Thread on my insistence in discussing uncertainty in health policy decision-making related to COVID-19.

When I was doing my PhD, I took a class with Dr. Terre Satterfield: “Science, Technology and Values in a Policy Context” if I recall correctly.

Terre made us read works by Dorothy Nelkin, Sheila Jasanoff, Bruno Latour, Paul Slovic, Robin Gregory, Roger and Jeanne Kasperson. A lot of the literature on risk. Many works in the STS literature.

Being exposed to the literature on risk, values and valuation, uncertainty...

... really changed me. I respect public health professionals, epidemiologists and modellers a lot because they KNOW they need to properly understand risks, uncertainties, and assumptions and their limitations to do their work.

I don’t LIKE uncertainty. I study institutions ...

... because rules and norms give certainty and stability to the relations and interactions across actors. I like robust institutions because they provide society with increased certainty and stability.

Uncertainty is very de-stabilizing, I get it. But an abundance of caution...

... seems to be an appropriate strategy in a context of extreme uncertainty. That’s what the precautionary principle is all about: reduce risk and uncertainty when designing interventions.

I think this pandemic may be the watershed moment when we integrate risk and uncertainty

... into our daily lives even more than we do now.

Again, I don’t *love* uncertainty but I think I need to live with it. Manage risk, minimize and hope for the best.

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