{"id":46694,"date":"2020-02-21T15:58:12","date_gmt":"2020-02-21T14:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/?p=46694"},"modified":"2020-03-04T12:04:46","modified_gmt":"2020-03-04T11:04:46","slug":"robert-peckham-covid-19-outbreak-need-strategies-manage-panic-epidemics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2020\/02\/21\/robert-peckham-covid-19-outbreak-need-strategies-manage-panic-epidemics\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Peckham: The covid-19 outbreak has shown we need strategies to manage panic during epidemics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"standfirst\">Panic is a word that\u2019s been widely used during this outbreak, yet Robert Peckham argues that this social phenomenon is little understood<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-46695\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2020\/02\/Robert_Peckham.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"172\" height=\"167\" \/>My local supermarket recently <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/video\/hong-kong\/3049353\/shelves-cleared-some-hong-kong-shops-panic-buying-related-coronavirus\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">made the news<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. The grey metallic shelves, emptied of rice and noodles, were a stark reminder of the panic that covid-19 has sparked in Hong Kong and across the region. In Singapore, Indonesia, and Japan people are bulk buying provisions, fearing the worst. And it\u2019s contagious. The sight of a foodless food store is enough to make anyone sweat.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Panic is a word that\u2019s been widely used during this coronavirus outbreak. We\u2019ve heard the oft repeated injunction by experts and media commentators for people to stop panicking. Used in this sense, panic is implicitly the antithesis of level headed science\u2014it\u2019s something that those with less knowledge, and certainly less restraint, fall prey to. Panic is a reflection of a groundless fear, a primitive flight response to some perceived danger.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Throughout history people have feared the spread of disease, but the invention of telegraphy in the 19th century ushered in a new era of mass panic. The flow of information could now outstrip the speed of human travel. A catastrophic event on one side of the globe could cause ripple effects on the other. An outbreak of plague in Hong Kong, say, could trigger market panics in London and New York. Global connectivity created a new propensity for disruption. Anxieties were amplified and compounded: fears about a disease outbreak became merged with financial concerns and social anxieties. Modern panic was born in this techno matrix. Fin-de-si\u00e8cle sociologists identified <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.co.uk\/books?id=vRF2BgAAQBAJ&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;dq=Empires+of+Panic&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjRo_e70uDnAhVOXMAKHTovCuwQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&amp;q=Empires%20of%20Panic&amp;f=false\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">panic as a modern pathology<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a condition brought on by the excitations of urban living, the frenetic pace of communication, and the attenuation of social relations that these produced.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Fast forward to the tweet-a-second 21st century. As the World Health Organization has noted, covid-19 is driving a <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/news.un.org\/en\/story\/2020\/02\/1056672\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">social media \u201cinfodemic,\u201d<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> with this information overload making it increasingly difficult for people to distinguish fact from fiction. This is panic\u2019s uncertain habitat: the world of the \u201cwhat if?\u201d As in: <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">it might not be true, but what if it were? <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The diffusion of misinformation via social media can have a direct impact on the spread of disease in how it <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/journals.sagepub.com\/doi\/full\/10.1177\/0037549719885021?journalCode=simb\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">influences human behaviour<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. It can lead to people bypassing steps that would help to prevent disease transmission or, alternatively, prompt people to follow ineffective advice.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Herein lies the rub. Communication, which is so central to public health, also turns out to be key to panic. Circuits of information can all too easily flip to become conduits of misinformation. The technologies that connect us have the wherewithal to drive us apart. Public health messages that seek to jolt us out of complacency can all too readily alarm us. Panic, in other words, can be a hair\u2019s breadth away from prudent concern.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">There\u2019s also a thin line between misinformation and uncertainty, particularly in the midst of an epidemic. The identity of the causal pathogen may be unknown, its epidemiology obscure, and the spectrum of clinical manifestations confusing. All of this is grist to the panic mill.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">During an epidemic, panic\u2019s infective properties come to the fore. The spread of disease and the diffusion of panic intertwine, the one fuelling the other, both posing challenges of different kinds for public health. As David Baltimore noted of the panic during the height of the SARS crisis in 2003, \u201c<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ph.ucla.edu\/epi\/bioter\/sams.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">media viruses are immune to rational inoculation<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u201d Baltimore\u2019s argument was, in part, that the contagious panic sparked by media driven stories about the virus had worse effects than the virus itself.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Hong Kong, long queues for face masks form outside pharmacies from the early hours. Shops are emptied of rice, toilet paper, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">and <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">disinfectants<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In part, this is triggered by a self-fulfilling pre-panic panic: people rush to forestall the effects of a future panic. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Conspiracies<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> abound online, spurred by repeated calls to stop panicking, and by the public\u2019s widespread mistrust of the government. There are rumours of invisible coronavirus spreaders stalking the city. Lists of fever houses\u2014the homes of those suspected of harbouring the disease\u2014circulate on social media, making them easy targets for retribution. Panic has an ugly face.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The ongoing covid-19 outbreak has underlined the need for more research on the nature of panic and its drivers. The strategies we have for communicating about risk and engaging with communities are insufficient. We need to better understand the links between panic, rumour, fear, and anxiety. To what extent is panic universal or are panics in fact culturally specific? How precisely is panic linked to issues of trust\u2014whether that is trust in the government, media, or experts?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Panic is still too little studied and far too little understood. It is easily dismissed as a distraction to the main task at hand of containing an epidemic. And yet the management of panic is likely to be key to managing infectious diseases in an ever more connected world.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>Robert Peckham<\/strong> is MB Lee professor in the humanities and medicine, chair of the Department of History, and founding director of the Centre for the Humanities and Medicine at the University of Hong Kong. He is the author of <\/span><\/em><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Epidemics in Modern Asia<\/span><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> (2016) and editor of <\/span><\/em><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Empires of Panic: Epidemics and Colonial Anxieties <\/span><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">(2015). <\/span>Twitter <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RSPeckham\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">@RSPeckham<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><b>Competing Interests: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">None declared.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Panic is a word that\u2019s been widely used during this outbreak, yet Robert Peckham argues that this social phenomenon is little understood [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2020\/02\/21\/robert-peckham-covid-19-outbreak-need-strategies-manage-panic-epidemics\/\">More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46697,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-global-health"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - 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Panic grows in Hong Kong as the city has confirmed the 50th case of Novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). Over 40,000 cases of the virus has confirmed around the world, it has so far claimed over 1000 lives. 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Panic grows in Hong Kong as the city has confirmed the 50th case of Novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). Over 40,000 cases of the virus has confirmed around the world, it has so far claimed over 1000 lives. 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