Article Cope or Perish? Managing Tipping Points in Developing Coping Strategies for Emergency Response during the First Wave of the COVID-19 Outbreak in Europe Tom van der Voorn 1,* and Martin de Jong 2,3,4 1 Institute of Environmental Systems Research, University of Osnabrück, Barbarastr. 12, D-49069 Osnabrück, Germany 2 Erasmus School of Law, Erasmus University Rotterdam, 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands;
[email protected] 3 Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam, 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands 4 Institute for Global Public Policy, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China * Correspondence:
[email protected] Abstract: When the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic started to manifest itself across the globe at an unprecedented pace and magnitude, the various emergency response strategies pursued by highly affected countries in Europe raised many questions about their supposed effectiveness. To contain the outbreak, a rapid and adequate emergency response was vital to control emergent public health risks, but emergency management was challenged by large uncertainty due to many unknowns about crucial determinants of the outbreak, determining the effectiveness of the response, which was often derived from uncertain information. This paper aims to draw lessons from the first wave Citation: van der Voorn, T.; de Jong, of the COVID-19 pandemic and it presents a review of strategies for emergency response pursued M. Cope or Perish? Managing in eight European countries, including tipping points that triggered strategy shifts in emergency Tipping Points in Developing Coping response. The paper shows that: (i) these countries have a culturally determined preference for policy Strategies for Emergency Response response style (Mediterranean, continental and liberal style) depending on their relative scores on during the First Wave of the power distance and uncertainty avoidance, which (ii) is reflected in the initially adopted control COVID-19 Outbreak in Europe.