Disaster Preparedness

This was part of the readings we had for Coursera's Disaster Preparedness course. Stuff like this kind of make me grateful I haven't faced yet a full-on marooned situation. However, thanks to the courses I've taken before on Irrationality and Social Psychology, I understand. God help me, I understand.

The patients were an outgroup. The ingroup, which were the medical professionals stuck in that hospital at the time, were completely untrained for the situation; but being the ingroup they must have favored each other more than those in the outgroup. Maybe things have been simmering for a long time and the situation forced the ugliness out. 

They were going by heuristics. There's some representativeness bias and spontaneous trait inference in them assuming that someone who has signed a Do Not Resuscitate order doesn't want to survive the crisis. Maybe there was some self-serving bias in there, thinking that their actions constituted the best care they could give under the circumstances. There certainly was self-serving bias in them declaring that evacuating certain patients would be impossible; you can't trust that statement when the people making it are dead-tired and would find it easier if a couple conveniently died on them. There was conformity - either some went along or they didn't protest effectively enough.

Then there's the rationalizations. I'm sure they made those up to assuage any cognitive dissonance. Like the consensus argument - that what they did wasn't any different to what they normally do. That what they were doing was sanctioned by the laws of God. That they were giving comfort. That since they were doing everything "respectfully," it was alright. Because they were doctors and nurses and medical professionals, so obviously they know more and should be allowed to get away with more.

I shouldn't make attributions to their disposition. They were in a terrible situation and this is why every country should have well-designed disaster management plans down to the level of the individual citizen. 

It's just that you're Americans. From the USA. Guardians of freedom, liberty, justice, and democracy. You should be better. If something like this could happen well within your own territory, then... this world... it's pretty horrible, huh?