Science

With a touch of real sadness, we present the effects of COVID -19 in this issue in a set of articles that we believe will prove useful and interesting.

The art and science of underwriting relies upon levels of predictability that often include an irrational “gut” sense on the part of the professionals assessing risk. In the case of the COVID – 19 pandemic, an entire society’s leaders needed to don the robes of risk managers in a trice of time and try to find predictors and pathways that ended up being as much “gut” as science, since the science was so low in actual reliability and the scientists so widely varied in their views. Add a touch of “cancel culture” – the bane of our current social scene – and you have demotic rhetoric from podia and from TV screens. As close to a sane person as there is on the political scene, Mike Pence, the anti-COVID point person, was at a loss often for consistency and the President was at a loss for the right words that would reflect the right, reliable science – especially for words that were not full of demurring and terpsichore. Dr Fauci was not the sage that Americans hoped for nor was he rightly to have been discredited for being a mere human faced with an inhuman task. We learned the boundaries of science, to an extent, and will need to relearn them when the vaccines hit the streets in record time. Credit President Trump for Operation Warp Speed if – when, let’s hope – it works…..The science of leadership: On the insurance scene, it is the last day in August as I write this, as interest in sports wanes in the wake of  weaponized team cultures, as cities are de-lapidated and burned at the hands of anarchists and malevolent, misguided Marxists, and as the limits of the public’s collective power feels greatly diminished at the hands of imperious officials who seem to take special pleasure in restriction and pessimism that gives them powers beyond their paygrades and intellectual potencies. New York City’s Mayor is the closest example for readers of the Insurance Advocate. He has chosen this time of duress to trade in symbols and to look to the dismantling of public safety in his willful war on the walls of our best institutions. I will never be able to erase the image of the Mayor painting graffiti on Fifth Avenue in front of Trump Tower, in favor of what has turned out to be a bad group of anti-social, anti-American activists on the same day as crime, COVID-19 and economic hardship plagued New York so intensely. A disgrace, for sure, but worse, a distraction – what is called “mission drift” in diplomatic and military training. As insurance professionals it is easy to see how irrational events, horrendous social trends and gross irresponsibility results in harsh, avoidable claims for property, life, damages, and so much more. Avoidable. SA