Your analysis misses an important point, which is opportunity cost. Every action has costs and putting resources toward one area means taking them away from another.
Hindsight is 20/20. Could you or anyone have said this a few months ago?
EDIT: let me make it clear what I'm saying/implying. Saying stuff about opportunity cost means that you think that this wasn't necessary. Given the fears of overrunning hospitals, I can't see anyone being able to justify not doing this except in hindsight.
No, I’m not saying that it wasn’t necessary. Simply that a more intelligent analysis would have factored in various costs and benefits, as well as the likelihood of actual events vs. perceived ones. Every action has unintended consequences, but this simple fact seems to have been total forgotten with the response to the coronavirus.
Policy makers should adopt some of the modeling tricks from Wall St. and Silicon Valley. Manage risk. Assess sure things and long shots, feed in the parameters, then allocate resources appropriately.
We need better financial instruments, novel forms of insurance, put a price on resilience, to counterbalance the drive towards lean efficiency. So that key suppliers can maintain capacity without assuming all of the risk, for instance.
