Do People Really Learn From Their Mistakes?

Plenty of leadership stories talk about learning from failure after failure and so, eventually, learning enough to create something successful.

It’s a good idea. One that I believe in.

But do people really learn? Do they even want to learn?

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, it became clear that swift, decisive action was needed to contain the spread of the disease. Yet many health officials around the globe wavered not so much because they were gathering data, but because political and economic leaders objected to the effects those policies would have on all manner of things that had nothing to do with public health.

As time passed and people got tired of those mitigations that were eventually established, politicians turned to lawyers to defeat measures recommended by doctors about a disease. One candidate won his party’s nomination by campaigning on various accomplishments, among them his successful suit to end health mitigation efforts among them, and did so at a time when the Omicron BA.5 variant was becoming dominant and hospitalizations due to its effects were rising.

In Europe, the BA.5 variant not only contributes to its growing caseload, but in some areas has begun putting people onto ventilators, a situation that an Italian health official said he thought was now in the past.

On this side of the Atlantic, New York City saw a 25% one-week jump in COVID-19 infections, as the U.S. trails Europe’s rises and falls, now rising with BA.5. Some might expect a return to mandatory mitigations, but America’s largest city instead issued an advisory to wear masks in all indoor, public settings and any crowded outdoor settings. Apparently, the city has enough ventilators to allow COVID-19 to spread basically unchecked.

We’ve seen this play out several times in New York and elsewhere. Have we learned anything?