Experts’ conservative judgment and containment of COVID-19 in early outbreak

We present the case of the outbreak and containment of COVID-19 in its early stage and analyze the causes for conservative judgment of the disease control experts who are blamed for delayed action and inadequate response by the government. We find that the disease control experts have a clear tendency and preference to make conservative judgment about the epidemic risk of a low probability and high impact new disease. This conservative preference may have been a major factor in the judging and communicating the risk of COVID-19 epidemic. The experts’ perception of the epidemic risk is affected by their habitual thinking facing a low probability event with uncertain progression. Their conservative preference is augmented by political concerns due to the high social and political impact of the event and the potential political consequence of a false judgment. Balancing personal payoffs of decision options, the experts’ rational choice would lean towards a conservative decision. We propose a three-factor decision model that integrates habitual thinking, political concerns and rational choice to explain the experts’ conservative judgment, and corroborate the model with evidences from the case. We conclude the paper with policy implications for improving experts’ role in public health emergency response.