Regulating COVID-19: what lessons can be learned from the handling of the 2009 swine flu pandemic by the EU and the WHO?

Given the unprecedented response of governments across the world to COVID-19, what lessons can be learned from the last pandemic to hit the world in 2009? Esther Versluis explains that a notable problem with the WHO’s response to the swine flu pandemic was that it downplayed the uncertain nature of information during the outbreak, prompting criticism of its advice. However, while the WHO appears to have learned from this mistake with COVID-19, we may well be in a worse position overall, with populism prompting even less trust in science and expertise, and fake news flourishing on social media.