Complexity and Simplicity: A Critique of Simulations and Modelling in Pandemic Preparedness and Response

• In Event: Modeling Health Futures: Practices of Assuming, Anticipating, and Forecasting - I

Abstract

In this paper I draw on sociology of knowledge and science and technology studies to theorise the role of complexity and simplicity as driving forces always in tension, in formulating plans to respond to a future pandemic outbreak.

Such plans are generated at various scales, and especially those generated at national and international level are accompanied by substantial investment in a preparedness infrastructure and in exercises. Whilst the nature of the pathogen(s) that may cause an outbreak is still unknown, experts agree that novel lethal infectious diseases are continuously emerging and crossing species and that even pathogens already known are found to re-emerge in variants that are more virulent and resistant to known medical treatment. The disruptive effects of high consequences events such as the emergence of a novel respiratory virus, spreading across countries rapidly, like SARS or MERS did, or of a new pandemic avian influenza spreading globally, inject urgency to the drive towards securitising against such threats. Yet, under conditions of radical uncertainty, policy makers and responders are increasingly deploying techno-scientific tools of modelling and simulation to inform decision-making. This practice, however, may raise more questions than it purports to answer. The tension between keeping complexity in the picture, to account for multiple outcomes and confounding factors, and achieving a simplification of the picture, for the sake of agility and transferability of plans from one crisis to the other, means that important dimensions are overlooked. This may undermine the very feasibility of the plans developed.

Author

• Elisa Pieri, The University of Manchester