https://palladiummag.com/2021/07/15/the-myth-of-panic
Really interesting piece from Palladium Magazine about how the common popular response to disasters is not panic but resilience and the spontaneous emergence of stronger social cooperation and, notably, how threatening this is for elites.
It's particularly threatening for a managerial elite or ruling class that has an ideology of being in control of things and able to rationally direct them on the basis of special expertise or talent.
In the context of the current pandemic it is striking how many people are quoted as saying they didn't want a dramatic response early on because they did not want to cause public panic before they knew all the details of the virus. That is to get it exactly back to front - 'panic' (i.e. assuming the worst) is what you should rationally do initially before you get fuller information, you then scale it back (often rapidly) once information becomes available and if it then becomes clear things are not so bad. (You also should not assume that there is nothing to worry about - that is even more foolish).
The key question is this: what are the possible consequences of either posture if things go wrong?
When the adverse consequences are low probability but disastrous (as they are with things like pandemics as well as other things such as nuclear war risks for example) you should always be alarmed initially and assume the worst. That is what responsible elites that make decisions do. What we now have is a ruling elite that is all about public relations and managing the spectacle - one aspect of this is that they underestimate the public as the essay describes, because they project their own fear and anxiety about losing control onto them.