LACK OF SECURITY CULTURE IN FACING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Abstract

The current COVID-19 pandemic, caused by the novel human coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, is an unprecedented event in recent human history in many aspects. By reaching nearly all the countries in the world and causing strong restrictive reactions in many countries, the ongoing pandemic presents perhaps the greatest social challenge for this generation and threatens to permanently change the life as we know it. As a specialized organization of the UN responsible for international public health, the WHO took the leading role in the promotion of the most optimal measures for containment of the pandemic, but its reactions caused certain controversies as well. Without a developed security culture in the domain of public health, and without learning from previous pandemics or epidemics, different countries applied different measures. And while some countries were hit more than others regardless of the activities taken, a common denominator for nearly all of them was the fact that the economy received the strongest blow. The fact that this pandemic takes place at the moment when the Internet is a dominant form of disseminating information and communication caused that numerous controversies and disinformation were appearing due to lack of control of truthfulness of information, which in perspective has to result with reevaluating the criteria of credibility, which is another consequence of unreadiness of the world to face a pandemic of great proportions.