Part of our problem with this virus is that it works on a time scale different than any that we've been used to. Actions we take today only show up as having an effect on the virus about three weeks from now. But we live in a zero-time society, where instantaneous events are the norm. This is probably especially so in politics, so political leaders are hyper-chipmunk like in their velocities. And they expect the other realities in their world to work on the same time scale. Nothing coming at them slowly looks like a danger. So our sensibilities are designed for threats very different than what these are. In Italy, in Spain, in the UK, in NYC, and now I fear in many places across the US, leaders realize that their actions at one moment only register with the virus's behavior weeks later. This realization is coming for Arizona, for South Carolina, for Florida, for Texas, and for many other places in the US.

This is a general truth about politics that has other applications.  Concerns about long-term economic policy; about education policy; about the slow cultivation of alliances and the slow learning about other nations; certainly about the changes to the environment in the anthropocene.  It would probably do the State Department and other policy shops a great deal of good to have some offices dedicated to slowness -- to thinking through changes that are happening at different time scales.

Maybe this is something that the next Administration should do: create institutions to think in longer time-scales than the instantaneous.  There will be a lot on their plate, but this seems important, and as President Obama said as a candidate, “Part of the president’s job is to deal with more than one thing at once."  Just a thought.