Thread: it is always tempting to claim that things could've been better weren't it for the incompetent people in charge. But the right course of action is usually clear only in retrospect.

Consider that we get pandemic scares every couple of years: SARS, MERS, West Nile, Zika, Ebola, swine flu, avian flu. Some of them, such as SARS, actually seem more frightening than COVID-19 - but then, usually just fizzle out in the developed world.

There is probably no approach that prevents us from grossly overreacting to 90% of such scares, but still permits us to act swiftly and decisively enough to make a major difference in a situation such as COVID-19.

So yes, in retrospect, there's plenty of blame to go around. For Mr. Trump and for Democratic officials alike - including the NYC health commissioner who, back in Feb, urged residents to attend events and "not change any plans due to misinformation spreading about coronavirus".

It's also easy to be upset with outlets such as Vox, many of which proclaiming that the pandemic is not coming and labeling the concerns as xenophobia-fueled "fake news". But then - if COVID-19 followed the pattern of SARS, we would all be touting their level-leaded leadership.

This is not a defense of Mr. Trump or anybody else - there are plenty of valid criticisms to make. But the reality is that there might be no "right" way to handle the situation we're in right now - that is, until we one day look back in retrospect.

In particular, there is no clear end game for curfews, and it's entirely possible that all we're doing is setting ourselves up for a devastating second wave once the toll of curfews is severe enough to make them politically untenable: https://medium.com/@wpegden/a-call-to-honesty-in-pandemic-modeling-5c156686a64b

Now, that's not to say I'm advocating for serenity. There are two things I am sad about, because I think they were easily avoidable - but the blame for them doesn't rest with any single political party.

The first is the misallocation of billions in federal emergency preparedness grants that apparently did not go toward stockpiling basic essentials, such as PPE - even though we always knew that another major respiratory pandemic is only a matter of time.

The other is the "noble lie" that pundits - including health authorities - repeated for weeks about the merits of face masks. These self-contradictory and condescending arguments undermined their credibility and probably made things worse for all of us.