Pandemics, vulnerability and prevention: time to fundamentally reassess how we value and communicate risk?

Pandemics have long been recognised on the UK’s National Risk Register as both the likeliest and most severe of threats. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as obesity, heart failure and mental ill-health was already crippling our healthcare services and our economy. The quality of the places in which we live and to which we have access, most especially in deprived populations, compound that vulnerability significantly. When vulnerable, as we are now, we are forced to acknowledge what has weakened us, and to fundamentally reassess our actions and priorities