Modelling Pandemic

Axiomatic, everywhere, to experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic are models: models for prediction, models for understanding, models for projection, models for story-telling. Struggles over the interlocking global crises that the pandemic has provoked—and what to do about them— translate, in many places, into struggles over the parsimonious representation of that which exceeds observation. Which, then, are the models wielding greatest authority in the COVID-19 pandemic? How are they put together and disseminated, and by whom? What claims and hierarchies are embedded in them, not just in their explicit assumptions but also in their timescales, aesthetics, and semiotics? Where lie their centres and peripheries? With what or whom are they most concerned and to what or whom are they inattentive or indifferent? To take account of the world-making and -remaking ramifications of COVID-19, we must register and read closely how it is being modelled