Wiser after the event?

Abstract

There are many that are critical of what has been done in the pandemic, but we should not use that to negate what has been achieved: we must not let thoughts of perfection lead us to deny what has been good, particularly when it has all involved new experiences and therefore has been fraught with uncertainties. We have had to try out new approaches where there were no, or little, tried experiences immediately available. The obvious success is to be able to develop effective vaccines in a very short time. In great quantity. As it happened using mRNA research for vaccines against viruses was an incredibly brave and imaginative idea of Şahin and Türeci in January 2020 after considering the COVID-19 virus in Wuhan. They decided swiftly that their cancer research company BioNTech should be dedicated to the search for a vaccine against Sars-Cov-2 with new ways of getting those vaccines to activate the immune system with mRNA. To follow them for their safety and efficacy and to get them to millions of people. Another success has been that so many healthcare patient management initiatives and improvements, supported by technical and logistic revolutions, have occurred. The risks to the carers of those who are sick have been recognised and improvements in protecting them have been made. The efforts ingenuity behind all these medical advances need to be understood, weighed, valued, and remembered. We must use the fact that there has been open international dialogue and cooperation and that MUST continue. Surely the UN andWHO should be authorized to bring together nations to prevent and optimally mange world disaster? What science has appeared as less successful is statistics, epidemiology and particularly prediction. To a large extent, overpromotion, misuse, overoptimism and misunderstandings have played a part in this potentially useful area of science. The good news is that anyone who has been following the use of this important public health tool attentively will have learned a great deal. Epidemiology depends upon data, the context of its collection, its fitness-for-purpose to use in a particular new situation, its quality particularly its level of homogeneity. Confidence intervals and size of samples is critical information. How appropriate and what size is the control group is another matter that determines how we can value the results. These details are just some of the information necessary for interpretation of results. Adding to those matters, we have limited information how deductions from research have been made, and it