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A combination of micro-economics, principal-agent theory and corporate theory teaches us what I think may be the most intuitive yet least understood aspect of leadership and management, and in this instance it has important and far reaching ramifications... https://twitter.com/IvanTheK/status/1248949974014087168
...Good decision making in any group is about aligning the authority to make a decision with the information necessary to make it. Get information into the hands of the decision maker. Who are the decision makers in reopening our economy? Unfortunately the answer is everyone. ...
It's not just Trump, and it's not even just State, County and City officials. It is also corp CEOs, boards of non-profits, principals and leaders of every small business and even every individual, as employees and consumers. Why? Because that's who shut down the economy. ...
Sure, the State govt can stop requiring you to stay at home, but can they *make* you go back tonwork if you don't feel safe there? Can they *make* you buy things in the store? Nope. By and large, people are reasonable and their survival and that of their families is at stake. ...
So, what does that mean? Well, it means what a lot of (but not all) epidemiologists seem to grasp, because they are gasping for decision making intelligence. We need massive, widespread and readily available testing. We need COVID19 tests and we need serum tests. We need ad hoc..
..tests for individuals who think they might be sick, we need tests for hospitals to diagnose potential patients and we need a nationwide, systematic audit of the population with serum tests to understand where COVID19 was truly prevalent and who remains vulnerable. ...
Trump AND the CDC need to understand, this isn't just a matter of good public healthcare, though it is certainly important for that. This is a matter of political leadership to get the economy back open, to get the information needed to make day-to-day decisions into the hands..
...of the people making those decisions. To reopen the economy, politicians need to give people the confidence they need to go to the office and the post-office, the grocery store and retail stores, church and non-profit fundraisers, school and their kids soccer games, etc. ..
It starts w "am I sick" and broadens into community concern as a matter of personal survival and safety. Many epidemiologists have advocated for this information from the outset and the public isn't stupid. Even if they lean heavily on public health officials for advice...
...members of the public know that public health officials themselves don't have the information they need and that detracts from confidence. So, the sooner this admin sets up a public health information intelligence gathering and distribution network, the better. Otherwise...
...the economic decision making will be made on an ad hoc basis as that information trickles out. Trump has already started pushing on the "time to reopen the economy" string. The harder he pushes without exhibiting any leadership, the more idiotic he's going to look.
