Why the COVID-19 outbreak has led to mass hysteria

STOP THE Obsessive-compulsive coronavirus disorder

The reaction to the coronavirus has created catastrophic economic and social disruption. It has spooked investors causing them to wipe trillions of dollars of value from global financial markets. It has panicked consumers driving them to clear out supermarket shelves in order to fill household pantries. And it has besieged governments forcing them to impose travel restrictions, quarantines and shutdowns.

Volatility is now the new normal as the pandemic brings with it unprecedented changes to daily life. To break the chain of transmission, people are embracing a combination of hygiene measures (eg, hand sanitising) and social distancing measures (eg, remote working). We are all being asked – quite rightly – to change our usual habits to curb the virus and protect the most vulnerable in society.

Many of the disruptions that we are experiencing are not caused by the outbreak itself. Rather, they are the result of people’s panicked response to the coronavirus. Many believe that the media must take some responsibility for fuelling unnecessary alarm. The pathogen is dominating the news cycle with radio stations and television networks bombarding us with dire forecasts about the pandemic.

Media outlets around the world have been breathlessly reporting virtually every new diagnosis of the coronavirus. However, they rarely tell you that catching the virus is non-life-threatening for most people under 65 years. Many infected people never become sick and, of those who do, the fatality rate may yet turn out to be less than the number of deaths from the annual influenza epidemic.

Each year, according to estimates by the World Health Organisation and the United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention, up to 650,000 people die of respiratory diseases linked to seasonal flu. As of this writing, the number of coronavirus deaths worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University, is 58,901.

In a recent press conference, Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, said that for most people infected with the coronavirus it “will be a mild illness and it will pass”. He acknowledged that the most at-risk members of the community were the aged, which is why authorities moved to lockdown aged care facilities to protect vulnerable residents.

I commend governments and medical authorities around the world for being concerned and taking the coronavirus seriously. The outbreak has plunged us into the unknown. We know what to expect from the long observed seasonal flu and have a vaccine to treat it. But the coronavirus has taken us into uncharted territory – its novelty means that scientists aren’t sure yet how it behaves.

Understandably, many find this frightening and that’s all the more reason why reporting of the pandemic must be measured and balanced. The media has an important role to play in letting the public know the dangers without inciting panic. But they have hyped the outbreak with alarmist information such as worse-case scenario death toll predictions. This has driven fear rather than build an understanding about the illness.

US academic, Kalev Leetaru, is a senior fellow at the George Washington University. He recently published the results of an analysis which sought to identify the degree of scrutiny the media deserves for “fomenting” coronavirus panic arising from their “wall-to-wall, end-of-days coverage”. His conclusion is that the media has “played a measurable role in driving public attention to the virus and likely worsening behaviors such as panic buying”.

Of course, scaremongering by the media is nothing new. In his 2012 book, Sideshow: dumbing down democracy, former Australian federal minister for finance, Lindsay Tanner, described how the media manipulates the discussion of issues in ways that entertain rather than inform. He argued that media reporting is blatantly designed to manipulate the public’s emotions. Tanner cited a number of examples where the media created unnecessary panic including the Global Financial Crisis, the Year 2K computer bug and the swine flu epidemic.

The media reporting of these events produced a public response out of proportion to the threat. I vividly recall the exaggerated Y2K reporting. While technology legend, Bill Gates, saw the millennium bug as “a minor inconvenience”, less qualified IT commentators promulgated doomsday scenarios and were aided in their deception by the media who spun compelling but inaccurate stories.

A gullible public bought into the outrageous predictions about planes falling from the sky and missiles self-launching. But the bug did not bite and the New Year passed with nothing more than the expected hangover. Those who foretold of a global computer apocalypse caused unnecessary panic but were never brought to account.

Nothing had changed by the time of the Fukushima power plant disaster in 2011. Yet again, the media wheeled out instant experts who hyperventilated over the very modest amounts of radioactive fallout. Fears about radiation contamination were clearly overblown but made for dramatic headlines which trumpeted the dangers of nuclear energy. The same tactics are being used by the media with regard to the coronavirus.

During an address at a conference in Munich on 15 February, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director General of the World Health Organization, said: “… we’re not just fighting an epidemic; we’re fighting an infodemic. Fake news spreads faster and more easily than this virus, and is just as dangerous”. Two weeks later, Dr Ghebreyesus ended a 28 February media briefing with a similar remark: “Our greatest enemy right now is not the virus itself. It’s fear, rumours and stigma”.

Another voice worth listening to is that of Clare Wenham, assistant professor of global health policy at the London School of Economics. In an article that she recently co-authored with two colleagues for online global healthcare knowledge provider, BMJ, Wenham wrote:

We conceptualise this as two different outbreaks: one outbreak of a coronavirus, and one of viral fake-news. This sensationalised panic and fear concerning the nCoV2019 outbreak is a consequence of the proliferation of sources of information which exaggerate the severity of this outbreak….

She went on to say:

… we need to consider the media’s role and responsibility in informing and shaping understanding and reaction to this outbreak. Are they aware of the public health impacts of headlines such as “killer virus”, “deadly disease” or a “killer coronavirus epidemic”? Alarmist headlines like these incite further fear among populations and communities (and) challenge the more measured public health communications from the government or WHO … The scarier the language and voice, the more this false narrative of coronavirus takes hold.

Every public health outbreak inevitably involves communication and panic prevention is an integral part of managing any pandemic. Panic is contagious and destructive and should be avoided at all costs. All new contagious diseases receive extensive media attention with the media coverage setting the agenda for public debate and concerns.

Media executives know that people are predisposed to fear what they do not understand. Dire warnings by news outlets of a “horrific” and “catastrophic” disease tap into our anxieties and play to our primeval fears. Care must be taken, therefore, not to use fear-inducing language but to employ a narrative which tempers fear and provides reassurance.

Let’s work together to stop the virus of fear.

P.S. The best article that I have read on the role of the media in fuelling coronavirus panic is by Professor Karin Wahl-Jorgensen of Cardiff University – a must read!

Regards

Paul J. Thomas
Chief Executive Officer
Ductus Consulting