Covid-19: Science, politics, media, and the public—a systemic view

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic is taken as an opportunity to analyze the role and performance of medical science, the political acceptance of scientific advice, and the importance of mass media as the intermediate link in the “information supply chain.” We demonstrate the confusion about indicators of the “dangerousness of the virus SARS-Cov2” by number of deaths. The elective use of one of various possible indicators implies different assessments of risk and, in consequence, different public health measures. Results and discussion show that COVID-19 pandemic management uncovered the lack of inter-and transdisciplinary culture in medicine and public health, as well as the lack of a conceptual framework. In a systemic human ecological view the framework would be expanded, including the link between ecology and medicine. A perspective of a “human ecology of health” (EHO, 2020) could improve multidimensional understanding of the pandemic and enable connections to other systemic approaches and to sustainability research.