COVID-19 Warning:
I thought both readings were very interesting and relevant to what is going on in the world currently. In the Dorner reading, a central theme is how taking action to alleviate short term issues can lead to greater issues long term. When elected officials make these decisions, the decision can ripple into other areas that were not expected. In the reading, an interesting example that stuck out to me is the example of changing the speed limit and placing speed bumps in a downtown district to limit pollution and make the area safer for pedestrians. While this may seem logical, pollution rose because cars were in second gear instead of third gear which causes more pollution, and people ended up going to nearby malls instead to avoid new traffic and congestion issues. While this plan was supposed to help downtown businesses, some businesses ended up going out of business in the long term. I think if the elected officials did trials before enacting this change and considered more long term changes, they could have prevented this from happening and found a more effective way to limit traffic while keeping businesses busy.
I think the examples made in this reading can serve as an allegory to all of the preventative measures being passed due to COVID-19. When the virus was spreading in China and factories, communities, and cities with millions of people were being shut down, the United States spectated as an outsider, and did not take preventive measures at that time to alleviate the inevitable spread of the virus. Now that the virus is in all fifty states and case rates are growing daily, the measures local governments and businesses make cannot keep up with the virus, which will have serious long term implications on society on a micro and macro basis, as employment patterns will change and certain industries will likely not be able to recover. This serves as a reminder to show how critical it is to take threats seriously and consider the long term ramifications for not considering the different outcomes.
Something the city planning example made me think of was how officials (local, federal, corporate) invest in Research and Development. Rather than testing, although this is an excellent step for new solutions, cities can research how other people have solved similar issues and then choose the most effective one.
Short term and long term is such a good point! I feel as humans like we constantly think in the short term – making decisions that affect the immediate now. This has only heightened in the technological age where everything becomes instant, fast and at our greedy fingertips. We aren’t thinking about the long term goal and investment when we splurge and but our entire amazon cart that will ship and arrive tomorrow. We are thinking, “Ah yes instant gratification”. This mindset carries over and had effected habits during the Covid-19 outbreak. Stay home from my spring break trip? Compromise my beach day? Don’t go out? We aren’t thinking about the long term when we make impulsive decisions during the covered- 19 outbreak. So retrain the lizard brain and “stay the fuck at home”.
It will be interesting to see how the long term solutions effect us. In the relief bill that the federal government passed, there is a large sum of money allocated to help failings businesses, however taking the money will essentially give the government part ownership. This was part of the “small print’ of the bill, and while perhaps it will not have a large effect on society it is not a condition that I think people would normally be eager to support. I am sure there are more details like this which we will only learn about after they start affecting people.
I really enjoyed this post and liked how you related it back into something affecting us currently. I agree that learning from past mistakes as well as others mistakes is crucial in a time like this. I also agree that our government was too late to act and we should have taken more serious measures in the beginning to prevent the spread. Then again the ripple effect of one decision is pretty absurd.
It is crazy to me that with a history of outbreaks like the flu and with a whole discipline of epidemiology devoted to this type of work, the U.S. government was unwilling to take precautionary measures and realize we had a real issue at hand. Yet, Americans are largely individualistic and we often do not face the consequences until they become life-threatening, putting thousands of people at risk of infection and death.