Virtuous cycles of trust. This figure shows a simplified conceptual relationship between use of power, accountability, and trustworthiness, and specifies long- and short-term conditions of accountability that governing authorities should consider strengthening to justify, support and facilitate trustworthiness. High ‘scores’ on long-and short-term conditions are expected to accommodate the empirical trust needed within the population to produce voluntary compliance with policies in times of uncertainty and threats, e.g. during an unknown pandemic.