Countries around the world have instituted formal lockdowns to halt the coronavirus. However, an indefinite lockdown would wreak total havoc on societies. So how can we transition into some form of normalcy while at the same time keeping the pandemic at bay?
To discuss these matters, I am joined by my old friend Pavan Mamidi, director of the Centre for Social and Behavior Change at Ashoka University. Pavan is a sociologist who specializes in social norms and he has been advising the Indian government on how to achieve behaviorial change post-lockdown by rapidly cultivating new social norms around social distancing, hand and respiratory hygiene, and mask wearing.
You can follow Pavan and the CSBC on Twitter: @MamidiPavanH and @CSBC_AshokaUniv.
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Music: ‘Pollution‘ by Dexter Britain (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)
Great interview! Thanks so much!
The government of Armenia has done exactly the same: shift responsibility to individuals, use symbolic reminders, ask people to respectfully reprimand individuals who don’t conform. And the focus is also very much on masks, number one. Then social distancing (or staying home as much as possible), and finally disinfecting hands. Social distancing here is very difficult with multi-generational families living in small spaces. Disinfection is also a problem, especially in areas where water is regularly cut or unavailable for extended periods of time. But a mask is something that everyone can wear anytime they’re out, and is the easiest to regulate and monitor.
Another important factor that helped change people’s attitude, as was also mentioned in the podcast, was the widespread wearing of masks by the country’s leaders, first and foremost, by the Prime Minister, but also by MPs during parliamentary debates. Doing this normalized the wearing of masks.
And finally, there was a “healthy dose” of fear-mongering from the government, not only in the sense of “do you want your mother or grandfather to die?” but more so in the form of “do you want to go back into a lockdown—stricter than the last—and starve to death?” This latter has seemed to hit home more than the former…
It took a few weeks to get people on board, and compliance is still not 100%, but there’s definitely more of it now than there was a month and a half ago, and the results are showing: numbers have more or less stabilized, and in the past two weeks have even started going down.