Regulation and Policy Responses to a Major Health Emergency

The scale of the Covid-19 pandemic was unprecedented in modern times, with the Spanish flu pandemic 100 years previously being the last example on a similar scale. Although medicine and systems available to manage the crisis have advanced considerably in the intervening years, so too has the speed and extent of population travel to spread disease. On this panel, we consider a range of facets of dealing with Covid-19 and potential similar future crises, from tools to anticipate the evolution of the crisis to policy tools to force or encourage population behaviours, to timelines and approaches to dealing with unproven treatment or preventative measures.

Derek Groen will show how the Simulation Development Approach can be used for crises such as Covid-19 to clarify how quickly forecasting models can be used to anticipate the scale and nature of response that governments and regulatory bodies would need to put in place.

Manu Savani will explore public attitudes to the policy approaches used during the pandemic to change behaviours, ranging in their stringency from lockdowns and social restrictions to nudges and social norms. We used to think that people preferred to be 'nudged' rather than 'shoved', but does the pandemic challenge this view?

Fotios Drenos will present an example of his analysis of the efficacy of an unproven preventative measure for Covid-19 – Vitamin D. Through this example, he will explore the timeframe of such research reaching a stage where policy makers would trust it, and the reluctance of policy makers to get involved in debunking a theory they hadn’t promoted in the first place.

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