“…From the perspective of the management and governance of the COVID-19 pandemic, the so-called high-performing leaders – including but not limited to Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand, Mette Frederiksen of Denmark, Scott Morrison of Australia and Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan (The Guardian, 2020; Chater, 2020; Pang, 2021) have been compared to their so-called low-performing counterparts – including, but not limited to, the then US president, Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and the UK prime minister Boris Johnson (Craig and Amernic, 2020; Independent, 2020; Ladkin, 2020; Pollock and Steen, 2021; Gottlieb, 2021), mainly on the basis of the former’s ability to understand and implement the precautionary principle, particularly at the early stages of the pandemic. Specifically, these high-performing groups were credited for adopting a precautionary strategy – a “worst-case scenario” approach – that allowed them to immediately impose full national lockdowns, including enforcing the closure of schools, gyms, markets and national borders as early as March 2020 (The Guardian, 2020).…”