[pl_row] [pl_col col=12] [pl_text] Precautionary Principle and a post COVID world.

It is clear that this time in the world will be marked with Before COVID Era (BCE) and After COVID Era (ACE)- obviously I’m being facetious, but COVID will be an event that marks massive changes, or at least that’s what feels like will happen. There have been other socially traumatic experiences in history, that marked some sort of change. But Humans have tended to revert back to stasis for the most part, as that is a place where humans, me and you reading this tend to be most comfortable.

Reading the news during the COVID Era (CE)- i.e. now when we are still in lockdowns, there are many suggestions by people about how life ought to change, should change, will change. People are pontificating and offering resolution about dilemmas they face or their internal struggle about a problem in society and write about or communicate in some other form suggesting what the change ought to be.

I will not write about social change and moral change that people postulate and write about. Rather, policy changes that may need to be enacted in society in from a BCE to an ACE. I worked at the Toronto Transit Commission (the TTC, Toronto’s public transit system) from 2009-2011. One of my tasks during my tenure as an Assistant Emergency Planning Officer, was to work on the TTC’s operational pandemic plan. We had the H1N1 pandemic, which was the impetus to revising the TTC’s pandemic plan. Toronto had previously experienced the fear of the SARS pandemic in 2003 which was a large influence on critical infrastructure requiring good pandemic planning. The history of emergency planning as a formal subject was largely influenced by the need for planning for the worst in 1999 when people thought that computers would have problems in 2000- the era known as Y2K. Then in 2001 with the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centers, businesses knew they had to have back up plans. Just about every year after this to today has had some event in the world that would be an influence on organizations and people having emergency plans.

I am attempting to bring out the 20-year history of emergency planning in a nutshell to tell you about the precautionary principle. All these major events over the past 20 years, helped to crystallize emergency planning as a required discipline whose job it is to direct and advise organizations (internally and externally) in having back up plans for continuity and to deal with personnel and to manage risk. Yet, in a post crisis world, “things kinda go back to normal”.

The precautionary principle (PP), is the concept that when there is a new idea that is relatively untested is presented, it is best to not run after the suggested changes (possibly until such time that the ideas are tested). The PP is a multidisciplinary concept that is applicable in many scenarios. For example, and in the CE, one may ask what will happen to the banking system, or financial institutions, and economic systems. Some people suggest that new rules be employed to overhaul the “system”. But the PP would have to apply, as brining in new rules brings on new risks. In the CE there was unprecedented government support for people who had lost their jobs due to COVID. The method by which money was deployed was unprecedented. It was a risk, and seems like the best response to helping ensure people have money, but it also means that people will take undue advantage of this system, because it is not tried and true (under normal circumstances there is a vetting process to being able to collect unemployment benefits- the system is bureaucratic and rule based in order to mitigate for fraud.)

Governments are criticized by their citizens for spending huge money on pilot projects. They do this in order to ensure that if a change is made, many of the problems are ‘worked out’. There may be wasteful spending or huge swaths of time wasted to run “pilot projects” but this not without good reason.

What I am attempting to highlight, is that in any space you read an article or idea about what kind of change will ‘make sense’ in a ACE, and think about the PP and whether policy changes will make sense, or whether they have to take time and testing in order to ascertain their full potential. The same goes for private sector pushes to change the way people do things. People in their decision-making process often employ the PP in order to save money or ensure that the first time they do something they spend (possibly more) on an established opportunity than one that is not. For example, when renovating a roof, do you get the guy who you found on a local advert, that may be a few thousand dollars cheaper than the person with a strong web presence, or recommended by a friend, who may cost more, but has been around, will do a good job, and ensure they can maintain the warranty of the repair (anyone who has had to replace a roof will know what I’m talking about.) When people talk about “fly by night” they are using PP in their decision making. If a person seems to be “fly by night” they may run a risk of losing out more, than using someone not “fly by night”.

In conclusion while many suggestions are nice, think about what is tried and true. It doesn’t mean that things that are tried and true are good, it just means that people may revert back to these things even when the time for change seems right.
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