Three Ways in Which Pandemic Models May Perform a Pandemic

Models not only represent but may also influence their targets in important ways. While models’ abilities to outcomes has been studied the context of economic models, often under label ‘performativity’, we argue that this phenomenon pertains epidemiological such as those used for forecasting trajectory Covid-19 pandemic. After identifying three ways which a model by Response Team at Imperial College London (Ferguson et al. 2020) have influenced scientific advice, policy, and individual responses, consider implications performative capacities. We argue, first, performativity impair ability successfully predict course an epidemic; second, it provide additional sense these models can be successful, namely changing epidemic.