Crippled community governance and suppressed scientific/professional communities: a critical assessment of failed early warning for the COVID-19 outbreak in China

Abstract The public governance of epidemic outbreaks faces great uncertainty. Successful governance is only possible with a competent early warning system, which hinges upon efficient production, sharing, and use of relevant knowledge and information. In this process, functional scientific/professional communities are critical gatekeepers. Analyzing China’s failed early warning for the COVID-19 outbreak, we show that an epidemic governance system dominated by bureaucratic forces is doomed to failure. In particular, we identify the lack of autonomy of scientific/professional communities—in this case, virologists, physicians, and epidemiologists—as one of the major contributing factors to the malfunction of the early warning system. Drawing upon the idea of community governance, we argue that only by empowering scientific/professional groups to exert efficient community governance can a state modernize its early warning system and perform better in combatting epidemics.