COVID was mismanaged: How not to repeat that history?
In COVID'S Wake [1] provides a very detailed description and analysis of the mismanagement of the COVID pandemic.
Major contributing factors were:
—> Ignoring long-standing plans for handling such a pandemic, plans based on sound data and insights
—> Suppressing informed voices that pointed this out
—> Self-interested actions by influential leaders anxious to show that they were doing what was needed
—> A lack of independent and knowledgeable media coverage
The attempt to avoid repeating this sad piece of history surely requires that these major factors will not play the same role with the same effects.
The last two factors listed are natural consequences of human nature and modern human societies. Their effects might be somewhat mitigated under special circumstances, but it would be unrealistic to imagine that they could be made completely ineffective. The self-interests of institutions and individuals are part-and-parcel of free, democratic, societies in which individuals and institutions compete on some matters while cooperating on others. The hegemony of an asserted mainstream consensus is a natural aspect of such societies, since it represents an at-least-temporary competitive success of one group’s collective opinion; and the consequent effective suppression of dissident voices is also quite natural.
Fortunately however, in liberal democratic societies paying more than lip-service to freedom of speech and academic freedom, the suppression of dissident voices by the mainstream consensus is a matter of degree, a degree far below what autocratic dictatorships accomplish. The problem to be solved becomes that of making the general public, leaders, and specialist policy-makers aware of the dissenting voices that would otherwise be swamped by the prestige of the mainstream proponents and the natural tendency of the mass media to turn to those prestigious people and institutions for news-worthy material.
So the best hope for avoiding a repetition of this sad COVID-19 history might be the establishment of an early-warning system, that some imminent or potential danger could be so serious as to threaten societal damage so severe that public actions are called for to avoid the possible harm.
Such an early-warning system would need to be entirely independent of influence by existing institutions, since the rather obvious self-interest of, say, the political class would interfere with factual assessment of the degree of risk in all its details. Such independence is incorporated in “ombudsman”-type arrangements.
In the here-suggested context, an Ombudsman Office would need to be fully knowledgeable about the history and sociology of science, medicine, and technology. That would usually not include active researchers with any connection to the nature of the potential danger, since such scientists or medical practitioners would inevitably harbor possibly subconscious biases and prejudices.
The duties of that office would be to exert constant vigilance for ideas or claimed discoveries with the potential for wide-ranging public policies and actions, and in such cases to make sure that alternative ideas and dissenting voices are not suppressed.
A necessary corollary to such an office would be a protocol for assessing, in an entirely independent, unbiased manner, the relative merits of mainstream and dissenting voices: something like the Science Court for which I have argued [2] elsewhere. Indeed, a Science Court would need such an early-warning system to know when its services might be required.
It must be emphasized that the prime criterion for action by the Ombudsman should be that the potential or imminent danger is truly a major societal threat, an almost or claimed existential threat; because In the normal course of events, the suppression of dissident voices in science and medicine (as well as over religion and other ticklish topics) occurs all the time on all sorts of matters. As history has shown amply, mistaken mainstream consensus in science, on questions of fact and knowledge and understanding, become modified and corrected over time, and society as a whole rarely if ever suffers serious damage.
Moreover, history also shows that the mainstream consensus is usually more often on the right side of things than dissidents are. If there is no truly great, imminent, potential danger, those probabilities indicate that there is no pressing need to give dissenting voices society-wide publicity. The presently suggested arrangement is specifically and precisely only to avert serious, widespread and potentially lasting damage like that occasioned by the social distancing and lockdowns during COVID, damage to several cohorts of children through inferior or even lacking education in crucial years, and all the other harms detailed in In COVID'S Wake [1.]
The need for total independence from existing institutions and commercial interests means that it will not be easy to establish a Science Court and a corresponding Ombudsman. Perhaps the best existing analogy for the proposed arrangement would be the Supreme Court, which shows that, in principle at least, liberal democratic societies are able to establish independent institutions to safeguard laws, freedom of speech and belief, and truth-seeking and truth-telling.
Indeed, the most desirable place for a Science Court and Ombudsman would be under the supervision of the Supreme Court. That extra responsibility would likely not be welcomed, but it should not require much continuing effort beyond initial establishment and staffing.
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[1] Stephen Macedo & Frances Lee, In Covid's Wake — How Our Politics Failed Us, Princeton University Pres, 2025
[2] Henry H. Bauer, Science Is Not What You Think: How It Has Changed, Why We Can’t Trust It, How It Can Be Fixed, McFarland, 2017; ch. 12
Needed: a specifically dedicated SCIENCE Court: Laws (and the legal system) should be compatible with the realities of nature (25/3/9);
https://henryhbauer.substack.com/p/needed-a-specifically-dedicated-science
Covid-19 mistakes underscore the need for a Science Court (25/3/24); https://henryhbauer.substack.com/p/covid-19-mistakes-underscore-the