Table 1.

Features of COVID-19 as a transboundary disaster contributing to severe uncertainty

Transboundary disaster criteria	COVID-19 examples
1. Threat jumps international, national/political governmental, and functional (sector to sector) boundaries	“To make matters worse, restrictions on international travel, imposed to prevent the spread of the virus, have impacted on shipping and logistics activities, meaning that even when PPE was available it could not be delivered (Edgecliffe-Johnson, 2020; Peel, 2020)” (Bryce et al., 2020, p. 883)
	“Moreover, the effects go far beyond those felt by healthcare systems; they stretch across virtually every sector of society—from food systems to education—and have debilitated economies” (Weible et al., 2020, p. 226)
	“The effectiveness of the COVID-19 response depended to a significant degree on the prolongation of imposed lockdown measures. The longer these were maintained, the more likely an effective response in terms of reducing patient numbers. But that same effectiveness fed a sense of impatience among citizens and business owners” (Boin et al., 2020, p. 197)
2. Spreads very quickly accompanied by global awareness of risk due to mass media attention	“The COVID-19 crisis gave rise to an army of amateur virologists and intense public discussion. Looking to the crisis regimes of other countries, public discussions would soon revolve around the question ‘why don’t we do that?’” (Boin et al., 2020, p. 197)
	“In many ways, national responses to COVID-19 were shaped by international context, whether it was alarm at TV images from Italy, geopolitical posturing between the US President and China, or the way in which national populations adjusted their behavior in view of policy responses elsewhere (such as parents withdrawing their children from school)” (Boin et al., 2020, pp. 199–200)
3. No known central or clear point of origin initially; possible negative effects are unclear; more pervasive ambiguity than in traditional disasters because information about causes, characteristics, consequences is distributed across the global system	“Little was, initially, known about the virus, its paths of transmission and its health impact” (Boin et al., 2020, p. 190)
	“A key gap in our knowledge of SARS‐CoV‐2 transmission is the role of animals, and despite a consensus that this virus arose from an animal reservoir, a fundamental and intriguing question is which species?” (Ward, 2020, p. 1)
	“The Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, neatly summarized the challenge when he observed that he had to make 100% of the decisions with less than 50% of the required information. Political leaders and policymakers everywhere had to cope with this condition of deep uncertainty (Capano et al., 2020)” (Boin et al., 2020, p. 190)
	“The more doctors and researchers learned about the virus, the more perplexed they became (see e.g. Cookson, 2020)” (Boin et al., 2020, p. 191)
4. Large number of potential and actual victims both directly and indirectly; differs from traditional disasters because # victims is open-ended due to disruptions spanning boundaries	“Initial fatality data suggested that the lives of relatively small groups of people (the elderly and those with underlying medical conditions) depended on the behavior of all others (DW, 2020a; BBC, 2020d)” (Boin et al., 2020, p. 195)
	“Older adults and those with pre-existing conditions (e.g., asthma) are at higher risk for the more severe impacts. However, everyone is susceptible, and anyone can contract and spread the disease” (Weible et al., 2020, p. 226)
5. Traditional/existing response solutions & approaches may not always work; requires international organizational involvement early on as opposed to the norm of starting with local planning & management	“Standard advice (see World Health Organization Writing Group, 2006) regarding how to manage pandemics was soon proven insufficient. Policymakers were pressed into taking measures that, in the context of western liberal democracies at least, were seen as both unimaginable and infeasible (such as extensive lockdowns as initially imposed in Wuhan)” (Boin et al., 2020, p. 190)
	“Most governments found themselves ill-prepared to deal with the COVID-19 crisis” (Boin et al., 2020, p. 193)
6. Greater degree of emergent response behavior and short-lived informal linkages across groups that may not have coordinated previously; informal social networks form to exchange information but are hard to identify	“International collaboration flourished in response to COVID-19, channeled through the epistemic community of epidemiologists, virologists, and pharmacologists. Such collaboration is enabled by a global network of state agencies, private interests, and international institutions in efforts to coordinate public information activities and global research priorities (Mesfin, 2020). In this transboundary crisis, countries exchange data and experiences to learn about the virus and its effects” (Weible et al., 2020, pp. 228–229)