What Now? Epidemiology in the Wake of a Pandemic

Edwards, Jessie K; Lessler, Justin

The COVID-19 pandemic and the coming transition to a post-pandemic world where COVID-19 will likely remain as an incident disease present a host of challenges and opportunities in epidemiologic research. The scale and universality of this disruption to life and health provide unique opportunities to study phenomena, and health challenges, in all branches of epidemiology, from the obvious infectious disease and social consequences, to less clear impacts on chronic disease and cancer. If we are to both take advantage of the largest natural experiment of our lifetimes, and provide evidence to inform the numerous public health and clinical decisions being made every day, we must act quickly to ask critical questions and develop new methods to answer them. In doing so we should build on each of our strengths and expertise, and try to provide new insights rather than becoming yet another voice commenting on the same set of questions with limited evidence.