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Accepted Paper:
‘Connecting the dots’ in a pandemic: on models, ethnographies and uncertainty
Diane Duclos
(London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine)
Melissa Parker
(London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine)
Paper short abstract:
Reflecting on the idea of ‘connecting the dots’ to understand a novel pathogen in social and epidemiological contexts, this paper draws on conversations between modellers involved in COVID-19 responses in the UK and anthropologists to imagine future interdisciplinary collaborations.
Paper long abstract:
Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, mathematical modelling captured global attention, seen as a privileged tool to make sense of early epidemiological data. Assessing pathogenic, epidemiological, clinical and socio-behavioural characteristics of an outbreak to inform policies in real time is also known as ‘nowcasting’. We interviewed experts for a study documenting the role of modelling in policy responses to COVID-19 in the UK. Throughout the research, ‘connecting the dots’ emerged as a strong rationale to develop models which could help understand a novel pathogen. Our conversations with modellers resonated with our own experiences navigating uncertainty while doing research on epidemic responses. As anthropologists, we accept the fact that data is relational, and that what is made visible in ethnographic accounts necessarily mask other ways of knowing. To some extent, ‘connecting the dots’ between what is rendered visible and invisible by the anthropologist’s presence is part of the ethnographic enterprise.
In this paper, we contemplate uncertainty as an epistemological stance and a methodological effort which can be politically mobilised when systems are disrupted. In contrast with an anthropological critique of models, we offer reflections on how conversations between modellers and anthropologists can productively explore uncertainty. Such an approach allows for a dialogic interrogation of numeric and narrative representations of people, pathogens and flows when intervening in an epidemic. We do not intend to reconcile methodologies which are embedded in radically different epistemological traditions, but rather seize the opportunity of revisiting encounters between anthropology and modelling to imagine future interdisciplinary collaborations.