The Importance of Perspective

 In a recent facebook comment an article was posted with the headline "Political Leaders Must Act Now to Thwart the Next Pandemic". My comment was that the article lacked perspective. 

First of all, is it even possible that a government or governments can thwart a pandemic? And, if so, at what cost? As we saw in the recent COVID-19 pandemic, governments could  bring the horses -- the citizens -- to the water but it could not make all the horse drink -- the governmental laws, regulations and directives -- of the thwarting measures. In indeed, now have 7.837 billion people living in 195 sovereign countries with untold numbers of state and local governments. To think that it would be possible for them all to have any modicum of a common response to thwart the next pandemic I think such a program to thwart pandemics lack perspective.

Secondly, I question whether the resources available to governments. If the objective is prevention of premature death, would they not be best spent in combating death from malnutrition (9 million each and every year), cardiovascular diseases (18 million each and every year), cancer (9 million each and every year), obesity (4.72 million each and every year) rather than on preventing pandemic like COVID-19 that killed less than 3 million over its 2 year duration? 

The COVID-19 pandemic killed less than 3 million in two years while 81 million -- 27 times more -- that died from less sensational malnutrition, cardiovascular disease, cancer and obesity over the same period of time.The COVID-19 pandemic is largely a thing of the past but more than 40 million people will continue to each and every year of malnutrition, cardiovascular disease, cancer and obesity. I think such a program to thwart pandemics rather than malnutrition, cardiovascular disease, cancer and obesity lacks perspective.

So what kind of response did I get?  .

 Statistics

 This respondent seems to think that statistics which give rise to perspective are of no value as if no one thing has greater importance or greater relevance than another. An idealistic magic fairy will make all his wishes come true. But reality does not work that way. The brain does not work that way. The brain is constantly making evaluations and enabling actions based on those evaluations. And those evaluations are make on the basis of experiences with the statistically greater being the deciding factor. Otherwise the brain would always respond to whatever it is experiencing at the moment and we know that the brain discards about 90% of all sensory inputs in making decisions. It responds to what is most relevant at the moment, not giving equal weight to all experiences in what we do