My Take | United States should stop scapegoating China and WHO
- Epidemiology can help contain an outbreak, but epistemology – what’s knowable and how – may decide who’s to blame
Former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld once said there are known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns. His language may not be elegant, but as a statement characterising the challenges policymakers almost always face in a crisis while trying to act under uncertainty, and with inadequate information, he is right on the mark.
So, let’s apply Rumsfeld’s “epistemology” to epidemiology. China has so frequently been accused of covering up the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic it is, for its critics, an established fact. But is it?
To cover up something, you need first to know what you are covering up.
What people don’t seem to realise, or care to admit, is that when a new virus emerges, you are dealing with something that straddles the unknown unknowns and the known unknowns.
Throughout the month of December when the outbreak in Wuhan started and worsened, medics and officials were dealing with a lot of unknown and poorly understood factors. But by December 31, the World Health Organisation (WHO) was already informed of pneumonia cases of an unknown cause in Wuhan.