“It's (Not) Like the Flu”: Expert Narratives and the COVID‐19 Pandemic in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and the United States

Abstract

We trace the crafting of expert narratives during the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and the United States. By expert narratives, we refer to how experts drew different lessons from past disease experiences in order to guide policymakers and the public amidst uncertainty. These expert narratives were mobilized in different sociopolitical contexts, resulting in varying configurations of expertise networks and allies that helped contain and mitigate COVID-19. In Mainland China, experts carefully advanced a managed narrative, emphasizing the new pandemic akin to the 2003 SARS outbreak can be managed while destressing the similar mistakes the government made during the two crises. In Hong Kong, experts invoked a distrust narrative, pointing to a potential coverup of COVID-19 similar to SARS, activating allies in civil society to pressure policymakers to act. In the United States, experts were mired in a contested narrative and COVID-19 was compared to different diseases; varying interpretations of COVID-19's consequences were exacerbated by political polarization. In expert narratives, the resonance of the past is emergent: the past becomes a site of struggle and a cultural object that is presented as potentially useful in solving problems of the present.

Listening to experts is not always wise: Unravelling the dynamics of decision‐making in the crisis cell

“…They are then ‘more successful in predicting the future’ than the expert, ‘who knows one big thing, toils devotedly within one tradition, and imposes formulaic solutions on ill‐defined problems’ (Tetlock, 2017). Experts are designed to recognize similarities between the present moment and past experiences (Au et al, 2022). When confronted with a new crisis, experts encounter realms of knowledge that are unexplored and fresh.…”

What’s In a Name?: Contrasting the Politics of Post-Covid Symptoms Across Three Countries

“…As a first approximation, the paucity of Long Covid patients is explicable in relation to how the pandemic unfolded in China. Initially, Covid-19 was quickly read against the experience in 2003 with the outbreak of SARS (Au, Fu, and Liu 2022), and Chinese experts recognized the potential catastrophe. This resulted in the lockdown of Wuhan and other cities (Yang 2022), followed by the implementation of the !health code" system that purported to help trace potential exposures and limit the spread of Covid-19 (Liu 2022;Liu and Graham 2021).…”

“…Initially, Covid-19 was quickly read against the experience in 2003 with the outbreak of SARS (Au, Fu, and Liu 2022), and Chinese experts recognized the potential catastrophe. This resulted in the lockdown of Wuhan and other cities (Yang 2022), followed by the implementation of the !health code" system that purported to help trace potential exposures and limit the spread of Covid-19 (Liu 2022;Liu and Graham 2021). These measures by the Chinese government had the effect of keeping the numbers of Covid-19 infections relatively low, which is why they were referred to as the "Zero Covid" policy.…”

“…Chinese public health experts, especially those known as "SARS heroes," advised the government and became identified with the Zero Covid policy. Their unanimity was contrasted positively with the well-publicized expert conflicts in the United States (Au, Fu, and Liu 2022). Zero Covid stood for China's rise to eclipse Western democracies as the new hegemonic model.…”

The sociology of global health: Inequality, disease‐related stigma, and the rise of nongovernmental organizations

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