Government crisis communication during the coronavirus crisis: Comparing France, Germany, and the United Kingdom
Résumé
The SARS Covid-19 crisis is unique in terms of the coordinated and global dimension of its disaster management. The 1889-90 flu pandemic, the Asian flu of 1957-58, the Hong Kong flu of 1968-69 and most of all the Spanish flu of 1918-20 had global effects and very high numbers of fatalities. But in those instances, disaster management was either localized or set at the national level and disconnected from global efforts. Even if the SARS epidemic of 2003-04 and the H1N1 epidemic of 2009-10 highlighted the emergence of a global disaster management capacity, government crisis management remained limited in scope and only certain countries took mitigation measures. The current crisis management is therefore particularly relevant for understanding public action in crisis, not because of the singularity of the event, but because it allows comparing large scale government responses to a single disaster. [First paragraph]