The pandemic is an important lesson. Experts from around the world have developed important recommendations

The aim of the study was to develop a consensus that would avoid the mistakes that were made during the management of this pandemic in the future. According to a study participant and co-author of the article published in Nature, Prof. Mariusz Gujski, especially in the initial period of the pandemic, there were serious problems in the field of communication.

- We couldn't very clearly, calmly and objectively explain to people where certain limitations come from and why they should behave as they do. We were unable to explain our decisions factually, and by the way, it is worth adding that many of them were incomprehensible, wrong and absurd. They often resulted from ignorance, or from the fact that in many countries the pandemic was managed by politicians, not experts. The thesis that this type of health phenomenon should be managed by experts (scientists, doctors, communication specialists) was also included in these recommendations. In countries where politicians were wise enough to hand over decision-making to a body of experts, things were definitely better - emphasized Prof. Mariusz Gujski.

As many as three out of ten key recommendations developed as part of the consensus concerned the area of ​​communication. The authors in this field recognize the important role of community leaders and experts who should jointly develop public health messages. It is also important for governments to cooperate with people and organizations that enjoy great social trust.

– People lose trust. People don't believe what they hear. People often don't like what politicians say. Therefore, we also need to involve the entire society in the communication process - noted Dr. Kenneth Rabin from The City University of New York, Senior Scholar at the School of Public Health, co-author of the article and one of the leaders of the #COVIDconsensus project.

An important effect of the way the pandemic has been managed is its impact on public health. We are talking more and more about health debt.

– This debt is difficult to quantify, but is measured, for example, by excess deaths minus the number of deaths directly linked to Covid. On a national scale, unfortunately, we are talking about hundreds of thousands of such deaths from the pandemic period. Statistics also confirm the shortening of life expectancy. I think that this is not a direct effect of the pandemic, but an indirect one, resulting from the involvement of the system to fight Covid at the expense of patients with other diseases - noted Prof. Zbigniew Gaciong, Rector of the Medical University of Warsaw.

The pandemic experience can also be considered as a major lesson in vaccinology.

- The main thing we've learned is that only thanks to vaccination we are able to control such a pandemic. This is because most infections have come from people who are asymptomatic. Techniques such as taking temperature were a sieve with holes. If most of the infected were asymptomatic, then they could not be caught by such methods. Another lesson is that you should not bet everything on one card. Dozens of vaccines have been developed, and only a few of them have gained worldwide popularity due to their effectiveness. We have also seen that investing in basic research pays off. We learned the structure of the coronavirus very quickly, and at the same time, progress made it possible to develop vaccine platforms, emphasized Dr. Ernest Kuchar, head of the Pediatrics Clinic with the Observation Department of the Medical University of Warsaw, president of the Polish Society of Vaccinology.

By October 2022, there were over 630 million Covid-19 cases and over 6.5 million deaths worldwide. According to some estimates, the actual number of victims of the pandemic could even exceed 20 million.