While the biological epidemic is doing it's job, there is another epidemic that spreads among the population. This one is silent, unacknowledged, and unaccounted for until it is too late. It is not fatal, at least mortally, but has impact on several aspects of our lives. This epidemic is the epidemic of fears, epidemic of explanations and epidemic of actions. Strong Phillip provides different types of psycho-social epidemics.
Epidemic of fear is exactly what is understood by the reader. People of the pandemic are afraid of this unseen contagion. They are afraid and also suspicious about the next person standing in the line for groceries. This epidemic of fear is bipolar based on the human rationality and sentiment. Either people are overly afraid of the contagion, surfaces it might be contaminating, and the reality that is created, thus being in a panic state or are totally callous about the reality, the surfaces, and the contagion. This swaying happens until something grave happens around them. This 'something grave' results an epidemic of explanations.
The epidemic of explanations is witnessed through an outburst of theories, speculations, hypothesis, and so forth; all related to the survival during the pandemic. Many of such outbursts are moral in nature: Why did God create this virus? Will society survive this? Who in this society will survive the pandemic? and so forth. While these speculations act as a force to keep people inside their homes, it also keeps creates an epidemic of actions or potential actions.
The fear and explanations create a potent combination that fuels different stages of chaos. Strong puts it in following order: avoidance, segregation, abuse, and pogroms. The epidemic of actions based on fear and speculative explanations is also bipolar dependent on human nature. Irrationality in the human beings will either yield actions or in-actions. Regulated actions like enforcement of health educations about topics that are usually not discussed (hand washing being the prime one) are desired. While regulated in-actions like prohibition of travel and so forth are also desired.
All such fears are led by irrationality, at a scale. While historical pandemics suffered from lack of information, we are suffering from an abundance of information. While the historic and the ancient had to tackle with magic and taboo because of lack of information, we sail through these analyses to find our what are we dealing with.