On March 9, 2020, Martin Landray was studying the potential impact of Covid-19 When I started sweeping Britain. He pointed out that what was required is a way to identify cheap and effective drugs that may limit the effect of the SARS-COV-2 virus that fills hospitals in the UK with serious patients.
Within 10 days, Landy-worked with his colleague at the University of Oxford Peter Horby-prepared healing, a drug test program that included thousands of doctors and nurses working with tens of thousands of Covid-19 patients in UK hospitals.
The trials were made in wings jammed with sick individuals, and these quickly showed that many medications that were designed over Naibah such as hydroxy chlorocin anti -malaria drug were ineffective.
At the same time, Dexamethasone, a cheap treatment for inflammation and arthritis, was found Reducing deaths from a third Among the patients with artificial respirators, the discovery of more than a million people all over the planet.
The recovery was one of the greatest scientific victories in the United Kingdom In the battle against Kovid, although Landray is still cautious. And he said to observer.
“I am concerned that this will not happen again when the next epidemic arrives. We can end up with a lengthy relying on the committee that will be very slow and we will not get another recovery. We haven’t learned our lessons.”
It is a view that many other scientists shared. Britain may have triumphed in the recovery program and its rapid introduction to vaccines, but today the nation shows signs that warn of danger to forgetting the scientific lessons it learned during the epidemic. It is a point confirmed by Professor Adam Fein from the University of Bristol.
“With regard to public health decisions, the main lesson that we learned in 2020 is clear and direct: when you get a pandemic, do not assume that it will be the last time. Five years ago, everyone expected that the next epidemic was the influenza, and thus the models assumed that we had to close schools and keep children at home because they would be the ones who spread the disease.
This was true for influenza, but it was not for Covid. Young people were not wrong, wrongly, they remained separate. They paid an unnecessary price because we have made wrong assumptions. “
It was a major lesson, but the Finn said he was now concerned that the nation was already forgetting what it had learned during Covid. “I have already started to happen, not only in the minds of the audience, but also in the minds of the scientific community. Memories and lessons – like Long closing error From schools – lost. We really need to record what happened carefully so that our previous experiences can guide us when this happens again. Just make inquiries to give people to get an incomplete error. “
Criticism of operations recommended by scientists was also expressed by Professor Mark Wolhaus from Edinburgh University. And he said to observer. “There have been a lot of mistakes committed, and I think we need to change how we do it. We need a better way to take samples of scientific evidence and scientific opinion, and a better way to turn it into advice. We need to ask more scholars and lack of their views in the advice.”
Woolhouse also criticized the widespread delay in the side flow tests. “The scientific advisory system did not adopt this technology, and therefore it was not presented as it could have been in the late 2020 when it could have played a major role in avoiding the next lock. Instead, we had to wait another year until it was used in a large -scale way when it played a major role, along with vaccines, in the battle against the arrival of the OMICRON variable,” added Woolhouse.
Professor Sir Andrew Pollard, Director Oxford vaccine groupHe warned that institutional knowledge in the United Kingdom about what to do if there is a new pandemic is now on the edge of the abyss.
“We are still not ready today to protect the population within 100 days of the emergence of most of the epidemic scenarios, and we are not spent enough on health security to get there anytime soon.
“The danger of society should be taken from the epidemics seriously as the relatively low -death web is still causing a global shock. Next can change the world as we know it.”
