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Making pandemics big: On the situational performance of Covid-19 mathematical models

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  • Rhodes, Tim
  • Lancaster, Kari

Abstract

In this paper, we trace how mathematical models are made ‘evidence enough’ and ‘useful for policy’. Working with the interview accounts of mathematical modellers and other scientists engaged in the UK Covid-19 response, we focus on two weeks in March 2020 prior to the announcement of an unprecedented national lockdown. A key thread in our analysis is how pandemics are made 'big'. We follow the work of one particular device, that of modelled ‘doubling-time’. By following how modelled doubling-time entangles in its assemblage of evidence-making, we draw attention to multiple actors, including beyond models and metrics, which affect how evidence is performed in relation to the scale of epidemic and its policy response. We draw attention to: policy; Government scientific advice infrastructure; time; uncertainty; and leaps of faith. The ‘bigness’ of the pandemic, and its evidencing, is situated in social and affective practices, in which uncertainty and dis-ease are inseparable from calculus. This materialises modelling in policy as an ‘uncomfortable science’. We argue that situational fit in-the-moment is at least as important as empirical fit when attending to what models perform in policy.

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  • Rhodes, Tim & Lancaster, Kari, 2022. "Making pandemics big: On the situational performance of Covid-19 mathematical models," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 301(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:301:y:2022:i:c:s0277953622002131
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.114907
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Rhodes, Tim & Lancaster, Kari, 2019. "Evidence-making interventions in health: A conceptual framing," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 238(C), pages 1-1.
    2. Leach, Melissa & Scoones, Ian, 2013. "The social and political lives of zoonotic disease models: Narratives, science and policy," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 10-17.
    3. Michel Callon & Fabian Muniesa, 2005. "Economic markets as calculative collective devices," Post-Print halshs-00087477, HAL.
    4. Neil M. Ferguson & Derek A.T. Cummings & Simon Cauchemez & Christophe Fraser & Steven Riley & Aronrag Meeyai & Sopon Iamsirithaworn & Donald S. Burke, 2005. "Strategies for containing an emerging influenza pandemic in Southeast Asia," Nature, Nature, vol. 437(7056), pages 209-214, September.
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    1. de Graaff, Bert & Huizenga, Sabrina & van de Bovenkamp, Hester & Bal, Roland, 2023. "Framing the pandemic: Multiplying “crises” in Dutch healthcare governance during the emerging COVID-19 pandemic," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 328(C).

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