Alex Engel

May 2015

Bioterrorism is a threat that looms larger and larger every day. As technology advances and globalism spreads, it becomes more and more likely that the United States will be the victim of an act of bioterror. Many precautions have been put in place in the event that such an act does occur, but an area of concern that is often overlooked or cast off as a sub-problem is the effect of the panic that will inevitably occur after an attack on the United States. This paper will provide an investigative look into how panic might enter and affect the population after an act of bioterror as well as the methods through which panic spreads. Following this analysis, this paper will look into possible solutions to the panic problem and suggest several best practices for dealing with an outbreak of panic. 

In 2009, the world was struck with news of a new pathogen that had the potential to start an epidemic. This pathogen was called H1N1, or more commonly, swine flu. For close to a year, people with access to any form of media were bombarded by warnings from all directions. News channels, late-night comedians, and even press releases from the World Health Organization (WHO) had many people convinced that they would be the next to fall ill. This led a large portion of the population to buy countermeasures in order to ensure their health.  Online entities selling respirator masks encountered crashed servers due to the overwhelming amount of traffic on their sites and Purell hand sanitizer was sold out on both Drugstore.com and Amazon.com.1 Panic and fear of contracting the diseases were spreading faster than swine flu itself, and the WHO did nothing to control this aspect of the epidemic.

As it turns out, from a scientific standpoint H1N1 was relatively harmless compared to epidemics of the past. It appeared as if the WHO had immediately considered the outbreak of this new form of influenza a worst-case scenario, without regard to the panic that spreading this unfounded information would spread throughout the general public. Richard Schabas, a former chief medial officer of Ontario and critic of the WHO, was even quoted as saying, “Sometimes some of us think that WHO stands for World Hysteria Organization.”2 Regardless as to whether or not you agree that the WHO had a valid case for declaring swine flu such an extreme global emergency, everyone can agree on the fact that spreading panic is enormously counteractive to defeating any common enemy and that the WHO could have put in place further countermeasures to prevent against this panic. In order to create the most effective system for guarding against a global outbreak, panic and fear are issues that must be addressed and improved upon before an unforeseen epidemic develops.