Technology adoption is often described by the “hype cycle,” which starts with a rapid rise toward the “peak of inflated expectations,” plummets to the “trough of disillusionment,” and then rises gradually along the “slope of enlightenment” before ultimately arriving at the “plateau of productivity” — when we finally figure out how to use the technology effectively. That cycle seems as apt a description as any for the biomedical science around COVID.
When the virus first arrived on our shores, there seemed to be a rush of hope, a sense that, as Matt Damon’s marooned astronaut phrased it in The Martian, we were prepared to “science the sh** out of this.” Epidemiologists, data scientists, academic researchers, big drug companies, and scrappy startups — everyone, it seemed, turned their attention to this emerging problem. You could be forgiven for assuming that scientists had the problem in their sights and were well on the way to victory.
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