Coronavirus can only be beaten if groups such as Sage are transparent and accountable | Richard Coker

The reaction to the 1976 swine flu outbreak in the US is a prime example of the dangers of scientific groupthink

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Earlier this month in the Guardian, the Lancet editor, Richard Horton, suggested that "coronavirus is the greatest global science policy failure in a generation". He recalled the many experts who have been predicting such a pandemic, some for decades, and argued that in the UK, "the experts - scientists who have modelled and simulated our possible futures - made assumptions that turned out to be mistaken." If he is right, and I think he is, then we should ask, why?

I've been researching the control of infectious diseases for 30 years, and I believe that an earlier debacle - one perhaps forgotten by many - offers insights. In 1976, fearful that an outbreak of swine influenza at Fort Dix army camp in New Jersey was the centre of an influenza pandemic on a scale potentially similar to the 1918 Spanish flu, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advised President Gerald Ford of the urgent need for a mass immunisation programme.