Factors of Social Public Crisis Caused by Sudden Major Epidemic–The Enlightenment of “SARS” on Prevention and Control of COVID-19

ABSTRACT

To collect and sort out key measures in the process of disposing SARS pathogen in China in 2003 and afterward. Based on the perspective of public crisis management, analyze the main factors that may cause a public crisis in a sudden and important epidemic situation. This paper explores the possible factors that induced public crises during the handling of epidemic events, and then combs the path from public events to public crisis events. We find that urban residents are more sensitive than rural residents, and are prone to cause multiple public crises, which last longer and have greater intensity. Although the duration of public crisis is relatively short and the intensity is relatively low, the importance and urgency of public crisis incident handling and emergency countermeasures formulating cannot be ignored. At the same time, as all levels and departments are pursuing the goal of maximizing their own interests, the contradiction between the individual rationality of each level and each department and the collective rationality of the entire society will inevitably arise. Accelerating the establishment of social contradictions and emergency evolution models and coping mechanisms of the multi-layered and multi-sectoral dynamic gambling, so as to better build a warning and emergency management system of social contradiction and emergency public emergency. Finally, there is a gap in the education of citizens’ crisis awareness and response ability. The public generally has poor social alertness, lack of crisis knowledge, low level of public participation in early warning, and inadequate ability of government officials.

KEYWORDS:

• SARS
• COVID-19
• social public crisis
• sudden major epidemic

announcement statement

the author did not report a potential conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the National Social Science Fund of China under Grant No. 21BJY138; National Natural Science Fund of China under Grant No. 42171281 & Grant No.72034007 , the Shaanxi Province Science and Technology Innovation Team Project under Grant No. 2021TD-35, the ʻThousand People Planʼ specially invited expert for young professionals in Shaanxi Province, Shaanxi Social Science Fund under Grant No. 2020D036.