Except that, in this case, discarding them led to a worse world: - bitter divisions in the nation because they subverted the consensus mechanism - poor policy

Except that, in this case, discarding them led to a worse world: - bitter divisions in the nation because they subverted the consensus mechanism - poor policy decisions because we didn’t have a robust debate about options - poor medical outcomes because we didn’t exercise due caution The reason we had those principles in the first place was to avoid repeats of past bad outcomes from not having them — and they were discarded at a societal level for shortsighted reasons. Your job as a leader is to uphold those principles in hard times because they’re the path to a better outcome. And our leaders badly failed us.