as opposed to ---

[kazuhiko fudaba]

In the article of VOA: Why Aging of America Poses Huge Risk to US Economy, there are the centences as follows.

"There's so many things in this world you can't see coming. Demographics you see coming from a mile off,"
he says, "It should be something that we try to adapt policy to, as opposed to a lot of the things that we're very unsure about,
which we can more reasonably hesitate to act on.

Question) What does the phrase "as opposed to a lot of the things?

Thank you.

Kazu Fudaba

 

[grassy]

Two types of situations are opposed here: in one type, we think we're sure about something (e.g. how the demographics will change over time) and we can adapt our policy to that. In the second type, we're unsure about some phenomenon and we have to wait to learn more about it before we act.