This is how the Federal Council prepares for the next pandemic

The Federal Council reorganizes the involvement of science in a crisis. To this end, he approved on Friday a cooperation agreement with the six major scientific organizations such as the ETH Board, the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Association of Academies a+ and the Swiss universities.

This document states that in the event of a crisis, the Federal Council will investigate whether a scientific advisory committee is necessary. If so, the scientific organizations propose experts to participate. The Swiss universities, the Swiss universities, are the point of contact for this.

The agreement includes a code that sets out the tasks and responsibilities of scientists. Just like the task force in the Corona crisis, this advisory committee informs politicians about the current state of knowledge in their field, designs scenarios and outlines measures. Of crucial importance is the willingness of both parties not to interfere in each other’s tasks.

The settlement with an agreement could indicate that cooperation between politics and science has not functioned well during the pandemic. Marcel Tanner strongly denies this. The epidemiologist from Basel is a co-signatory, was a member of the first Corona task force and is chairman of the a+ academy association.

This agreement on political advice in times of crisis arose from political initiatives from 2020, i.e. at the height of the pandemic. “And not because the task force and the Federal Council worked poorly together,” says Tanner.

Collaboration was not easy at the beginning of the pandemic, but that is normal in a crisis like this. Even the school closures, which were criticized by some at the time, did not pose a problem for cooperation.

Now we simply need to use the experience of the pandemic to clarify in advance the roles and responsibilities of science and politics. “This makes it clearer how task forces can be created in a crisis.” It is important to have clear rules about the roles of all parties: science, the federal government and the canton, which did not exist before.

Epidemiologist Marcel Salathé also says that mutual interference between politics and science was not a major problem during the pandemic. “The scientists didn’t do politics, and the politics didn’t do science.” However, science participated in the public debate, and the professor at ETH Lausanne found this scientific communication very productive. “In the end, science provided the facts and politics decided. This understanding of roles was always clear,” says Salathé.

Scientists were accused by opponents of interfering too much in politics. Salathé sees no conflict of objectives there. “You should not equate scientific public relations with political influence. The population has a legitimate interest in hearing directly from science.”

Science tells us what we know and don’t know, Tanner says. This would then result in the options for action and the social policy decision on which measures should be introduced.

The code also states that scientific findings alone are not sufficient to make political decisions. Other aspects such as social values ​​and interests should also be taken into account.

Prior to a crisis, scientific organizations form so-called clusters for certain crisis-relevant topics, so that experts can be recruited more quickly. “It is very important to establish a real collaboration between science and government before the crisis, as we propose in the synthesis report of NHP 78 Covid-19,” says Marcel Salathé about these clusters.

The ad hoc advisory committees created during the crisis differ from the extra-parliamentary committees, “which have different functions and are not very effective in crises,” says Marcel Tanner. In a crisis you need speed.

(aargauerzeitung.ch)