What does the Covid19 Crisis tell us about better risk management in Europe?

For the first time in a century, the world faces a highly infectious and previously unknown pathogen. HIV, Ebola, SARS have all created challenges since their appearance, but COVID19 is more disruptive of society, as a whole, in all continents.

Facing a novel risk, we are responding with the same tool-box for understanding and response that human beings use for all other risks and threats.

We are seeing cases where science advice has been thought too lax, and where it is thought too severe. There seems indeed to be not one science, but a range of sciences. Not only do experts in key fields (like epidemiology and public health) disagree with other experts in the same field, there are also differences of language between different disciplines (think of the problems caused by the epidemiological phrase ‘herd immunity’ or the behavioural science concern around ‘behavioural fatigue’).

We are seeing cases where the general population follows quite severe policy well, and others where policy is widely flouted, at least by sub-sections of the population at certain times.

As we see the start of an anguished debate about lessons to be learned in the field of public health, we want to examine more broadly what the current crisis reveals about the European model of science-driven risk management.

We aim to discuss:

• What light is shed by the pandemic on European risk attitudes?
• How do the CAPUR principles inform pandemic management?
• How can health security be improved by better risk science?
• Can we reduce both misunderstandings and disinformation without recourse to censorship or propaganda?
• Does science emerge stronger or weaker from the current pandemic? 
• Can the CAPUR principles help?