What the COVID-19 pandemic reveals about science, policy and society

The global COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-2021 required politicians to work alongside and depend on scientists more closely than any other event in recent times. It also saw science unfold in real time under intense public scrutiny. As a result, it highlighted as never before the ways in which science interacts with policy-making and with society, showing with sometimes painful clarity that science does not operate in a social or political vacuum. With the advent of vaccines against the coronavirus that has caused the pandemic, science has come to be seen as something of a saviour. But at other times and in other contexts it has also been cast as a villain and an inconvenience, and has run into stark conflict with political leadership. In this article, I consider these issues with particular reference to the situation in the UK-which, as with any nation, illustrated some considerations of more general applicability but also had aspects unique to this country. I argue that there are many lessons to be learnt, and that, as this is surely not the last infectious-disease crisis of such magnitude that the world will face, we must hope they will be heeded.