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[BMJ Opinion] The covid-19 outbreak has shown we need strategies to manage panic during epidemics

February 21, 2020

  • Covid-19 has sparked panic in Hong Kong and across the region. In Singapore, Indonesia, and Japan people are bulk buying provisions, fearing the worst. And it’s contagious, yet HKU Professor in the Humanities and Medicine Robert Peckham argues that the social phenomenon of panic is little studied or understood.
  • Panic is a reflection of a groundless fear, a primitive flight response to some perceived danger. And panic has an ugly face.
  • 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.
  • In the tweet-a-second 21st century, information overload making it increasingly difficult for people to distinguish fact from fiction. Ultimately it can lead to people bypassing steps that would help to prevent disease transmission or, alternatively, prompt people to follow ineffective advice.
  • David Baltimore argued that the contagious panic sparked by media driven stories about the virus had worse effects than the virus itself.

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Robert Peckham
Professor Robert Peckham is the Department Chair in the Department of History, School of Humanities, Faculty of Arts at the University of Hong Kong. Photo: HKU Development & Alumni Affairs Office YouTube

More by Professor Robert Peckham:

[Independent] I’ve studied the history of viral outbreaks. Coronavirus panic shows how little China learned from SARS

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