt of these three imperfect sciences. While health sciences are a pandora’s box, already, these outside interferences, or in some cases, the lack of interferences, surely don’t make it easier.

Is there any country that is happy with its healthcare? Take behaviour sciences to the picture and people complain about healthcare in a country while they are there and complain about the healthcare to the country they migrate to, after saying wonderful things about it.

The bottom line is, the perfect healthcare system doesn’t exist. Yet.

The pandemic has just exposed it even more!