Reflections - How we think

How we think

There is time for optimism and time for pessimism

In an economic downturn due to a pandemic, famine, malfeasance by large financial organizations, poor governance, and other assorted reasons, trade wars and real wars etc., people respond to the situation in two ways as it pertains to their life and their livelihood:

a.   It is going to get worse

b.   The worst is over; it is going to get better

People who believe “it is going to get worse” take measures that deepen the overall perception of crisis. They hoard. Those who are more measured in their response, the “it is going to get better” lot, adapt and make do with less.  

In financial markets these behaviors and attitudes spawn the ‘bear market’ of pessimism and the ‘bull market’ of optimism. A bear lumbers. A bull charges.

Optimism or pessimism are ‘congenital’ traits that are not necessarily good or bad attributes of a person. In excess everything is generally bad. The two traits are ‘situational’ and ‘personality’ driven.

The pessimists tend to be less demanding of themselves than the optimists. They prefer balance in their life than the highs and lows which is the wont of an optimist.

An optimist by his very nature tends to do better than a pessimist simply because he (the male pronoun is used for convenience only) takes more risks and is willing to bear the downsides of the risks. A pessimist generally vets and reviews every decision before committing and in the process gets most of the decision right, but makes far fewer of them i.e. when not beset by an ‘analysis-paralysis’ syndrome.

An optimist responds to opportunities as they emerge with a go-no-go approach to decision-making and in the balance does better. Quantity begets quality. He does not grieve or become inconsolable when things don’t go his way. His argument is ‘you cannot win them all’ and with the nonchalance characteristic of him, he just moves on to the next thing. There is no slack in his pace. No moping over the loss or unbridled celebration over the win.

For an optimist winning is routine. He would not be an optimist if it was not so. It’s always ‘where is the next mountain to climb’. He approaches overcoming life’s challenges as a quest, not as a task.

In a business-as-usual situations both optimists and pessimists balance out the risks and rewards and their attitudes do not make any waves that call for alarm, oversight or correction.

However, in a crisis situation like an economic slowdown or a pandemic, we need more optimists and some pessimists to move things forward boldly and yet have some checks and balances. What we absolutely do not need is the 24/7 news channels and their hourly prognosis of doom.

At such times, it usually comes down to the individual. It is rare to see statues of ‘committees’ in parks or city junctions. It is always the individual who steps up; others follow. We need the ‘Howard Roark’ in such situations – the protagonist in The Fountain Head, a 1943 novel by Ayn Rand, a Russian-American author.

Howard Roark, is an individualistic young architect who designs modernist buildings and refuses to compromise with an architectural establishment unwilling to accept innovation. A major mass-based programme such as fighting an economic slowdown or a pandemic demands boldness, innovation and empathetic bonding with the masses to get the job done – done well – and done for good.

In these times we need optimists who believe such slowdowns (or pandemics that cause it) are a call to re-examine all our assumptions and beliefs about how things work. The business-as-usual attitude must seize; must become pariah to decision-makers. Failure to act makes what was manageable, a burgeoning crisis. It brings up the Churchill and Roosevelt in some and the Donald J Trump in others ‘thrashing around for the proverbial straw’.

All our assumptions and beliefs of crisis management is upended by the time you recognize there is a crisis, and importantly, of a very different nature. To live in denial is the default setting for a normal human being. Not so with true leaders.

Especially when dealing with something so totally new as the novel Covid 19 virus, that attaches itself to a phenomenon, such as global movement of people, at a peak travel period (year-end), whizzing the merry and the  brooding, shoulder-to-shoulder, in tubes literally – trains, planes and subways – breathing in fresh and recirculated air – and some droplets of spurned and abandoned virus.

In a pandemic of the nature of Covid 19 of 2019-20, a highly contagious respiratory impairment disease, containment of community transmission is directly linked to containment of the disease.

While the whole world struggled and still struggles with containment, the little state of Kerala in India with 35 million people (half of UK and tenth of US population with 7 and 4 percent per capita income of the two countries, respectively) did it successfully, going by the book: following the WHO protocol to the ‘T’ ‘I’ and ‘S’: test, trace, isolate and support.

The architect behind the successful containment is a kindly, cheerful, bespectacled former secondary school science teacher, KK Shailaja (Teacher), who has acquired many nicknames including one promoted by The Guardian, ‘The coronavirus slayer!’ in an article published on Thurs 14 May 2020 titled ‘The coronavirus slayer! How Kerala’s rock star health minister helped save it from Covid-19’.

There are many media vehicles that have covered the minister’s achievements in effective disease containment, including the Malayalam film ‘Virus’ which essayed her story battling the ‘Nipah’ virus.

