Pawson’s article raises the important question of what constitutes good and bad modelling during a pandemic. His article makes the case for more involvement of social scientists to capture the complex adaptive nature of governmental policy. While articulating a welcome critique of epidemiological models, his article fails to recognise that all model use simplifications which make some models better than others. I will suggest a useful way of differentiating between good and bad, useful and less useful, models based on the difference between idealisation and abstraction, concepts I borrow from Onora O’Neill and political theory. They allow us to apply a more nuanced criticality to the current models used by the government. Refining our critique of the government’s COVID response is important since we need to account for the fact that current government responses to the pandemic, while open to criticism, have had some effect in reducing infection rates.

鲍森的文章提出了一个重要的问题，即在大流行期间什么构成好和坏的模型。他的文章提出了社会科学家更多参与的机会，以捕捉政府政策的复杂适应性。在阐述流行病学模型的受欢迎批评时，他的文章未能认识到所有模型都使用简化方法，从而简化了某些模型。我将提出一种有用的方法，根据理想化和抽象，我从奥诺拉·奥尼尔（Onora O'Neill）借用的概念和政治理论之间的差异来区分好与坏，有用和较不有用的模型。它们使我们能够对政府当前使用的模型应用更为细微的批评。