The COVID-19 quandemic

This paper argues that the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed yet another important socio-political dynamic that can best be captured by the concept of a quandemic – a portmanteau of “quantification” and “pandemic”. The use of quantifiable metrics in policymaking and evaluation has increased throughout the last decades, and is driven by a synergetic relationship between increases in supply and advances in demand for data. In most regards this is a welcome development. However, a quandemic, refers to a situation where a small subset of quantifiable metrics dominate policymaking and the public debate, at the expense of more nuanced and multi-disciplinary discourse.

Based on experience from the Nordic region, the authors propose four distinct dynamics that characterize a quandemic:

1. A limited number of metrics tend to dominate both political, expert, and public spheres and exhibit a great deal of rigidity over time.
2. These few metrics crowd-out other forms of evidence relevant to pandemic response.
3. The metrics tend to favour certain outcomes of pandemic management, such as reducing hospitalization rates, while not capturing potential adverse effects such as social isolation and loneliness.
4. Finally, the metrics are easily standardized across countries, and give rise to competitive dynamics based on international comparisons and benchmarking.