POSS Team: Coulombic Twolves
Team Captain: Sreevarsha Maddasani
Team Members: Katelyn Chin, Timothy Chang, William Chin, Ananya Sundararajan
Synopsis: Paranoia is a coping mechanism. A strange one at that, but there’s nothing like violence and anger that allows the public to comfortably scapegoat. Their fear for their own lives tends to overpower any sense of community and compassion, targeting other groups for a chaos that no one can predict or cause, like pandemics. From the 14th century Black Death to today’s Coronavirus epidemic, human nature has echoed the same response — paranoia. Although in certain cases, pandemics and environmental stresses can unify communities, the trends within humanity trail along the lines of hysterical reactions and unnecessary blame.