Helen MacDonald

And in an editorial in the BMJ earlier this month, Devi Sridhar and Maimuna Majumder advocate for the use of other perspectives aside from modelling.

So does the inclusion of those seven modellers skew things too much?

They suggested more attention to case study analysis from other countries.

information from frontline health staff and patient groups and policy documents and historical analyses of previous outbreaks.

So in Germany, for example, their authorities considered model predictions, but they also used South Korea's strategy of testing, tracing and isolation.

And on that group, you can see there was little representation from jobbing healthcare professionals, including allied healthcare workers or any input from primary care.

So I thought that was quite interesting.

Yes, over in the US, away from the UK, Vinay Prasad, who's usually known for talking about oncology topics, had come to the defence of scientists using the example of John Ioannidis, who we interviewed a few weeks back for the show.

And I call Vinay to hear more about his concerns of how discussion around evidence and science was playing out on social media.

And goodbye from me.

Hi, Duncan.

I have.

We've talked a bit about the problems of guidelines in a crisis on this show before.

And medical ethicists seem to me to be playing a more prominent role because I could see them being mentioned.

And I've not noticed that before.

And why is that?

I think there's often reasonable quality evidence, which is quite key to informing guidance.

And in COVID, this doesn't readily exist anymore.

And secondly, a lot of these public health recommendations which are being made around isolation and also clinical guidance on approaches to triage and escalation of care involve value judgments.

So I was really intrigued to speak to ethicist Julian Sheather.