Socially-distanced science: how British publics were imagined, modelled and marginalised in political and expert responses to the COVID-19 pandemic

In early 2021, the United Kingdom (UK) had the highest per capita death rate from Covid-19 of any large country, despite having been ranked among the best prepared for a future pandemic. This paper contributes to debate and the UK Covid-19 Inquiry by identifying the imagined public(s) within the UK's scientific advice system. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies (STS) critiques of a singular or homogeneous ‘public’, the authors review meeting minutes and media briefings to reveal two imagined publics co-constructed by UK science advisors and policymakers in early 2020: (1) a ‘freedom-loving’ public resistant to stringent policy interventions; and (2) a public imagined as ‘all in it together’, echoing wartime rhetoric. These imaginaries reflect framing assumptions that help make sense of the UK’s pandemic response, especially tensions between homogeneous and multifaceted publics, and the compound health and social inequalities that predated the pandemic but became starker as it unfolded. The paper charts how these imagined publics moved through stages of cohesion and fracture in the early months of the pandemic, and considers implications for understanding the UK’s response and the future of scientific advice and emergency preparedness. How scientists and decision makers imagine the public affects communication of scientific advice and what knowledge is valued, with advisers framing models and advice in terms of what is seen as politically possible.

Rokia Ballo, Warren Pearce, Jack Stilgoe, James Wilsdon