Debates on COVID -19, Science and Technology
COVID-19 pandemic has affected almost half of the world. Various fields have been affected and most importantly the field of science and technology which has led to the reduced productivity on a number of fields and programs. It has also opened several new funding research lines in several governmental agencies around the world.
According to the brief, scientific assessments on COVID -19 are similar around the world but the time and manner of response vary considerably across the countries. There is a need to reassess the functioning of science policy interface systems, where they exist and to build them up where they are weak and non – existent in order to preserve public trust in science and government.
The pandemic may have improved scientific communication or established new forms of it. Scientists are reviewing, editing, publishing manuscripts and data at record speeds and in large numbers. This intense communication have allowed an unusual level of collaboration and efficiency among scientists. A number of factors shape how much and which scientific knowledge can be established timely.
The World Health organization is a leading organisation involved in the global coordination for mitigating the COVID -19 pandemic within the broader United Nations response to the pandemic caused by the emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavius 2 in late 19.
It had spearheaded several initiatives like the COVID -19 Solidarity response fund to raise money for the pandemic response, the UN COVID -19 Supply Chain Task force, and the solidarity trial for investigating potential treatment options for the disease.
On 4 May 2020,the World Health organization organised a telethon to raise US $8 billion from forth countries to support rapid development of vaccines to prevent COVID -19 infections, it had also announced deployment of an international “solidarity trial” for simultaneous evaluation of several vaccine candidates reaching phase II-III clinical trials.
The need for accelerating open scientific research made several civil society organisations to create an open COVID pledge asking to different industries to release their intellectual property rights during the pandemic to help find a cure for the disease. Current scientific culture is questioned and a call is made for more open public science.
For corona virus studies and information that can help enable citizen science through open science many more online resources are available through other open access and open science websites including portals run by the Cambridge University press, the Europe branch of the scholarly publishing and academic resources coalition, the Lancet , John Wiley and Sons and Springer Nature.
Additionally scientific assessment must be used properly and governments must act with greater urgency on global scientific assessments. International collaboration between scientists and experts is a powerful way of bringing evidence and scientific consensus to the attention of policy makers and to inform their actions.
Much of the needed actions will need to come from countries themselves but international cooperation supported by the UN system can facilitate progress in all these areas. Many much initiatives are in place but need to be scaled up.
Aishwarya Says:
I have always been against Glorifying Over Work and therefore, in the year 2021, I have decided to launch this campaign “Balancing Life”and talk about this wrong practice, that we have been following since last few years. I will be talking to and interviewing around 1 lakh people in the coming 2021 and publish their interview regarding their opinion on glamourising Over Work.
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