Juan Moisés De La Serna - A Psychological Perspective Of The Health Personnel In Times Of Pandemic

The results show that hurricanes with male names tended to be valued as more destructive than those with female names, regardless of the gender of the participants.

Which allowed us to understand why sometimes when faced with notices from the authorities, more or less attention is usually paid to prevention, for example, simply because the assigned name is male or female.

On the other hand, the name of diseases in the health field is usually indicated by acronyms that are related to some identifying characteristic of the site, symptoms or consequences.

Thus, and within the family of coronaviruses, there have been several outbreaks before, such as in the case of SARS-CoV that emerged in China in 2002, whose initials correspond to the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus and which refers to its symptoms; the MERS-CoV that arose in Saudi Arabia in 2012 and whose initials in English refer to the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus, where the symptoms and location are described; and the COVID-19 that emerged in 2019 in China whose initials in English refer to the Coronavirus Disease of 2019, without making any indication of the symptoms or the town where it arose.

It should be taken in mind that the term COVID-19 has not been the first to be used for this disease but rather it has been a change introduced almost two months after the first case reported to the WHO emerged, which has led to some proposing that the motivations for modifying it by incorporating an “official” name could have been carried out to avoid the negative economic consequences of associating a type of disease with a region or population (@radioyskl, 2020) (see Illustration 6).

In this way, the aim would be to eliminate the names of “China virus” or “Wuhan virus”, terms that point directly to the source of the infection.

A deference to China that some health professionals denounce, for not having the same consideration with other populations as in the case of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus.

Despite the fact that an official name of COVID-19 has been given, the population has continued to use the denomination of Viruses and especially Coronavirus to learn about the symptoms, prevention measures or extension of the disease, and although it is still too early to understand the reason why the official name has “failed”.

Illustration 6. Tweet Name of COVID-19

It must be taken into account that in order to create a new brand and get adherence to it, a series of variables must be addressed, as has been analysed by the University of Taylor (Malaysia) (Poon, 2016) with an investigation where an attempt has been made to find out the motivations for the success of certain brands compared to the rest, for this purpose, a list of fifty best-selling products for daily use was selected, from the two main marketing companies, to verify the effects of the brand.

After analysing the messages, pamphlets and advertising that are disseminated about these two brands by the media and the networks, it was found through the application of textual analysis and the interpretive method, that these brands were based on two pillars to maintain the loyalty of its customers.

The first one is the ability to generate positive emotions; and the second was that of the aesthetics of honesty, that is, it appears that the product actually serves what it indicates, maintaining the advertised quality standards.

Regarding the credibility of the WHO, indicate that according to the survey carried out by WIN / Gallup International (UN, 2014), this organization together with UNICEF are the highest valued international agencies worldwide, showing how 72% of those interviewed had good opinion of these organisms.

Therefore, it would be expected that citizens will gradually adopt this last name, taking into account the delay that occurred between the announcements of its official name made on February 11, 2020 (see

Illustration 6), while the worldwide concern began almost a month earlier, on January 20, 2020, in turn, almost a month after the first case was reported on December 31, 2019.

The evolution of the pandemic

Despite the fact that the circumstances are recent and do not allow us to analyse the information with a certain perspective, a small sequence of dates and data regarding the current pandemic is presented below, emphasizing information on health personnel, first in a general way and then specifically in Spain.

Thus, it should be noted that the new coronavirus 2019 (n-CoV) as it was initially named, also known as “China virus” or “Wuhan virus” which is the name of the Chinese province where the contagion began, being its official name COVID-19 according to WHO statements on February 11, 2020.

Although the first declared case of COVID-19 was at the end of December in China, some investigations indicate that several cases had previously occurred which had not been reported to the O.M.S. Likewise, there has been criticism about the late declaration of a pandemic by this organization made on that same day, March 11, 2020, when there were already more than 1,000,000 infected in the world (@radio_angelica, 2020) (see Illustration 7).

Illustration 7 Tweet Declaration of Pandemic

A virus, unknown until that moment, that little by little was spreading, but of which importance it seemed only that the health personnel were aware, thus the population until they saw the measures that were being adopted by the different governments, was “calm” trusting in the bonanzas of its own health system.

Perhaps the most “drastic” and unpopular measure adopted little by little by most countries as people infected with the virus were detected among their citizens, has been that of confinement at home when required, where the person must to avoid going out into the street and to do so only in justified cases since, if not, he can be arrested and taken to prison, or receive a heavy penalty for it.

The practice of confinement began in China and to the amazement of the world, where a large part of the population of the Hubei province, where is Wuhan, the city where the outbreak occurred, was confined in their homes.

A confinement that affected millions of citizens overnight, something that until then would be thought to be impossible due to the number of people involved, a decision that was adopted on January 24, 2020 (@shildalys, 2020) ( see Illustration 8).

Illustration 8 Tweet about quarantine in China

Controversial decision regarding the limitation that it supposes with respect to individual rights of movement and even work, but that it is necessary to adopt in times of health crisis if the good of the community is considered, carried out with the purpose of stopping the spread of the disease among citizens.

Aspect not always understood by the population that is confined, hence the governments have invested millions in advertising campaigns through the media and social networks to “modify” the vision of this restrictive measure, as necessary in based on the circumstances that are being experienced at that time.

After the decision taken by China and based on the growing number of cases that were beginning to be detected, Italy carried out the same restrictive measures in terms of movement in some of the northern regions, a decision adopted on the March 7, 2020, then passing the measure to the entire country, and from there to prevent the effects of the consequences of COVID-19, each country has been adopting similar measures, deciding in each case the partial or total closure of activities non-essential, or literally closing the country to prevent “infected” foreigners from bringing the disease (@Renzo_Utili, 2020) (see Illustration 9).