Nearly every journalist who contacts me about the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic wants to talk about panic. I usually ask the reporter, “Do you know anyone personally who’s panicking?” The answer is always no.
Panic is doing something harmful to yourself or others that you would never do if you were thinking straight, but you can’t help yourself because of out-of-control emotions. We see it in old horror movies: screaming crowds stampeding through the streets, hands waving in the air. Customers in a queue at Tesco, loading up on pandemic supplies, are not panicking. Yet some officials call that “panic-buying” – waiting patiently in line!
If officials keep dumbing down “panic” so it just means anxiously taking precautions against something scary, fine. But then they shouldn’t suddenly revert to the real definition and warn people that “this isn’t a time to panic” (when is?) or, worse yet, withhold upsetting truths out of fear that people will panic.
In crisis situations, true panic is rare. Most documented mass panics happen in places like nightclubs and soccer stadiums – places with a lot of alcohol. Sober people often feel panicky in a crisis, but rarely panic.
So why do officials so often accuse the public of panicking? Sometimes officials feel panicky about the possibility that the public might panic. I call that “panic panic,” and it’s not rare. Other times the officials feel panicky about the actual crisis, or whether they’re up to the job of managing it. When government officials imagine that the public is panicking, they are often projecting their own panicky feelings.
I doubt U.K. Health Minister Matt Hancock and Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty are wasting much time accusing the public of COVID-19 panic. They seem much more worried – as they should be – about COVID-19 apathy. They’re busy warning everyone about the pretty extreme social distancing measures they may soon impose, and expecting people to respond with resilience and determination, not panic.
If you’re taking this looming threat as seriously as it deserves, you’re bound to be mocked by some people as panic-stricken. When they finally get it, try not to say “I told you so.”
Adjustment reactions
While panic is rare, a temporary, small overreaction to a new threat is quite common. And it is surprisingly useful – it helps you prepare for the real thing.
- You pause. While you wait for official advice, you stop doing things that suddenly feel dangerous.
- You become hypervigilant, paying hugely more attention to the news, and maybe moving away from people who look sick.
- You take extra precautions – precautions that may be unnecessary, unkind (like avoiding Chinese restaurants), or at least premature.
These responses are signs of what psychiatrists call an adjustment reaction. (Normal people call it an OMG moment.)
Ideally, adjustment reactions come early. That’s a feature, not a bug – it’s a survival trait to take risks seriously before they engulf you. And ideally they don’t last long. Maybe the threat passes and we stop taking precautions. Or we settle into a New Normal, a longer-term state of preparedness. Or the crisis grows, and we fine-tune our early overreaction.
Adjustment reactions are rehearsals. They help get you logistically and psychologically ready for the looming threat. If you have gone through a successful adjustment reaction, you are better prepared to cope when the crisis arrives. Precisely because you have already practiced for it, you are less likely to overreact when the crisis is full-blown.
Officials hate the public’s adjustment reaction. They call it “panic” and try to stomp it out by sugarcoating or hiding scary information.
Instead of ridiculing people’s early overreactions, smart crisis managers legitimize and try to guide them. Instead of telling people not to have an adjustment reaction, they help people have a good one.
If you’ve already gone through your COVID-19 adjustment reaction, congratulations. If you’re going through it right now, welcome to my world. And if someone you know is mocking you for it, or accusing you of panic, ignore them.
Levels of fear
What propels people into this much-needed adjustment reaction? One key ingredient is fear. Fear is the emotion that gets your adjustment reaction going. Though officials find this hard to believe, in a crisis – and in the run-up to a crisis – fear is a good thing. It motivates action.
This chart shows the levels of fear.
In the middle of the chart, fear is the emotion most conducive to putting other problems aside to focus on the crisis. Everything below fear on the chart – even fear’s wimpy cousin concern – is too weak to motivate significant protective action. You’re concerned about your auto repair bill or your daughter’s math grade – no adjustment reaction needed!
And everything above fear on the chart – terror, denial, and panic – is too strong for people to bear, so they may end up doing nothing or doing the wrong thing. (Denial helps explain why panic is rare. When we’re close to panicking we trip an emotional circuit breaker and go into denial instead. Often one feature of our denial is accusing other people of panic.)
Crisis communication isn’t about reducing people’s fear. It’s about helping them bear their justified fear and helping them choose appropriate precautions.
If you believe the COVID-19 pandemic is a serious threat, then fear isn’t a problem. Fear is part of the solution.
Panic isn’t a problem either. It would be, but it’s rare.
Denial is a problem. People who can’t bear their fear and instead lash out at other people’s fear, calling it panic; people who can’t bear to imagine what life may be like for the next year or two and insist on business as usual – yes, they’re a problem.
And apathy is a problem. There are still plenty of people who aren’t paying attention, or who genuinely believe that the pandemic is overblown. Reaching apathetic people is always a core risk communication challenge, whether the issue is smoking or seat belts or diet … or COVID-19.
There’s one more problem I can’t find on my chart. In recent days I’ve been thinking about all the people who tell me they’re really, really upset about COVID-19 – and then they mention the plane trip they’re planning or the meeting they’re looking forward to or the crowded subway they took to work this morning. There’s a gnawing anxiety in the pit of their stomachs that just won’t go away. But they haven’t changed their daily lives much yet, or even planned much for life changes that they sort-of suspect are just around the corner. They’re fearful enough – but they’re still not taking precautions, even the wrong ones. It’s as if their heads haven’t caught up with their gut feelings.
Our gut “knows” there’s a hard road ahead. Our head suspects our gut is right, but is full of self-doubts – afraid of being wrong, of being mocked, of being weird. I know a lot of people who feel this way. Odds are you do too. Figuring out how to help them reconcile their gnawing anxiety with their self-doubts may be the toughest COVID-19 communication challenge of all.
Copyright © 2020 by Peter M. Sandman
