confusion

Confusion is a state of not understanding — or of general disorder. Inside one head, or across a whole scene.

The mental sense is the commoner one, so confusion about the arrangements means nobody knows what is happening. It takes about or over. The disorder sense describes a scene, and in the confusion is a standard phrase for the moments after an incident when nothing is clear. Medicine uses confusion precisely as a symptom, and sudden confusion in an older person is treated as an emergency.