Textures of an Epidemic: On the Necessity of Qualitative Methods in Making Better Pandemic Futures

Abstract

Numbers predominate in an infectious disease outbreak: the number of total cases, the number of new cases, the number of dead. These are important; people want to know where the virus seems to be headed and how virulent it is. Yet, what these numbers say nothing about is what is happening on the ground to those people infected, their loved ones, their caregivers, or to those larger numbers impacted by government responses. They say nothing about what deliberations go into decisions about public health policies, including what might have worked in previous epidemics. Yet, knowing details of differential impacts, discovering that suffering and vulnerability have endless permutations, and understanding the varied ways of perceiving and responding to epidemics is just as important as the stories that numbers tell. In fact, knowing what I call “the textures of an epidemic” is vital to understanding not just who might be impacted more heavily, but why and how. This is where qualitative methods come in, and COVID-19 is no exception to why we need to elucidate experiences across professional and geographic locations, and comb archives for what lessons might be revealed because doing this could mean doing better than we have in this epidemic to be prepared, redress inequities, and make better pandemic futures.