Agnotology of virology: The origins of Covid-19 and the next zoonotic pandemic

Abstract

Global pandemic preparedness initiatives rely on a vision of viral discovery-to rapidly detect and respond to emerging viruses, or even predict their future emergence. But despite the fact that the emergence of a coronavirus was accurately predicted, and the new virus was also rapidly detected, viral discovery failed to prevent or contain the Covid-19 pandemic. In this paper, I trace the history of the viral discovery paradigm in order to illuminate its 'agnotology'-that is, what is ignored in the production of virological knowledge. I argue that this ignorance is primarily a question of scale: the massive expansion in molecular knowledge of viruses has not been matched by knowledge about the ecology of virus emergence. © 2022 ANU Press. All rights reserved.