Chief Science and/or Health Adviser to the rescue --- Thanks Maxime for raising the issue of trade-off to maintain neutrality (I would modify this to say 'to arrive at an optimal solution', which may not be neutral per se) and arrive at a decisive approach (while being open and adapting to new evidence) in a time-bound manner. Governments have succeeded/failed to varying degrees, based on its own and its citizens' values. Having an adequately supported & trusted Chief Science and/or Health Adviser in place can enable decision-makers to not start from scratch but short-circuit the evidence gathering and deliberative processes to some extent, in an event like a pandemic.

Peace-time vs. war-time decision-making will have to be different, out of necessity. Of course, if the evidence gathering & deliberative processes are in place to begin with, war itself could be prevented or responded to with its ravages to a minimum.

Source author: Vid Nukala Vid.Nukala@gmail.com