Learning from COVID-19
Center for Pandemic Research Interim Chair Wilmot James co-authored a synthesis paper, bringing together research presented at the Futures Forum on Preparedness hosted by Schmidt-Futures and the Social Science Research Council. This synthesis paper pulls from the Epidemic/Pandemic Response in Africa: Covid-19 in Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa study.
A 23-Nation Comparative Study of COVID-19 Response, with Lessons for the Future of Public Health
Sheila Jasanoff (Harvard University), Stephen Hilgartner (Cornell University), Wilmot James (Columbia University), Lyal White (University of Johannesburg)
January 2021
INTRODUCTION
A central puzzle of COVID-19 is why some nations have contained the virus almost completely while others have struggled to prevent multiple waves of community transmission. Equally puzzling is why many nations with evolved resources to combat a pandemic have fared worse than countries with fewer resources. A further paradox is why the virus has produced such different political and economic repercussions in nations with similar systems of government and demographics. In sum, confronted with the same phenomenon -- a pandemic caused by a novel virus -- we need to ask why countries have diverged so significantly. They differ in what they perceived as the most important problem to address, what resources they mobilized to tackle it, how much political buy-in they achieved, and to what extent they ultimately contained the disease and its economic fallout.
Read the full comparative study here.