Looking back through the last 12 months, the scientific press, lay media, and the worldwide political agenda have been dominated by the pandemic COVID-19 cause by SARS-CoV-2.

We have rarely seen an infectious organism causing so much ravage, at least in industrialized countries, with huge impact on world economy and social life.

The scientific and medical community have worked extremely hard to explore and understand COVID-19; the best examples are introduction of better treatment regimens and development of vaccines faster than ever before. However, COVID-19 has also been a pandemic ruled by the news media and politicians not always on par with scientific knowledge-based decision. Scientific “experts” have bloomed during the pandemic all eager to explain how they think the COVID-19 behaves and expands etc., experimental virologist and bacteriologists becoming epidemiologist and mathematicians and basic epidemiologist without clinical insight having an opinion on clinical decisions, politicians making decisions based on gut feelings and fear rather than clinical and scientifically guidance.

Could the world have tackled COVID-19, no one knows, yet. In hindsight, many things could have been done differently but a true and clear picture on how we as a scientific community, the media, and the politicians have dealt with the situation will not be available for some time. What is important is not to necessarily point fingers but use all the evidence and knowledge created and developed during COVID-19 to prepare the world for the next pandemic. In addition, it would suit the politicians in the Western World if they dealt with the pandemics and suffering in third world countries as they did in their own countries during COVID-19.

No one doubts COVID-19 is special, and what makes it extremely special is that it has captured the written press and the world politicians like never before. Bottom line is that the lack of preparedness of the Western Word for COVID-19 has been exposed. Future investment in research and health care should take into account that the next disease X may fulfill the last criteria—high mortality. In this special issue, we have collected manuscripts describing past pandemics’ influence on the world as well as scientific descriptions on how different countries have dealt with the pandemic. We have collected articles from epidemiologist and mathematicians describing their work on predicting and explain the spread of SARS-CoV-2. Lastly, we have a few articles on methods to detect the virus and how countries have used patient databases for diagnostic purposes.

As of writing, other infectious organisms kill even more humans every year, an example is acute pneumonia which kills close to a million children under 5, and the bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis are killing close to two million people every year.

We sincerely thank all authors of this special issue on Pandemics Past, Present, and Future for their contributions.

We hope you will enjoy the selected articles

Sincerely

Henrik Calum and Thomas Bjarnsholt

回顾过去 12 个月，科学媒体、非专业媒体和全球政治议程一直被 SARS-CoV-2 引起的 COVID-19 大流行所主导。

我们很少看到一种传染性生物造成如此大的破坏，至少在工业化国家如此，对世界经济和社会生活产生巨大影响。

科学界和医学界为探索和了解 COVID-19 付出了极大的努力；最好的例子是引入更好的治疗方案和比以往更快地开发疫苗。然而，COVID-19 也是一种由新闻媒体和政治家统治的大流行病，并不总是与基于科学知识的决策相提并论。在大流行期间，科学“专家”如雨后春笋般涌现，他们都渴望解释他们认为 COVID-19 的行为和扩展方式等，实验病毒学家和细菌学家成为流行病学家和数学家以及基础流行病学家，而没有临床洞察力对临床决策有意见，政治家做出决策基于直觉和恐惧，而不是临床和科学指导。

世界能否解决 COVID-19，尚无人知晓。事后看来，许多事情本可以以不同的方式做，但我们作为一个科学界、媒体和政治家如何处理这种情况的真实而清晰的画面将在一段时间内无法获得。重要的不一定是指责，而是利用在 COVID-19 期间创造和发展的所有证据和知识，为世界为下一次大流行做好准备。此外，如果西方世界的政治家像在 COVID-19 期间在自己的国家那样处理第三世界国家的流行病和苦难，这将适合他们。

没有人怀疑 COVID-19 的特殊性，它的特殊之处在于它以前所未有的方式吸引了书面媒体和世界政治家。最重要的是，西方对 COVID-19 准备不足的问题已经暴露出来。未来对研究和医疗保健的投资应该考虑到下一种疾病 X 可能满足最后一个标准——高死亡率。在本期特刊中，我们收集了描述过去流行病对世界影响的手稿，以及关于不同国家如何应对大流行病的科学描述。我们收集了流行病学家和数学家的文章，描述了他们在预测和解释 SARS-CoV-2 传播方面的工作。最后，

在撰写本文时，其他传染性生物每年杀死更多人，例如急性肺炎导致近 100 万 5 岁以下儿童死亡，结核分枝杆菌每年杀死近 200 万人。

我们衷心感谢本期大流行病过去、现在和未来特刊的所有作者所做的贡献。

我们希望您会喜欢所选的文章

真挚地

Henrik Calum 和 Thomas Bjarnsholt