Professor Xiaogang Wu (New York University)

Since the first case was identified in Wuhan, COVID-19 has been spreading rapidly across the world, causing an unprecedented public health crisis in human history. In the global fight against COVID-19, various public health measures have been implemented, affecting billions of people’s day-to-day lives. Yet the feasibility and effectiveness of those measures vary across different sociocultural contexts and political regimes.

This lecture provides preliminary results from the surveys we conducted in Wuhan during the city’s lockdown period (Feb-March 2020, N=4,234), in Hong Kong (August 2020, N=1,890), and the United States (Oct-Nov 2020, N=4,407), and their follow-ups in March 2021. It will focus on the communities and trust in government across societies to offer some theoretical and empirical insights to explain the diverse responses to, and implications of, this global crisis.