Mass panic is a myth; times of crisis can bring out the best in people

ADAM RANG, Estonian World

We have nothing to fear but fear itself. At least that’s what I keep hearing about the coronavirus when I open up the social media. Many people think the coronavirus is not as bad as the media hysteria and mass panic around it.

Elon Musk, for example, is one of the most vocal proponents of this theory after first declaring that the “coronavirus panic is dumb” in a tweet two weeks ago that has already aged like milk.

I don’t have any expertise in viruses, but I can tell you a few things about how people really respond in times of crises – and it’s not panic. I’ve been trained in crisis management throughout my career in communications and I’ve been involved in quite a few major ones myself. The golden rule of crisis communication is to trust the public with as much accurate and up to date information as possible. That’s because people, generally, act rationally in times of crisis, especially if you give them good information. Mass panic is a myth.

China’s censorship made the crisis worse

The same is true now with the coronavirus.

In the areas currently worst affected by the virus, such as in China and Italy, people are showing resilience more than anything else. There are wide reports of incredible acts of bravery, especially by medical workers, and most people are just adapting to the situation and trying to keep spirits up, both for themselves and others. There is concern, sadness and anxiety to a reasonable extent, but not mass panic. These people need even more and better information about the situation they are battling through, not this patronising attitude that they can’t handle the truth about what is happening.

In fact, it’s the fear of mass panic over the coronavirus that got us into this mess. Elon Musk’s theory that panic over the coronavirus is worse than the virus itself was originally shared by communist authorities in China, which is why they first prioritised arresting doctors and censoring information to avoid what they feared would be mass panic. Yet good information, widely shared and trusted, is essential to fighting this virus. The theory that media hysteria around the coronavirus is worse than the virus is slightly undermined by the fact that the earliest epicentres of the outbreak did not have a free press who’d be allowed to talk about coronavirus.

As far back as 31 December, the Chinese social media began blocking messages that contained any keywords relating to the outbreak, such as “Wuhan pneumonia”. A day earlier, a doctor in Wuhan, named Li Wenliang, tried to advise medics that they should take extra precautions due to the outbreak, but he was later arrested for “severely disturbing the social order”. He later died of the virus he tried to warn about. It wasn’t until 20 January that the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, spoke publicly about the virus.

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