Dobson, Geoffrey P. (2020) Science and the War on Truth and coronavirus. Frontiers in Medicine, 7. 563.

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Abstract

[Extract] I am a scientist and this is my brief on what the world needs to know about science and COVID-19. Science is a method of truth-telling about the physical world and ways to improve quality of life. It is the most powerful enterprise that has led to improved healthcare, a more sustainable environment, a safer world, and a better “knowing and understanding” about the world we live in. Science is fun and spectacular. And it has rarely let us down, until now.

Despite multiple warnings in 2015, the current global pandemic has revealed major deficits in our preparedness for a viral attack. Governments have let the public down by not supporting early warning programs and for not providing sufficient science funding to understand how different people respond differently to a viral attack, and vaccine development. The present pandemic has also revealed that science underpins a country's national security in ways never appreciated before. The resultant economic upheaval has thrown global supply chains, stock markets, the airline industry, oil markets, and the central bank into frenzied disarray (1). It is regrettable that it took a global pandemic, and the most powerful global economies to come crashing to their knees, with hundreds of thousands of lives lost, to bring science out of the shadows, and into the spotlight.

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