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

The paper asks how UK publics were imagined during the early stages of COVID-19 and how these imaginaries shaped scientific advice and policy. Contextually, the UK entered the pandemic with high ratings for preparedness but experienced severe outcomes, including the highest per capita death rate among large countries by early 2021. The crisis thrust scientific advisers into public prominence and made the public central to policy implementation. From an STS perspective, the authors situate their inquiry amid prior UK crises (e.g., BSE) that shifted advisory norms toward transparency and engagement, yet revealed persistent paternalism under high stakes. The study’s purpose is to illuminate how imagined publics influenced what knowledge was constructed and deemed relevant, and how this affected UK decision-making, particularly concerning the feasibility of interventions (e.g., lockdowns) and the treatment of social inequalities.

The literature review draws on STS work that interrogates the politics embedded in scientific advice (Nelkin; Jasanoff) and the construction of ‘imagined publics’ (Maranta et al.; Marres), extending Anderson’s ‘imagined communities’. It highlights how expert advice often relies on assumptions about lay behavior, which can be unrealistic and reduce plural publics to a singular entity. Historical UK experience (BSE) demonstrated the risks of paternalism, the importance of trusting the public with uncertainty, and the tension between rhetoric of engagement and entrenched paternalistic practices during crises. The review links imaginaries to upstream knowledge construction, not just downstream communication, and points to ‘post-normal’ conditions where uncertainty and values are intertwined. It further integrates research on intersectional inequalities (e.g., Marmot reviews; Hill Collins), showing that pre-existing socioeconomic, racial/ethnic, disability, and geographic inequalities predictably worsen in crises. Emerging COVID-19 scholarship advocates moving beyond one-size-fits-all framings toward nuanced, engaged, community-informed approaches and more diverse expertise within advisory systems.

The study focuses on a 3-month period from 3 March to 3 June 2020. Methods include qualitative documentary analysis of: (1) publicly available minutes of the UK’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE); (2) documents from SAGE subgroups and related bodies (e.g., SPI-B, Ethnicity Subgroup, CO-CIN); and (3) transcripts of political speeches, media interviews, and televised briefings where senior ministers and scientific advisers jointly presented updates and measures. The analysis considers the political context (e.g., Brexit-era narratives) shaping what advisers viewed as politically feasible. Particular attention is paid to April 2020 when emerging data on heterogeneous impacts (especially ethnic and socioeconomic disparities) confronted an imaginary of a unified public. The authors interpret ‘backstage’ tensions between technical advice and political decision-making, examining the public performance of expertise and how it constructed or destabilized relationships between state, scientists, and citizens. The approach is interpretive, informed by STS concepts of co-production and imagined publics, analyzing how rhetoric such as ‘led by the science’ set expectations and constrained options, including the timing and content of modeling and policy choices.

