The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted personal, social, and economic lives of millions of people around the world. It has taken the familiar world away from everyone. The pandemic is in large part an epistemic problem caused by the invisible contagious virus. Its invisibility can make people ignorant of the threat and spread of the virus. Government and public need scientists to identify and understand the problem of COVID-19. While the latter do not have complete knowledge to cure the disease, they are more knowledgeable to inform the government how to prevent the pandemic from getting worse. Appropriate government intervention requires a thorough investigation involving frequent and massive data collection, which is too expensive for developing countries. Without sufficient data, any government claim and intervention are questionable. The government can compensate the insufficiency of data by acquiring data and information from other sources, such as civil society organization and the public.
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Globalization of business and tourism helped to quickly spread the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide. But it is also due to the invisibility of the virus, concealed deep inside the human body, that allows it to enter any part of the world undetected. People are encouraged to be cautious against the virus, which is too small to be seen by the naked eye or a standard optical microscope, and can only be identified through biochemical methods or electron microscopy (Roberts, 2020), which are not accessible to most people. Hence, they have to rely on the testimony of scientists or people they believe to be experts. People can experience the illness caused by the virus, but the causal relationship between virus and illness is given to them by medical professionals. The strict institutionalization of medical education and profession that emphasizes the trust in evidence has helped people to trust medical professions (Svenaeus, 2000).
During the pandemic, there is also the possibility that people get infected but are unaffected. If they lack scientific knowledge, and have little trust in government and government’s experts, they can be difficult to convince to follow health protocols and therefore become a healthy carrier, which can endanger other people. Some people need to observe or experience to believe in the threat of the pandemic. Only after the disease is experienced or observed in family members or close friends, do these people seek assistance and information from medical professionals, listening to their explanation to make sense of their illness and follow the prescription and rules given by the latter (Svenaeus, 2000).
The COVID-19 pandemic poses challenging problems for the governments. They need to protect and sustain the life of their citizens, particularly, by limiting the movement of the latter in order to minimize further contagion, but at the same time they cannot completely freeze the economic system. At least the production and distribution of food must continue fulfilling the needs of the people. To keep certain parts of the economy alive is not about money, but about the real goods for the real needs, because money will be useless if there is nothing to buy.
It is not easy for any government to find proper interventions under the tensions of conflicting demands. They need to know and understand the situation accurately. They need sufficient and accurate data as the basis for their decisions and actions. Prior to the availability of reliable vaccine, the COVID-19 disease cannot be eliminated. So, interventions by governments will not eliminate the main problem, only prevent them from getting worse, while waiting for the availability of the vaccine. Even if it is available, it does not guarantee to “permanently prevent people from catching COVID-19 and enable the disease to be gradually eradicated or at least contained to limited outbreaks” (Pitt, 2020).
Most countries were unprepared to deal with the pandemic. It was most apparent, particularly, in the beginning of the pandemic. Many governments seemed indecisive or reluctant to take the necessary actions. They are either confused or ignorant of the danger of contagion, while the anxious public who foresaw the threatening pandemics were pressuring them to take immediate actions, including implementing lockdown. The message of the president of Ghana, ”We know how to bring the economy back to life. What we do not know is how to bring people back to life,” had been made viral by impatient social media users to pressure their governments whom they believe did not want to sacrifice the economy.
Seeking for a proper balance between various, sometimes conflicting, demands is mostly an epistemic problem. Indeed, protecting human lives should be top priority, but keeping the production and distribution of food will protect human lives in the long run. The conflicting demands cannot be satisfactorily fulfilled, but policy makers need to make sure that they have made the most optimal decision. To achieve this, besides needing knowledge and wisdom they also need comprehensive and the most recent data. But, the data to be collected and the frequency and extent of data collection requires a lot of resources, which are costly and not always available (Timmermann, 2020).
Whatever policy being made governments need public support, which can be obtained if the latter comprehend the reasons behind that policy (Subagyo et al, 2020). Or, if they do not, they have trust in their government. Without such comprehension or trust, government may rely on disciplining people through violent enforcement. If this is enforced for too long, this will exhaust police or military personnel, and more importantly, will heighten the level of stress of the people, thus heightening the level of anxiety (Roy et al., 2020).