Reflections on trust and COVID-19: do politics, medicine and the environment need each other?

Alistair Cole; Frederic Dutheil; Julien S Baker

doi:10.14324/111.444/ucloe.000010

Reflections on trust and COVID-19: do politics, medicine and the environment need each other?

UCL Open Environ. 2020 Aug 27:2:e010. doi: 10.14324/111.444/ucloe.000010. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Alistair Cole¹, Frederic Dutheil², Julien S Baker³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Government and International Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong.
² Preventive and Occupational Medicine, University Hospital of Clermont-Ferrand (CHU), Clermont-Ferrand, France.
³ Department of Sport, Physical Education and Health, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong.

Abstract

This short article is centred on how trust can be a valuable resource for developing cognate responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in the medical and social sciences. Politics and medicine can learn from each other. Governments need to persuade individuals to adapt their behaviours, and such persuasion will be all the more convincing in that it is nested in social networks. Trust in government requires consistent (benevolent, performative and joined-up) explanations. The distinction between hard medical and soft social science blurs when patients/citizens are required to be active participants in combatting a pandemic virus.

Keywords: COVID-19; environment; international comparison; medical and social sciences; policy and law; political science; transdisciplinarity; trust.

Grants and funding

The corresponding author acknowledges and is grateful for the financial support of the Hong Kong Baptist University, Research Committee, Initiation Grant – Faculty Niche Research Areas (IG-FNRA) 2019/20.