- Two co-constructed imagined publics shaped advice and policy: (1) a ‘freedom-loving’ British public presumed resistant to stringent measures; and (2) a ‘uniform and united’ public portrayed as ‘all in it together’ to maintain solidarity and compliance. - Freedom-loving imaginary and ‘behavioural fatigue’: Early 2020 modeling of non-pharmaceutical interventions omitted lockdowns, assumed to be politically infeasible. Senior advisers publicly warned against ‘going too early’ due to supposed ‘behavioural fatigue’—a notion later criticized as lacking basis in behavioral science and not present in SPI-B advice. Influential advisers (e.g., John Edmunds) later acknowledged they found it ‘difficult to imagine’ public compliance—an assumption that proved wrong once lockdown was imposed. - Comparative imaginaries: British and Chinese publics were implicitly treated as incomparable, with China’s stringent measures framed as infeasible in a liberal democracy. This aligns with scholarship on epistemic orientalism and UK exceptionalism shaping which international lessons were considered relevant. - Inequalities evidence vs. ‘uniform public’: By April 2020, CO-CIN and SAGE minutes indicated higher hospitalization and mortality signals among Black ethnic groups, and noted socioeconomic factors and comorbidities. Evidence accumulated that COVID-19 exacerbated longstanding inequalities across health, employment, housing, education, and policing. - Key disparity statistics cited: Case and mortality rates up to 4× higher for minoritised ethnicities; mortality up to 3.5× higher for disabled people; people in England’s most deprived areas up to 2.4× more likely to contract and die from COVID-19; pre-pandemic life expectancy gaps up to 9.2 years (men) and 7.0 years (women) between most deprived and most affluent areas; media analyses cited 70% of deceased frontline health and social care workers being from BAME backgrounds. - Government rhetoric emphasized the virus as ‘indiscriminate’ and stressed collective sacrifice, invoking national unity and wartime metaphors, despite emerging inequality data and journalists’ questions. SAGE noted comorbidities could explain some ethnic differences, which risked medicalizing social problems and downplaying structural causes. - Messaging shift and individualization: The May 2020 ‘stay alert’ slogan reframed publics as responsible, knowledgeable ‘pandemic citizens’, shifting responsibility to individuals and away from state-enforceable measures, while practical steps (e.g., translating guidance beyond English) lagged for vulnerable groups. - PHE’s June 2020 disparities report fractured the ‘uniform’ public imaginary, forcing recognition that vulnerabilities extended beyond the clinically defined, even as some advisers urged caution in designating ethnic groups as at-risk without further causal analysis. - Overall, scientific advice was shaped by political imaginaries: ‘science of the possible’ limited early consideration of lockdown; later, a unity narrative constrained acknowledgement and response to inequalities.

The findings address the research question by showing how imagined publics co-produced by advisers and politicians shaped what evidence was generated, modeled, and prioritized. Early assumptions of a freedom-averse public legitimized delaying or omitting lockdown from modeling. Later, a homogenizing imaginary of national unity helped stabilize social order and sustain compliance but obscured heterogeneous risks and needs, particularly among socioeconomically deprived, disabled, and minoritised ethnic communities. These imaginaries influenced upstream knowledge construction and downstream communication, turning ‘led by the science’ into a performative sequence where science followed politics—defining what was feasible to model and justify. Recognizing these dynamics clarifies the UK’s policy trajectory, including delayed lockdown and uneven protection for vulnerable publics, and underscores the need for diverse expertise and meaningful public engagement to surface heterogeneity in values, capacities, and risks.

The paper contributes an STS-informed account of how imagined publics shaped the UK’s early COVID-19 response. It identifies two dominant imaginaries—freedom-loving and uniform/united—that constrained modeling and policy, first by rendering lockdown ‘unthinkable’, then by maintaining a unity narrative despite clear evidence of unequal impacts. Two main lessons are offered: (1) Avoid assuming homogenous public preferences or behaviors—meaningful, rapid public engagement and inclusion of social sciences and humanities in advisory bodies are essential to reveal plural, dynamic publics and avoid reductionist framings; (2) Address structural inequalities in advisory processes and outputs—recognize how existing evidence on social determinants and racial/ethnic disparities should inform targeted policies. The authors call for more transparent and diverse recruitment to advisory bodies, critical reflection on consensus formation and evidentiary thresholds, and a return to principles of transparency and trust in publics developed after prior crises. These measures can enhance pluralism, accountability, and responsiveness in future emergencies.

- Scope: The analysis focuses on a three-month window (3 March–3 June 2020), limiting generalizability across the full pandemic period. - Data sources: Reliance on publicly available SAGE minutes, subgroup papers, and press briefing transcripts may omit ‘backstage’ deliberations during SAGE’s opaque early phase. - Causal inference: The authors explicitly note they cannot interpret motivations with certainty; inferences about the influence of political imaginaries on scientific advice are interpretive, not causal proofs. - Measurement limits: Early disparity analyses (e.g., CO-CIN rapid reports) had data privacy and confounding constraints, potentially affecting precision of observed associations. - Context specificity: UK political context (e.g., Brexit-era narratives) may limit transferability to other national settings, though parallels are suggested.