Crisis Management - Dystopic Scenario VS Real-World Pandemic: The Case of Saramago's Blindness that Anticipated the Initial Managerial Approach to Covid-19 Pandemic Taken by Unprepared Governments Worldwide

In a scenario of COVID-19 pandemic, which has been menacing the whole world since early 2020, some governments initially allowed the virus to spread freely among their citizens, or abandoned successful crisis management measures, due to not having a proper and thorough crisis management plan put in place. Consequently, many infections were not avoided, and the health and well-being of the population those governments were legally bound to protect were affected, in some cases, hopelessly. Encouraged by Saramago’s Blindness, this dissertation proposes a correlation between the dystopic scenario (where governmental measures were just reactions to a sudden and inexplicable blindness) and the initial public policies undertaken to deal with COVID-19 pandemic. A ‘basic three-stage approach’ is the chosen crisis management framework. Its two initial macro stages (i.e., precrisis, and crisis) will be applied to compare real-life decisions with those imagined by Saramago. Saramago knew that human nature drives us towards rejecting negativity. It is more comfortable to avoid thinking about how to manage a crisis that does not yet exist than to react before an actual critical event.
Through case study methodology based on official secondary data, this work provides evidence that implementing an adequate crisis management plan regarding a pandemic like the one triggered by COVID-19 would have saved lives, enhanced emotional relief, and set the example how to implement adequate public measures.