Systematic Thinking Approach for Analyzing Individuals and Government Impact on COVID-19 Outbreak in Iran

The world faced a crisis called the coronavirus pandemic, a disease that has been able to disrupt a large proportion of the power and activities of the whole world and has evolved all economic and social decisions. These decisions are primarily related to restrictions such as widespread lockdowns and social distancing. Different countries have taken various approaches and decisions to deal with this situation, each of which has positive and negative sides. Apart from this issue, the rapid spread of this pandemic has affected researchers’ knowledge and viewpoints about this disease. Without any doubt, to expand our scientific knowledge and reduce the side effects of this challenge, it is essential to evaluate the behavior of COVID-19. Moreover, developing an effective vaccine in the short term was challenging. Regarding this issue, systematic thinking not only helps to find various ways to prevent this illness from spreading throughout the world but also reduces the mortality rate of this viral disease. From a systematic thinking perspective, governments and individuals play pivotal roles. They take care of vulnerable groups, support health employees, provide general education, identify new patients, and control specific situations in their countries. In such a situation where experts have not discovered any vaccine, governments and the people of society can be considered essential parameters to intensify or reduce the outbreak of this viral disease throughout the country. This paper’s main objective and motivation are to utilize causal loop diagrams (CLDs) to evaluate and determine various affecting factors created by governments and members of societies that have direct impacts on deteriorating or decreasing the outbreak of COVID-19 in Iran from a system dynamics perspective. Hence, the statistics on the incidence and deaths caused by the coronavirus in Iran were extracted during some periods. Using the cause and effect diagrams, the behavior of the people and the government in increasing or decreasing the number of patients is discussed.