Week 11: Economic Disincentives of Reporting

Hello again!! Great to see you this week 🙂 This week’s update will be relatively short as I don’t have new data to share, but I do want to discuss some more readings I found this week that I thought provided important context for my project.

You may recall that a big reason I decided to start this project was to find a more affordable yet reliable way for nations with less economic capacity to get an overview of the state of infection during an outbreak. Yet when I was catching up on readings this week, I came across an interesting finding: many countries with enough economic capability to report cases are actually unwilling to report because they face economic disincentives. 

For many countries, trade and travel make up large portions of the economies and ensure the country is connected with international partners. However, once an outbreak is publicized, partner countries may enact travel and trade restrictions that limit the original country’s connectivity with the world and put its economy at a disadvantage. According to Catherine Worsnop of the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, “trade exposure and domestic political opposition are significantly associated with increases in [outbreak] reporting lags…A larger agricultural sector is negatively associated with reporting” (Worsnop, 2019). Worsnop’s findings suggest that as countries gain a larger international trade presence, they become more reluctant to report cases because they face more losses from potential restrictions. 

An instance of this occurred during the 2002-2004 SARS outbreak which originated in Guangdong, China. While the outbreak started in December 2002, the Chinese government did not publicly acknowledge it until February 2003 (Worsnop, 2019). In fact, there was evidence that officers tried to actively conceal the outbreak from WHO, likely to protect its gocal economic interests (Knobler et. al., 2004). Although the outbreak eventually passed, it took hundreds of lives, and if the outbreak wasn’t discovered, many more would have died. 

This case study shows that government systems may not always be willing or quick to report infections. Ultimately, it is important to rely on a source independent of the government to generate infection reports to verify official sources. Social media, which is widely accessible in most countries and often allows for freedom of expression (with notable exceptions such as China, Russia, and North Korea), provides a valuable platform for individuals to share firsthand information. By analyzing these posts, researchers can develop a more comprehensive and timely understanding of the spread of infections within a population.

That’s all I got for you this week! I am almost done creating my presentation and I’m SO excited to be sharing these findings with you in person soon!!

Sources:

[1] Worsnop, C. Z. Concealing Disease: Trade and Travel Barriers and the Timeliness of Outbreak Reporting. International Studies Perspectives 2019, 20 (4), 344–372. https://doi.org/10.1093/isp/ekz005. 

[2] Learning from SARS; National Academies Press: Washington, D.C., 2004. https://doi.org/10.17226/10915.