TALK POSTPONED - Ineffective Responses to Unlikely Outbreaks: Hypothesis Building in Newly-Emerging Infectious Disease Outbreaks

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• Dr Freya Jephcott (CID, University of Cambridge)
• Tuesday 01 December 2020, 18:30-19:45
• Online.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Miroslava Novoveska.

We are sorry, but we had to postpone Dr Jephcott’s talk. The talk will happen on 1st December from 18:30.

The talk will be done on Zoom, link to join: https://zoom.us/j/5670372219?pwd=UjZVeWphTlNEVENyOFkzNWpuc28zdz09

Meeting ID: 567 037 2219

Passcode: VbRSX2

Over the last 30 years there has been significant investment in both research and infrastructure aimed at mitigating the threat of newly-emerging infectious diseases (N-EID). Core epidemiological processes, such as outbreak investigations, however, have received little attention and as such have proceeded largely unchecked and unimproved. In this talk I will discuss processes of hypothesis building in investigations of suspected N-EID outbreaks in sub-Saharan Africa. Using primary material from investigations into cryptic outbreaks in Ghana, Australia, and Ethiopia, I will trace processes of hypothesis building and their relationship to the organisational structures of the response. I will demonstrate how commonly recurring features of N-EID investigations produce selective pressures in hypothesis building that favour iterations of pre-existing, ‘exciting’ hypotheses and inhibit the pursuit of alternative hypotheses, regardless of relative likelihood. Many of the shortcomings in hypothesis building I will discuss are evident in the initial, flawed response to the current COVID outbreak, highlighting the need for greater scrutiny of core epidemiological processes.

This talk is part of the Trinity College Science Society (TCSS) series.

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• Guy Emerson's list
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