Managing uncertainty in the covid-19 era
BMJ 2020; 370 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m3349 (Published 01 September 2020) Cite this as: BMJ 2020;370:m3349
- Harry Rutter, professor of global public health1,
- Miranda Wolpert, head of mental health priority area2,
- Trisha Greenhalgh, professor of primary care health sciences3
- 1Department of Social and Policy Sciences, University of Bath, Bath, UK
- 2Department of Clinical Education and Health Psychology, Wellcome Trust, London, UK
- 3Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
- Correspondence to T Greenhalgh trish.greenhalgh{at}phc.ox.ac.uk
The covid-19 pandemic is maturing, but uncertainties continue to multiply for individuals and for policy makers. Should I return to work? Should I visit relatives? Which businesses should reopen? What about schools and universities?
This article is not about the answers to those questions. It is about uncertainty and how we handle it at personal and policy levels when urgent action is essential.
Science is sometimes depicted as the methodical and painstaking search for truth and good policy making as the translation of those evidence based truths into action. Before the pandemic such assumptions sometimes (though not always) held. But covid-19 has brought the complexity of science and policy making in the context of uncertainty into sharp focus.1 Some recent research findings can probably be given the status of facts, but overall the evidence base on effectiveness of interventions (preventive and therapeutic) remains patchy. The extent to which research findings from other diseases (and even other coronaviruses) can be extrapolated to covid-19 is contested.
As each country’s covid-19 experience shifts from an acute national disaster …