Preparing for Uncertainty: What are the training needs?
Written on the 9th of June, 2021
The deviant way in which low and middle-income countries (LMICs) (unintentionally) prepared their population differently for the global pandemic receive less coverage than it can use. The constant deluge of uncertainty daily in these contexts meant that the initial news and the attendant woes of a global pandemic were received as commonplace in many quarters. Significant portions of the distress inflicted on these contexts were a ripple effect from the despair expected and projected upon them by the more developed panic-stricken countries. The interconnectedness of political, social, and economic spheres made them have real-life consequences. That is not to suggest an absence of danger but that a fear factor preceded, being media-driven and learned.
It’s not uncertain if you can train for it
The year 2020 was not on time, and the world that has been deeply socialized with a high degree of control freaked out. Their adaptive muscles had gone years without exercise, and the lag in response was how long it took to get in shape. However, in the LIMCs, there is so much uncertainty and the only thing constant is to stay adaptive and responsive to the high rate of change. Against this backdrop of deep familiarity with a controlled environment, a few months ago a friend brought to my attention a contradiction receiving extensive attention and hyped-up by the global pandemic — efforts made to measure uncertainty (On Trusting the Model).
In a different conversation, we talked about the conceptual flaw in training for uncertainty because it is not uncertain if you can train for it. If you successfully deploy preparedness and mitigate or eliminate shock, that instance seizes to be an uncertainty that lies ahead. But efforts to bring calculus into uncertainty are relentless, as captured well by Jennifer Lentfer in her recent post, You First, stating that “we have been conditioned to believe that information can eliminate uncertainty and fear.”
Efforts to look on the bright side of the recent (perhaps ongoing) global pandemic has been to appreciate it as an opportunity for long-needed transformation to the systems that support and drive our political, social, and economic fabric.
Several authors have underscored the fact that the pandemic revealed how underprepared these systems were for the shock (post-pandemic transformations: How and why COVID-19 requires us to rethink development). This is evidenced in the efforts exerted by visionary leaders building recovery and in tandem developing protocols for better pandemic preparedness.
However, two things stand out to me amidst all of this, a) the next pandemic has crept in as a distraction from the broken systems and b) whatever we are preparing for isn’t the next global shock.
The next pandemic is a distraction
It is like the contrast in attention received, that can be observed between an “election year” and the “low profile and less significant years” that help make up the cycle before the next election year.
The tendency is to dedicate excessive resources towards returning a political party or figure to Office by the next election cycle, so the unspoken goal in those low profile and less significant years is not nation-building but winning the next election. The electoral promises made and prioritized are to the degree they guarantee a return to power — i.e. avert the next pandemic.
The implication is that the system remains broken. Preparing for the next pandemic doesn’t address the systemic issues that leave us susceptible to another global shock, not necessarily a pandemic.
Preparedness is for the next global shock
Lessons from this pandemic do not prepare us for the next global shock. There is no direct translation of lessons from the shock delivered by this pandemic to the shock that would come from the next global event.
We can prepare sufficiently not to be taken aback by another global pandemic, but that is not the same as preparing for the next global shock — uncertainty.
The preparedness is less about averting the occurrence and should tend to more psychological and emotional resilience. It is the recognition that there’s a combination of events (i.e., uncertainty) that could destabilize any degree of preparedness. That state of acceptance is the baseline for a response. It offers the grounding to internalize and process shock, its nature, impact, and risk of its propagation, before devising a response.
Conclusion
During Primer 2019, Miguel Jiménez helped put words to an observation that I have held for some time, paraphrased thus, “uncertainty is a design canvas and certainty means the design has already been finalized, and there’s not much else you can do with it.” He’s also recently put together a few words on uncertainty, see screenshots below:
Relatedly, it should also stand that uncertainty prompts two kinds of reaction, control, and adaptation. More developed nations have made significant investments in control, invariably limiting the degree of uncertainty their populations encounter. However, it is impossible to eliminate all uncertainty. Less developed nations have less investment in controlling uncertainty and the option forced upon their populations is adaptation. Where developed nations use scenarios to stretch their imagination about shocks, it is commonplace to stick around in less developed nations and see what happens.
