Data for the next pandemic

If there’s one thing that emerged with any clarity from COVID-19, it’s that where data played a decisive role in guiding policy interventions, outcomes were better. We need better data for the next pandemic.

My recent post on the Starschema blog discusses the need for better data products to tackle future pandemic challenges:

Three years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the medical, public health and disaster preparedness communities are trying to isolate lessons learned from the harrowing experience of a global outbreak that resulted in little shy of seven million deaths. There remains considerable disagreement as to what ought or ought not have been done, what worked and what did not and how to best approach a coming pandemic.

One of the only points on which there is widespread agreement regarding the global response to the pandemic is that data played a crucial role in tackling the crisis. Where data drove decision-making, outcomes were almost universally better in terms of morbidity and mortality.

Read the full post here.