Competition During Covid-19
Heidi Tworek · Global studies · 2021
Ranking failed during Covid-19.Autumn 2019 saw the release of the first World Health Preparedness Report, accompanied predictably with a Global Health Security Index (Global Health Security Index 2019).Compiled by the Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Policy, the Nuclear Threat Initiative, and the Economist Intelligence Unit, the Global Health Security Index offers a classic example of a ranking produced by "rationalised third-parties" (Werron 2015), which collect information and collate it into a plausible index.Like most indices, it created numerical values for multiple parameters and combined them to rank nation-states on their preparedness to address an epidemic.The report ran over 300 pages and contained more than 50 pages detailing its methodology.The Global Health Security Index has now become infamous for having no predictive power whatsoever.The index had ranked the United States and the United Kingdom as the first and second most prepared countries for a pandemic.When one economist compared the index with fatalities per capita in January 2021 (Milanovic 2021), he found that there was no correlation between a country's rank on the index and its performance during Covid-19.As of January 2021, the United States' fatality rate was 145 th out of 153 countries, while the UK was in 149 th place.One of the most striking aspects of this crisis is how ranking discourse so poorly anticipated nations' performance during the crisis.The Index had done what rankings are supposed to do: "To aggregate a variety of dimensions into one ranking position, rankings translate qualities into quantities" (Brankovic et al. 2018: 274f.).And yet those quantifications bore no resemblance to the reality that unfolded mere months later.While commentators have lambasted the Index for its poor choice of measurements, the report's subtitle highlights the paradoxical nature of such indices: "Building Collective Action and Accountability."An index that created national competition through ranking was supposed to generate collabora-