Also, in times of disaster, there are no good decisions, only the worst ones. Every decision comes with a set of consequences. What governments really struggled with was mitigating the impact of the decisions they felt they had to take.
My personal view is that what the UK is experiencing at the moment is a highly anticipated post-disaster phase. But I don’t want to stop learning lessons from it. I’ve been tweeting quite actively about the UK government’s coronavirus research, because it’s asking a lot of the wrong questions.
What am I doing wrong?
It focuses on personal interactions and the actions of people who are probably not the next person in charge. What it needs to answer is: how do you deal with the fact that there were plans and they were not used properly? What is an emergency plan? What should we do next time?
It has become clear how little the public understands about emergency response. Initially, there was very poor communication with the public about what the situation was. What a pandemic would do, what an endemic disease would look like, all that kind of stuff. We need to overhaul our approach to communicating scientific and medical information to the public.
Disasters can have very long-term effects on people’s physical and mental health and the environment. At what point do you decide the disaster is over?
For something like 9/11, it definitely becomes generational and a lasting scar. In some cases, the need for support may spike much later.
If you’re a local responder, fire or police, you’ll never forget, but there’s no particular need to keep reflecting on it. If you are a government, the ability to resume responding to it requires decades of good preparedness, which is very difficult.
Frankly, the disaster shows no signs of ending. That’s not the case. Some in the community will want to move on, but others, especially the bereaved families, will not.
One of the things I work on a lot is; grenfell [a residential tower fire in London in 2017 which killed 72 people]and that led me to more contact aberfan [a mining-related disaster in Wales in 1966 which killed 144], and realize it’s still very much a part of the place. You can always find the legacy of a disaster if you walk back around the site and have some idea of what you’re looking for.
How can we prepare for disasters before they occur?
There is something about citizen preparedness. If the power goes out. A flashlight or backup pack, and a cell phone charger.
And there are some things you can do in life to protect yourself. Go to the dentist or take care of your health. Take care of yourself because the world is getting a little more unstable.
I have also seen in recent years that people want to talk about the more difficult aspects. What would I want if I was told I had lost a loved one? Do you want their personal belongings back?
You’ll see me always talking about having a will, having a durable power of attorney, and not making assumptions about who your next of kin are in the arrangement. A little language trick we always use when planning for emergencies is “when, not if.”
Finally, should we worry about disasters?
Disasters do not create new rifts, so we need to care at a personal level about how the country responds to disasters. I want people to think more about what they demand from themselves, their families, their countries, their communities. What do they want from this government?
However, worry and fear are completely meaningless emotions. They put a strain on the body. I wish people would think more like emergency planners. I mean, we’ll talk about it and figure out what to do.
Listen to Lucy Easthope’s 10th Anniversary Lecture. wired health March 19th at King’s Place, London.Get your tickets at health.wired.com.