Abstract
The COVID-19 outbreak is not the first nor last series of recent real or potential catastrophes - be they natural disasters, terrorist attacks or pandemics - that have taken by surprise governments, globalised firms and the citizenry. 1Yet, due to its near-unprecedented impact on the highly interconnected but vulnerable systems that define the modern world, this pandemic has been testing our ability to govern risk more than any other crisis before. The last time the world responded to a global emerging disease epidemic of the scale of the current novel coronavirus without having access to vaccines was the 1918-1919 H1N1 influenza pandemic. 2Ironically, the measures mobilised today to counter COVID-19 - the so-called “non-pharmaceutical interventions” 3- are essentially the same as those deployed a century ago, and that despite significant social, technological as well as governance differences between 1918 and today. 4
Highlights
The COVID-19 outbreak is not the first nor last series of recent real or potential catastrophes – be they natural disasters, terrorist attacks or pandemics – that have taken by surprise governments, globalised firms and the citizenry.[1]
All of the above makes COVID-19 qualitatively different from any of the six outbreaks previously identified by the World Health Organization as pandemics (“Public Health Emergency of International Concern”, hereinafter PHEIC): influenza, polio, Ebola,[10] Zika, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS)[11] and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)[12]
Risk regulation is expected to provide immediate, cost-effective responses, and to be able to co-create these responses – through participatory mechanisms – when addressing a legitimate public health threat with an unknown trajectory, and to be able to do so in a situation of emergency. As this Special Issue clearly suggests, we have been thinking about how to govern risks, including disasters – such pandemic diseases52 – for a long time. This journal has been providing its own contribution by publishing a variety of timely symposia – such as those dedicated to the volcanic ash eruption in Iceland[53], the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill,[54] the L’Aquila earthquake[55] and the global risk regulatory response to COVID-19 – and featuring original research articles striving to advance the state of research.[56]
Summary
The COVID-19 outbreak is not the first nor last series of recent real or potential catastrophes – be they natural disasters, terrorist attacks or pandemics – that have taken by surprise governments, globalised firms and the citizenry.[1]. Due to its near-unprecedented impact on the highly interconnected but vulnerable systems that define the modern world, this pandemic has been testing our ability to govern risk more than any other crisis before. The last time the world responded to a global emerging disease epidemic of the scale of the current novel coronavirus without having access to vaccines was the 1918–1919 H1N1 influenza pandemic.[2] Ironically, the measures mobilised today to counter COVID-19 – the so-called “non-pharmaceutical interventions”3 – are essentially the same as those deployed a century ago, and that despite significant social, technological as well as governance differences between 1918 and today.[4]. European Journal of Risk Regulation, 11 (2020), pp. 187–194 doi:10.1017/err.2020.43
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