Shots fired: Fighting a pandemic in a post-truth world

It took a few weeks for the world to realize how serious the new virus radiating out of Wuhan was.

- Binayak Dasgupta

Once realization hit, by January 2020, a unique effort got underway. Within days, scientists had unlocked the virus's genetic sequence.

The first effective vaccine followed in just 11 months—a feat previously measured in decades. At their peak, countries such as India were delivering a million doses a day. Wealthier nations, albeit selfishly, funded and stockpiled breakthrough doses in even higher numbers. The message was clear: Science saves lives.

And yet, on February 25 this year, an unvaccinated child died of measles in Texas. Amid vaccine skepticism, the disease, declared eliminated in the US in 2000, has seen a resurgence.

This is the central paradox of the post-Covid era: that unparalleled scientific achievement could do little to halt a profound collapse in institutional trust.

The pandemic should have reinforced the idea of expertise; instead, somehow, movements around the world that undermine it have grown.

The scientific response to Covid-19 represented human collaboration at its most brilliant. Researchers redirected their collective energy in a manner reminiscent of history's greatest collective efforts (think, the Manhattan Project and the Apollo space programme).

By the end of 2020, journal repository PubMed Central hosted 89,000 Covid-related submissions. Traditional competitors shared data. Pharmaceutical companies compressed decades-long vaccine timelines into months.

Diagnostic capabilities expanded. Countries built oxygen plants almost overnight. Medical protocols evolved rapidly as clinicians shared frontline discoveries. By late 2021, genomic surveillance systems detected variants with increasing speed, allowing for more targeted responses.