Giant leaps for mankind

Leena Jukka
12.05.2021

During the summer 2021, all willing Finns will have received their first dose of the corona vaccine – only a year and a half since the news of a new respiratory virus having been found in China broke, in December 2019. Vaccination coverage rates between states is roughly the same, although some variation exists. For mankind this is a giant leap in time, as it normally takes 10-15 years to get a vaccine out on the market.

Researchers’ access to previous knowledge has played a key role in the fast development of the corona vaccine. Despite the fact, that this particular virus had not previously been researched, researchers could access databases with information about different viruses, diseases, the ways in which these spread and how they ought to be treated. In the current pandemic, findings from previous research stored in various databases has functioned as a unique steppingstone for vaccine development. Not only has it been foundational for vaccine development, but also for many other international research projects that investigate the economic, social, and public health effects of the pandemic.

There are more than 2000 key data or information resources globally, where researchers store research data. These scientifically derived materials have been and can be utilised in the search for answers to different research questions. Finnish researchers are familiar with databases such as the Finnish Social Sciences Data Archive, the Language Bank of Finland and Fairdata IDA. Beside these, many research centres and universities have their own databases. The main purpose of databases is to promote research and innovation within a society by providing material for replication of old studies or to be used in new ones. Data and information resources have previously not been studied from a national security of supply perspective, a gap which the IRWIN research project intends to fill.

Vast amounts of electronic data has been gathered into databases, which modern information technology allows to easily be processed and shared. Electronic data archives are however historically speaking a rather new way of storing and sharing knowledge. So called memory organisations, such as archives, libraries and museums play a much more crucial role for a society’s collective memory. The user interface between a person and an object in a memory organisation remains much simpler and more reliable than the interface between a person and the information pooled in databases, despite continuous strides within digitisation and user-friendliness. Interestingly, for example our knowledge about assembly restrictions, social distancing and rigorous hand-hygiene slowing down the spread of a pandemic date back to articles from a hundred years ago. We find ourselves societally in a very similar situation now as during the last pandemic - the Spanish flu in 1918-1919.  The Spanish flu could not be overcome with vaccines, and alternative ways to overcome the pandemic had to be invented.

Modern societies’ preparedness to overcome unexpected events like the covid-pandemic largely rests on our knowledge of similar events in the past. Such knowledge can be replicated, combined, tested, and further developed to adapt to each new crisis ahead. The better we take care of our accumulated knowledge and collective shared memory, the faster we will be able to react to future crises with fact-based policies and effective treatments.

 Leena Jukka, Researcher, University of Eastern Finland

Lähteet:

1 Our world in data, https://ourworldindata.org

2 Registry of research data repositories, re3data.org, https://www.re3data.org

3 Nelson, Bryn – Kaminsky, David, History repeated: Applying lessons from the 1918 flu pandemic. Cancer Cytopathology, 129(2), 2021, s. 97–98. https://doi.org/10.1002/cncy.22408