COVID → unprecedented response from scientific community, in terms of volume and speed... hit Western science at home, when there were more researchers than ever before, drew diverse workforce

Massive breakthroughs (diagnostics, vaccine), but also major flaws: racial and gender inequality, financial inefficiency, misinformation... amplified the best and worst aspects of science.

Acceleration of science through preprints → more responsive; open-source datasets and tools.

"Platform technologies" approach to vaccine: ex. mRNA, take a sequence coding for a noninfectious fragment— very quick once genome published; also working on production, distribution in parallel. Likely changed vaccine development for good.

Treatments → many awful studies with bad design, going on & spreading misinformation — didn't have to be that way (compare to WWII; current UK initiative

Negative impacts of the shift in science

• Slow down/halting of literally everything else, including long-term studies
• "Epistemic tresspassing" or experts into other fields, making avoidable mistakes, reinventing the wheel

~1850, social view of medicine (Rudolf Virchow):

Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing but medicine in larger scale.

• Shifted away from this in late 19th c with discovery of microbes, etc., but coming back since late 20th c: environmentalism, impact of inequality and poverty on health

Disproportionate impact of COVID on people of color, people who simply can't stay home all the time (nonpharmaceutical interventions)...

• Reality of how dependent things are on policy, behavioural change, etc. more clear than ever.

In summary: COVID both showcased advances in data-sharing, experimental speed, and vaccine development exposed flaws in science of "warped incentives, wasteful practices, overconfidence, inequality, a biomedical bias" → now we the scientific world has the chance to do what it can do best: self-correct.