Table 1. COVID-19 deaths and public... | Emerald Publishing

Table 1.

COVID-19 deaths and public accountability

Level of ethnostatistics	Form of accountability	Accountability mechanism	Accountability claim	Findings
Level 1: To Count	Rule-based / virtuous accountability	Standardised classification rules (ICD codes), death certification procedures, medical judgement	States are accountable if they follow recognised rules and procedures to record deaths objectively and consistently	COVID-19 deaths became accountable objects through formal rules that enabled counting, aggregation and auditability. However, discretionary clinical judgement, inconsistent testing regimes, timing constraints and weak civil registration systems produced systematic invisibility and miscounting – particularly among vulnerable and low-income populations. Official counts retained legitimacy due to procedural compliance
Level 2: Accounting	Transparency-based / performative accountability	Public reporting, dashboards, league tables, ratios and visualisations	States demonstrate accountability by making numbers visible, comparable and intelligible to the public	Aggregated death counts transformed mortality into public-facing accounts that enabled comparison, ranking and performance evaluation. Despite acknowledged data flaws and non-comparability, real-time reporting fostered trust, justified emergency interventions and functioned as a performative signal of responsible governance. Visibility, not accuracy, became the primary accountability currency
Level 3: Recounting	Ex post / mechanistic accountability	Statistical modelling, expert judgement, proxy measures (excess deaths)	Governments are accountable for narratives of outcomes when evaluated retrospectively against counterfactual benchmarks	Excess deaths reconstituted accountability by retrospectively reassessing the true human cost of policy decisions. These proxy measures challenged official narratives, revealed undercounts, enabled transnational comparison and reassigned responsibility for success or failure. Although imprecise, excess deaths carried epistemic authority and legitimised retrospective judgement of state performance

Level of ethnostatistics	Form of accountability	Accountability mechanism	Accountability claim	Findings
Level 1: To Count	Rule-based / virtuous accountability	Standardised classification rules (ICD codes), death certification procedures, medical judgement	States are accountable if they follow recognised rules and procedures to record deaths objectively and consistently	COVID-19 deaths became accountable objects through formal rules that enabled counting, aggregation and auditability. However, discretionary clinical judgement, inconsistent testing regimes, timing constraints and weak civil registration systems produced systematic invisibility and miscounting – particularly among vulnerable and low-income populations. Official counts retained legitimacy due to procedural compliance
Level 2: Accounting	Transparency-based / performative accountability	Public reporting, dashboards, league tables, ratios and visualisations	States demonstrate accountability by making numbers visible, comparable and intelligible to the public	Aggregated death counts transformed mortality into public-facing accounts that enabled comparison, ranking and performance evaluation. Despite acknowledged data flaws and non-comparability, real-time reporting fostered trust, justified emergency interventions and functioned as a performative signal of responsible governance. Visibility, not accuracy, became the primary accountability currency
Level 3: Recounting	Ex post / mechanistic accountability	Statistical modelling, expert judgement, proxy measures (excess deaths)	Governments are accountable for narratives of outcomes when evaluated retrospectively against counterfactual benchmarks	Excess deaths reconstituted accountability by retrospectively reassessing the true human cost of policy decisions. These proxy measures challenged official narratives, revealed undercounts, enabled transnational comparison and reassigned responsibility for success or failure. Although imprecise, excess deaths carried epistemic authority and legitimised retrospective judgement of state performance