Obama's response to the ebola crisis reminds me of the trolley problem. By making an attributable action to avert a bigger disaster for a smaller one he became

Obama's response to the ebola crisis reminds me of the trolley problem. By making an attributable action to avert a bigger disaster for a smaller one he became accountable for the outcome. As the larger disaster never materialised he never received due credit. It seems like Western democracies are very ill-equipped to deal with problems of this nature where all future outcomes are bad and the chosen executive has to deliberately choose the least worse. Facing such scenarios it's often the case our leaders choose not to take any political damage and do nothing until we are at the edge of catastrophe or take half-hearted measures that solve nothing. To take any deliberate and effective action would be not seen be seen as prescient aversion, but considered a wasteful diversion. The social, political and media environments, in particular the "news of the day" media, of the West are suited to guiding executives towards quick and decisive actions in the midst of the crisis because they are biased towards describing the here and now rather than the where and when. For most problems a society faces this may be a sufficient means of dealing with those issues. However in pandemics there are two catastrophes happening simultaneously, the one people think is happening in their midst based on the here and now, and the far more severe catastrophe epidemiologists know is happening based on the where and when. At the start of this crisis Western governments reacted to the former in the expected manner, that is with half-hearted measures and a dismissive attitude, what we needed was for them to react to the crisis epidemiology was describing. There is very little excuse for Western governments during this pandemic. They caught a lucky break with the SARS outbreak in 2003 and became complacent, choosing not to bolster responses to epidemics as Japan, Taiwan and S.Korea have done. Then they wasted the time lag between the virus outbreak in China to it reaching their countries by declining to take effective actions.