Paper short abstract:

My paper argues that public health scenarios represent pandemic disease emergence through the “formulaic plot” of the “outbreak narrative” (Wald 2007), thereby privileging biomedical intervention and public sphere engagement at the expense of community wellness.

Paper long abstract:

In the fall of 2019, representatives from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, with support from the World Economic Forum, convened an emergency meeting in anticipation of a novel coronavirus pandemic. They were not responding to COVID-19 but instead to a fictional exercise entitled Event 201. Event 201 is an example of scenario thinking, a narrative technique of uncertainty management that tells plausible stories of possible futures to prepare for the unexpected. As public health continues to stress preparation for—as well as the prevention of—disease, scenarios increasingly constitute a key public health tool even as the practice remains underexamined by public health researchers. Responding to Priscilla Wald’s suggestion that “the interactions that make us sick also constitute us as a community,” (2007), my proposed paper—“Well-Laid Planning: Public Health Preparation and Scenarios of Community Wellness”—argues that contemporary public health operate with a radically constrained vision of public health that foregrounds biomedical intervention and public sphere engagement at the expense of community wellness.

My paper argues that public health scenarios represent pandemic disease emergence through the “formulaic plot” of the “outbreak narrative” (Wald 2007). Referencing representative public health scenarios, including "Clade X" (2018), and "Event 201" (2019), my paper argues that these scenarios overlook the “systemic factors that promote pandemics” (Butler 2012). My paper concludes by turning to illness memoirs—in particular Toronto “street nurse” Cathy Crowe’s "A Knapsack Full of Dreams" (2019)—for models of community wellness that can inform and inspire alternative scenarios of public health.