What lessons can we derive from this optimist, who succeeded twice over, battling community transmitted infectious diseases that potentially could affect 35 million in her state?

a.   the belief that the virus can be contained, a belief strengthened by her earlier experience combating the Nipah virus successfully

b.   creation of enabling infrastructure for containment based on the Nipah experience by having the foresight that such epidemics will occur again

c.    responding with alacrity and speed based on news of the virus which she read online (serendipity?) when WHO had yet to wake up to the deathly scourge, definitively

d.   galvanizing her health care team to act expeditiously; pressing the law and order department to enforce rules on quarantine

e.   putting a plan in place but also knowing that “no plan survives contact with the enemy” and so empowering the team down the line to take judgment calls

f.     leading from the front – visiting infected areas – educating and calming nerves – and dealing with issues as they came up: when ambulance drivers feared infection, she gave them the necessary accoutrements to protect themselves, offered pay hikes, and also medical insurance for treatment in case of infection

g.   did all of above with arresting serenity and deep empathy that built profound confidence in her frontline team, knowing the government machinery and resources and the people are backing them squarely.  

Some extracts from The Guardian article fleshes out the lessons for better appreciation of the minister’s her day-to-day manoeuvring, decision-making and leadership chops.

“On 20 January, KK Shailaja made a phone call to one of her medically trained deputies who confirmed that the Covid-19 virus was indeed serious.

“Four months later, Kerala has reported only 524 cases of Covid-19, four deaths and – according to Shailaja – no community transmission. By contrast, the UK has reported 40,000 deaths and the US has reported more than 82,000 deaths. Both countries have rampant community transmission.

“How has this been achieved? Three days after reading about the new virus in China, and before Kerala had its first case of Covid-19, Shailaja held the first meeting of her rapid response team. The next day, 24 January, the team set up a control room and instructed the medical officers in Kerala’s 14 districts to do the same at their level. By the time the first case arrived, on 27 January, via a plane from Wuhan, the state had already adopted the World Health Organization’s protocol of test, trace, isolate and support.

“At the height of the virus in Kerala, 170,000 people were quarantined and placed under strict surveillance by visiting health workers, with those who lacked an inside bathroom housed in improvised isolation units at the state government’s expense.

“That number has shrunk to 21,000. “We have also been accommodating and feeding 150,000 migrant workers from neighbouring states who were trapped here by the lockdown,” she says. “We fed them properly – three meals a day for six weeks.” Those workers are now being sent home on charter trains.

“When Shailaja’s party came to power in 2016, it undertook a modernisation programme. One pre-pandemic innovation was to create clinics and a registry for respiratory disease – a big problem in India. “That meant we could spot conversion to Covid-19 and look out for community transmission,” Shailaja says. “It helped us very much.”

“When the outbreak started, each district was asked to dedicate two hospitals to Covid-19, while each medical college set aside 500 beds. Separate entrances and exits were designated. Diagnostic tests were in short supply, especially after the disease reached wealthier western countries, so they were reserved for patients with symptoms and their close contacts, as well as for random sampling of asymptomatic people and those in the most exposed groups: health workers, police and volunteers.

The successful containment by the Health Minister KK Shailaja and the Kerala government headed by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, stands in stark contrast to how some of the most powerful world leaders of the Western world responded to the Covid 19 pandemic.

Notably, the US White House and the President of the United States of America, Donald J Trump, the most powerful man in the world, who stayed in denial for too long to effectively administer containment of the virus – and the same could be said of some of the European Heads of State where the virus has taken its unpardonable toll.

The leadership of the Kerala State and the governments of the Western world had the same notice period to the deadly nature of the disease. Only one took it seriously. The others hoped wistfully that the virus will die from jetlag. President Trump was unequivocal that the virus will vaporise with the heat when it touches American shores. ‘The sun never sets on America’. Oops! That was Britain. We know where such hubris leads to – rising death toll and collapse of a whole empire.  

It does not always pay to be an optimist. Not in situation when ‘quantity does not beget quality’. Covid 19 is not a daily occurrence on which you can gamble on an upside on infinite throw of the dice. Some pessimism on the enormity of the task without being overwhelmed by it makes for a good starting point to err on the side of excess for mitigation of the potential damage a hideous virus can do – as in Wuhan, China.

Pessimism on levels of preparation to combat the disease would certainly have helped save lives in countries had they not been complacent and allowed their guard to drop based on misplaced optimism, to tragic results.

By ‘timing’ our optimism and our pessimism, situationally, we can come up tops, most times.