Typical responses to social system shocks of unknown origin

Predictable stages in a pandemic or diseae wave. From Lessons from a history of fears by Jonathan Mann, a book review of Epidemics and Ideas: Essays on the Historical Perception of Pestilence edited by Terence Ranger and Paul Slack.

All the features of our modern pandemic emerge in the elegant historical portraits in this book. There is the blaming of minorities (in Ancient Athens); the search for purification of society (dragon-slaying in medieval Europe); the co-mingling of fear and pity in attitudes towards the poor and marginalised populations (plague in early modern Italy); the ways in which discussion of the epidemic functioned as a surrogate for debate about major societal issues (medieval Islam); the fear among the vulnerable that the epidemic is a plot unleashed by the powerful (India); and resentment towards the medical profession and reluctance of authorities to inform people about epidemics through fear of creating panic (cholera in 19th-century Europe).

Social responses to uncertain health circumstances:

1) Blaming minorities or social outsiders

2) Efforts to purify society

3) Fear contending with pity as the appropriate response

4) Searches for analogies between disease and social concerns

5) Conspiracy theories about intentionality (Who is doing this to us)

6) Blaming of societal institutions unable to alleviate conditions (health sector and government)

7) Efforts to suppress circulation of information for fear of causing a panic.

8) Abandonment of focus once the societally powerful are no longer vulnerable

While the book being reviewed is focused on epidemiology, it strikes me that those responses look similar to any societal shock under conditions of uncertainty - military conflict, economic reversals, ideological assault, uncontrolled immigration, etc.