Opinion Understanding Epidemics - Steps Towards a Theoretical Epidemiology

Due to the author’s context commitment, epidemiology is understood as a central subfield of public health and medicine. It provides data and models for understanding population’s health risks and thus providing orientation and action for public health. The corona pandemic in particular has shown us many options but also needs for improvement of data-driven epidemiological modelling as it implies difficulties at interpretation compared to explanatory concept-oriented modeling. The modelling was also conceptually quite one-dimensional, using mainly medical data and largely ignoring psychosocial aspects. In addition, the fixation on quantitative observations has led to the neglect of patients’ voices and even the experiences of medical staff. As a result, and because of these shortcomings, public health regulations were likely to be suboptimal and associated with numerous adverse side effects. This has been demonstrated for some countries in Europe, especially Germany.