Think about the median person; half of us are dumber than that person.

The second thought is that in this pandemic, we're all in this together.

Australians do not like thinking collectively, and I think that's partly due to those two facts. It is not a comfortable thought that we're dependent on some idiot we've never met, who could instantly wreck our society overnight.

We certainly do not like the idea that we ought to take some action, or offer up some sacrifice, in the vain hope that everyone else will do the same and together we can create some collective good. They're not going to; I'm just going to give up something for nothing.

But let's get the elephant out of the room straight away. Former PM Tony Abbott made some characteristically unhelpful - but illustrative! - comments about the Australian COVID-19 response this week.

Condemning "virus hysteria", he argued universal coronavirus restrictions ought to be dropped completely. Instead, each individual ought to decide how much risk they want to assume.

"Now that each one of us has had six months to consider this pandemic, and to make our own judgments about it, surely it's time to relax the rules so that individuals can take more personal responsibility and make more of their own decisions about the risks they're prepared to run," he said.

Now, there are a couple of problems with this.

Like passive smoking, risky behaviour during a global pandemic doesn't just affect one person. Obviously.

But humans are also notoriously bad at judging even ordinary types of risk, like drink driving or not wearing a seatbelt. Epidemiology adds a whole new layer of complexity we're just not capable of handling individually.

One idiot could kill thousands, or more. That's why we have Public Health Orders, legally enforced lockdowns, medical orders like masking mandates and more.

We use collective institutions to give individuals confidence their individual sacrifices will be matched by everyone else, and therefore will not be in vain.

But I am sympathetic to Abbott's concern about the efficacy of the organs actually responsible for implementing the collective action we've undertaken.

I think the crisis over the bug has shown up seriously woolly thinking and flabby processes in our society's biggest collective institution, government. Infamously, the Victorian quarantine hotels debacle was caused by probably the worst false economy in public service history - saving a few bucks an hour going the cheap option for hotel security (at a cost of $9 billion and a few hundred lives).

Public health officials for months refused to recommend people wear masks, despite proven health benefits, on the basis of amateur economics and sociology that proved false - only for their position to instantly collapse as Victoria went into its second lockdown, needlessly causing a massive run on surgical masks as they became mandatory overnight.

Not only did their factually unfounded stubbornness cause a degree of chaos, it undermined public and political confidence in their advice based on knowledge that was genuinely expert.

In NSW, Hunter New England Health fought hard to pointlessly keep the location of confirmed COVID-19 cases secret, causing panic because people only saw a single very large number.

When MP Adam Marshall started providing journalists with the location of stricken locals by local government area, he was cut off. So he got the information from police, who were then cut off too.

The police, of course, are the lead agency for enforcing Public Health Orders; you might think they ought to know where those infected people actually are.

Let's not even talk about the disgraceful management of the Queensland or Victorian border closures. Or our failed aged care system.

This is the sort of idiotic high-handed behaviour that lends strength to Mr Abbott's position. Nobody really likes relying on the common sense of someone else, at any time, let alone some remote bureaucracy.

But he's still wrong. Crap collective action is better than none.

Unfortunately, we live in a democracy. We can't blame Dear Leader for any of this. Ultimately the flaws of our public health - or education, or policing, or any public system - are all our fault. We get the public institutions we deserve. We voted for them.

READ MORE:

Fixing it isn't just about voting better, or even joining the political party of your choice and getting directly involved in improving your democracy - though you should definitely do that.

It's also about adopting a different attitude. For too long governments have been hobbled by a very human bias towards fearing the remedy more than the malady. And a bias towards fending off perceived local threats that provide only broader benefits. From zoning rules to franking credits, NIMBYism is probably the biggest impediment to progress in the world's democracies.

Australians should, to paraphrase US President John F. Kennedy, ask not what their country's change will cost them, but ask whether it will benefit their fellow citizens in the aggregate.

Basically, we should be more willing to sacrifice for the greater good.

But even a global pandemic pales in comparison with the much more universal threat of climate change. COVID-19 could kill millions of us - global warming could, according to the unchallenged consensus of the world's scientists, kill all of us.

We're often told by governments that Australia, really, isn't responsible for the climate crisis. That emissions-reduction targets that are too ambitious would require sacrifice from Australians that would not necessarily be met by the shifty, untrustworthy citizens of other nations.

That is, in the first instance, factually false. Emissions reduction would likely be of net benefit to Australians, even excluding climate change, in part because carbon emissions cause cancer and other horrible diseases. Also, renewables are cheaper than non-renewables.

But even if it weren't a lie, would we accept that logic anywhere else?

Would we accept a business owner irresponsibly spreading deadly coronavirus because virus mitigation measures are disruptive and expensive?

One idiot isn't responsible for the emerging crisis of climate change. 26 million of us are.