Imagining the next pandemic: Finnish preparedness for chronic transboundary crises before and during COVID-19

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, infectious disease experts had postulated that the next pandemic is only a matter of time, and Finland, among other nations, had prepared for it. Yet the COVID-19 pandemic crossed the customary political, functional, and temporal boundaries of crisis management to a surprising degree. This study analyses pandemic preparedness among Finnish infectious disease experts at the central government level before and during the COVID-19 pandemic (2017-2021). The study is based on interview material, participant observation in the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare's infectious disease unit in 2017, and health security-related document analysis. By analyzing expert perceptions of preparedness in two points of time, the study provides insights on the challenges that increasingly transboundary crises have posed for preparedness efforts. The experts perceived that pandemic preparedness would benefit from a more generic approach to planning and from more comprehensive risk assessments and policy advice. The analysis shows that Finnish crisis management had overlooked the extent of transboundedness of present-day crises and is lacking consideration of how crises turn into chronic conditions that deplete capacities over time. The crisis man.agement regime needs to develop structures to better analyze systemic risks and to extend its timeframe to cover long-term crises.