I think the fundamental issue is that the most important factor in succeeding as a politician (and I mean that in the broader sense of anybody who takes on political accountability), is the art of avoiding accountability entirely. The truth often stand directly in the way of that objective, so this idea of the scientific politician is already starting off as a bit of an oxymoron.
Another problem is that politicians are just fundamentally bad at risk management. I’m sure we’ve all worked with those types of politicians at least once. They never want to try anything, because the risk it will fail is unacceptable, and the most important part of solving any problem is finding somebody else to blame. Politicians in public office are the worst at this. I used to live in a place where road deaths where a big cause for public concern, and I watched somebody get elected to office on the platform of reducing road deaths to 0. Now, anybody with any experience in risk management would know that attempting to reduce the likelihood of any risk to 0 is not only a bad idea, but is just simply impossible. The goal of risk management is to reduce the likelihood and impact of risks to an acceptable level, but a politician can’t stand in front of a news camera and say “an acceptable number of people died on our roads this year”.
I think even if you left the risk assessment portion of pandemic management entirely to the “experts”, it’s this deeply flawed style of politically managing these risks that has been biggest source of controversy. To start making risk management decisions on behalf of other people, it is necessary to curtail their liberty, and regardless of how medically unqualified the general population is, they can plainly see that a lot of the policy decisions around the pandemic have been very politically influenced.
Another problem is that politicians are just fundamentally bad at risk management. I’m sure we’ve all worked with those types of politicians at least once. They never want to try anything, because the risk it will fail is unacceptable, and the most important part of solving any problem is finding somebody else to blame. Politicians in public office are the worst at this. I used to live in a place where road deaths where a big cause for public concern, and I watched somebody get elected to office on the platform of reducing road deaths to 0. Now, anybody with any experience in risk management would know that attempting to reduce the likelihood of any risk to 0 is not only a bad idea, but is just simply impossible. The goal of risk management is to reduce the likelihood and impact of risks to an acceptable level, but a politician can’t stand in front of a news camera and say “an acceptable number of people died on our roads this year”.
I think even if you left the risk assessment portion of pandemic management entirely to the “experts”, it’s this deeply flawed style of politically managing these risks that has been biggest source of controversy. To start making risk management decisions on behalf of other people, it is necessary to curtail their liberty, and regardless of how medically unqualified the general population is, they can plainly see that a lot of the policy decisions around the pandemic have been very politically influenced.