Thread

Knowing what to do, and then doing it, can be hard. But not knowing what to do, and doing nothing, can be harder still.

We often expect leaders to know what to do, especially in a crisis. We often expect them to show what should be done – to lead by example.

But think of leaders for whom the right decision is to say, we do not yet know enough to review our decisions on lockdown, but we do know that changing these decisions would be wrong. Therefore, the right thing is to do nothing, and to wait.

And they set an example by deciding not to make changes, and waiting. That’s a hard decision. It doesn’t mean that nobody is gathering and analysing information from local, national and global sources. It doesn’t mean that there’s nobody thinking about options for next steps.

But what it does mean is that we are all agreeing to do the difficult thing, when it would be easier to do something else. It would be easier to say it’s Easter weekend, so let’s just all go to our favourite spot for a couple of hours.

It would be easier for our leaders to say, it’s Easter weekend, so just go out a mingle with family and friends if you want.

It would have been great if they had – instead of waving to my daughter-in-law as she passed on her way to the supermarket with our grandson, my wife and I could have gone and picked him up out of his pram, to see if he could still remember Grandpa and Granny.

But nothing has changed, so we couldn’t do that. We have accepted the decision that we still need to do nothing, and we still need to wait. Because it’s not just about us – it’s about everybody.

I remember speaking to a doctor who said that sometimes the toughest discussion with a patient was the one where the advice was, do nothing and wait.

Wait watchfully, of course – but the information available just now tells us that it would do more harm than good to do something, however much “doing something” would feel better than “doing nothing”.

So for all our sakes, we are deciding to do nothing, and accepting that waiting is better than doing something. Once again, we are all indebted to one another.