Thread by @M_B_Petersen

Today in @Nature, I outline a key lesson from COVID-19:

"Governments, dare to to trust your citizens."

Governments' fear of their people is not supported by science & it stymies pandemic management and breeds vaccine hesitancy.

Read it here: nature.com/articles/d4158….

🧵 (1/8)

Trump feared "panic" (washingtonpost.com/politics/trump…)

Bolsonaro feared "hysteria" (brasildefato.com.br/2020/03/25/bol…).

And Johnson feared "fatigue" (internal-journal.frontiersin.org/articles/10.33…).

All of them feared their people. (2/8)

Yet, prior to the pandemic, I had researched responses to crises (press.princeton.edu/books/hardcove… &(onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/po…). We concluded that people keep their balance, if political leaders do. This also echos research on reactions to natural disaster (doi.org/10.1016/j.evol…). (3/8)

In March 2020, my message to the Danish media and government was therefore: "People can handle the unpleasant truth. Do not fear panic. Communicate openly and clearly such that people care to listen and know what to do." (

https://twitter.com/M_B_Petersen/status/1237785420269858817?s=20

.) (4/8)

Distrusting govs will communicate in self-defeating ways. For example: A sense of efficacy is key for compliance (bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bj…) & transparent communication, even if unpleasant, upholds trust (pnas.org/content/118/29…). This requires clear communication. (5/8)

Already in 1997, Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom warned that distrust in citizens leads to poor policies (cambridge.org/core/journals/…). Since then I fear that parts of behavioral economics has added to this distrust by it's emphasis on errors in human-decision making. (6/8)

In 2019, the US & UK was named the most prepared countries in the world against a pandemic (ghsindex.org/wp-content/upl…). Part of why it went wrong was distrust in their people. It is time for decision-makers to abandon the model of a panic-prone public in the face of crisis. (7/8)

It may be easier for a Danish gov to place trust in citizens as citizens trust the gov. But the lesson is relevant elsewhere. Trust is an "assurance game" where somebody needs to move first. This is the gov's responsibility. If govs won't trust, citizens never will. (8/8)