« This Virus Is Potentially Pandemic »
This article questions the capacity for experts in avian influenza to predict flu pandemics based on the viral mutations they observe in birds. Rather than borrowing concepts to the anthropology of myth or prophecy, the language of divination is used, following the analyses of Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, to understand how viral mutations are perceived as signs of catastrophic diseases that may affect humans. The anticipation of pandemics does not rely on a probability calculation, as in the risk management of public health, but on the imagination of a catastrophic event out of early warning signals. In the language of immunology, sentinels are devices through which these warning signals are perceived before the organism reacts in a catastrophic manner. Preparing for flu pandemics constitutes a moral imaginary that provides meaning to the signals of pathogens when they cross species barriers, below the sacrificial gesture of pre-emptive slaughter.