The clocks run at slightly different speeds. Clashing timeframes in COVID-19 health risk governance

Abstract

Decision-making processes in times of crisis are rarely scrutinised. In this study we open up the ‘black box’ of regional COVID-19 decision-making. From March 2020 to June 2021, we had the unique opportunity to do (mostly) on-site ethnographic research and watch the unfolding of COVID-19 decision-making, as this took place in meetings. This enabled us to examine how timeframes played a key role within an important decision-making forum in the Netherlands: the ‘regional safety authority’, responsible for regional crisis and disaster management. Our study highlights how timeframes structure the ways in which normative choices and dilemmas are considered and political decisions are made. We identify three timeframes that ‘perform’ a specific temporality: the ‘no time to waste’ frame, the ‘taking the time’ frame and the ‘future time’ frame. These timeframes form a specific composition of (1) patterns of action, (2) objects at risk, and (3) values that feature in decision-making. We reveal how the ‘no time to waste’ frame dominated decision-making, producing a solitary focus on a rather narrow concept of safety, while other timeframes and other voices, measures and values were marginalised. We argue that timeframes can and should be negotiated and made explicit in a balanced approach to governing a pandemic or other types of long-term crisis.

Keywords:

• COVID-19
• timeframes
• values
• risk
• ethnography
• pandemic

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Regional safety authority is a translation from the Dutch ‘Veiligheidsregio’.

2. This division of 25 regions does not correspond with the administrative layer of 12 Dutch provinces, nor with the division of 10 regions for acute care delivery (ROAZ), adding to the fragmentation of the decision-making structure during the pandemic.

3. The Director of Public Health (DPG) manages both the public health department (GGD) and the Medical Assistance Organization in the Region (GHOR) and, as responsible for the GHOR, is also a member of the management of the regional safety authority. Within this context, the Director of Public Health provides integral advice on behalf of the entire ‘medical care chain’ of acute, public, social, and long-term care.

4. The scenario team was a new multidisciplinary advisory body consisting of representatives from the ‘general column’ (crisis and risk management, communication, population care and medical aid), the military, the police force, the fire brigade, civil servants from various municipal services and municipalities, a social scientist and, as from September 2020, public health actors from the ‘white/healthcare column’.

5. Riots had already been described as a worst-case scenario in mid-2020, long before the first riots occurred in February 2021 and again in November 2021. According to several actors, ‘Unfortunately, many worst-case scenarios eventually came true’.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the NWO project Corona: Fast-track Data program [440.20.018].