Biosocial Technical Systems: An Emerging Approach to Analyse Responses to Novel Diseases

The COVID-19 pandemic emerged in the context of a parallel epidemic of information, namely an infodemic. With the development of vaccines occurring in record time, a disinformation campaign ensued rendering the infodemic ever more troubling. As COVID-19 had to be curbed with vaccines opinion pools and surveys indicated that a minority, but relevant, part of the general public had weakened trust in public health policies and also on governmental responses to the pandemic in general. This dissent in public opinion on pandemic response is interpreted in this chapter as a controversy related to the efficacy and risks associated to vaccines. Such controversy gained momentum partly because traditional scientific communication has been largely unidirectional rather than bi-directional. We propose to apply a novel biosocial technical perspective to examine the COVID-19 pandemic controversy and communication, articulating social, biological and technical issues. The interaction between COVID-19 and vaccines, i.e. artefact-biological interactions, resulted in vaccine development in record time. However, the interaction between social systems and vaccine as artefacts was plagued by partial public reluctance in their acceptance. This rendered communication efforts ever more relevant, bringing lessons related to the importance of a more fluid bi-directional communication in future disease epidemics.