Hold the Leaders Accountable

A month ago, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign appeared to have one of the most comprehensive plans to bring students back, which involved widespread testing for everyone on campus. "Had [students] followed our guidelines, we would have ended the semester with no more than about 700 cases," said Robert Jones, the chancellor of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, during an interview on Vox’s podcast Today Explained.

Instead, the university reached that number in just two weeks.

During the podcast, Jones mentioned "a few bad actors" who nearly derailed the university's efforts by engaging in actions that were not factored into their model. While illicit parties were predicted—fair enough, as they anticipated college students would behave that way—they hadn't accounted for the possibility that students might not always answer their phones (where positive test results were communicated). Jones also noted that willfully breaking quarantine or isolation protocols was "something we really didn’t think was going to happen."

It seems like they relied on a model for student safety that turned out to be inaccurate. The result? No repercussions for the administrators, at least as far as I can see. Meanwhile, students and student organizations faced disciplinary actions.

Julia Marcus and Jessica Gold warned in July that colleges were preparing to place the blame on students for outbreaks stemming from the decisions made by administrators. Their prediction came true swiftly—before August even ended, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill had so many cases that they had to send students home. Jonathan Sauls, the vice chancellor for student affairs, commented on the “blatant rule-breaking” and “poor judgment” exhibited by students.

But who really showed the poorest judgment here? In my view, if your plan disintegrates the moment someone violates the rules, it wasn’t strong enough to protect the community to begin with.

Whose decisions carry the most weight?

People make individual choices, but those in power determine the environment in which those choices are made. We look to our communities, our leaders, and our surroundings to assess our options and decide what the best choices might be.

"If you don’t feel safe, don’t go," stated the governor of Iowa about a football game that seemed poised to go ahead with 25,000 spectators. This sentiment has been echoed in other contexts, such as employees returning to work in the UK or voters attending polls in Missouri. The underlying message is that if you do feel safe, it’s okay to participate. This approach shifts a significant community decision onto individuals who may lack the resources to make an informed choice.

This is precisely why we need effective public health agencies: to collect data, anticipate how people might respond to advice, and implement strategies that maximize safety. It’s unrealistic to expect every person to act as their own epidemiologist, particularly when trained professionals in public health are the ones qualified to handle these decisions. When we act on instinct, we risk making the wrong call—nothing in our lives has adequately prepared us for decision-making in a pandemic.

Leadership is crucial because those in charge don’t just set the rules—they also set an example for the rest of us. At a petting zoo, we trust that each animal is safe to touch. If a drug is sold over the counter, we assume it’s likely safe. We believe, "Somebody responsible, with more information than I have, made this choice."

When leaders fail to take responsibility, they’re not empowering the rest of us—they’re withdrawing necessary guidance and then blaming us when things go wrong. As an individual, my choices may protect myself and my family, but the choices of a leader have the potential to safeguard or harm thousands.

This applies on every level. A coordinated federal response could have spared hundreds of thousands of lives by now. Governors, in many instances, misused the authority they had to curb the spread of the virus within their states. Even in a small group of friends, deciding whether to attend a big party is one thing. It’s another entirely to decide it’s acceptable to host one.

The leaders are making poor choices

Rather than leveraging the resources at their disposal to protect people, those in power are focused on maintaining the advantages they had before the pandemic. Governors lifted lockdown restrictions due to pressure from business owners and political adversaries. Colleges reopened for in-person classes because they faced severe financial repercussions if students withdrew and dorms remained empty. Sports events are happening because they generate revenue.

"Elites, who are generally insulated from the immediate impacts of a disaster, are often more concerned about disruptions to the status quo and the potential loss of political power than the disaster itself," Malka Older writes in Foreign Policy. Her article tackles the myth of public panic during crises, but this observation also sheds light on why those in power often make decisions that serve their own interests, then shift the blame to others.

And we fall for it. Take panic, for example: during the early days of the pandemic, we accused each other of hoarding toilet paper, even though the actual shortage wasn’t caused by panic at all. With many people now using toilet paper at home instead of at work, manufacturers had an excess of industrial rolls but too few of the consumer rolls we needed. Their factories and supply chains weren’t set up to switch between the two kinds.

People stockpiled when they could, which isn’t panic—it’s the logical response to periodic shortages. But we complained about imaginary toilet paper hoarders despite no evidence of widespread hoarding. We blamed individuals for a systemic problem over which none of us had any control.

It’s not only leaders who blame people for poor individual choices—we blame each other. We argue with customers and store clerks over masks, because mask-wearing became a personal decision that sparked strong opinions. Imagine what could have been if the US Postal Service had been allowed to follow through with its plan to send five masks to every household back in April. It would have been universally accepted that masks were available and necessary. (We would have found something else to disagree about, but hopefully it would have been less impactful.)

Similarly, if people are transmitting COVID at bars, it's partly because they believed bars were safe enough to visit. Who made that possible? The leaders who lifted the lockdowns on bars.

Likewise, if college campuses experience COVID outbreaks, students may have contributed—but the responsibility to not reopen the damn college when it wasn’t safe was on the administrators. Risk assessment for an entire community can’t be left to individuals acting alone, especially when those individuals are young people with still-developing brains. Often, these are the same young people who were pushed back to work when lockdowns ended, whose jobs as cashiers and servers exposed them to the highest risk of contracting and spreading the virus. Leaders blamed them for partying, too.

Let’s place the responsibility for failures at the community level where it truly belongs: with the leaders who have been making—or more frequently, neglecting to make—the crucial decisions. Behind every school opening delay and every last-minute event cancellation, you'll find a leader who knew exactly what should be done to keep everyone safe but hesitated out of fear of disappointing someone.

It's time for those in charge to rise to the occasion and take action when a change or cancellation is necessary to protect public safety. Even if that decision is unpopular or—heaven forbid—costs a wealthy individual a bit of money. When the inevitable happens, we need to stop blaming each other and focus the blame where it belongs.