Beth Kamunge-Kpodo and John Coggan

During the pandemic, there were social gatherings in Number 10. This seriously undermined trust in government. But what exactly is trust? And why is trust so vital during a pandemic? Jamie Webb explains.

The pandemic had disproportionate impacts when measured by ethnicity, gender and geography. Beth Kamunge-Kpodo and John Coggan are both legal scholars, and both are interested in inequality.

At the start of the covid pandemic there was little time for officials to consult the public. Sarah Cunningham Burley oversaw some public dialogues to assess public attitudes to the pandemic, and to the government’s response.

During the height of the Covid pandemic we became accustomed to watching, listening to and reading about experts in health statistics. J. Wilson and M.Smallman have been researching the use, and sometimes misuse of pandemic data.

Vaccines to combat Covid were developed in record time. Policy-makers then faced a tricky question. It was impossible to vaccinate everyone immediately: so who to inoculate first? Jonny Pugh says there were complex trade-offs.

The Pandemic Ethics Accelerator programme was led by Ilina Singh, an Oxford Professor of Neuroscience and Society. In this interview she explains what the programme was, what it was designed to achieve and whether it succeeded.