Almost every expert in the UK knew how the virus was going to behave.

For some reason, the Prime Minister, surrounded by dozens of advisers, did not seem to have known what was going to happen.

To be fair to Mr. Johnson, he was not the only one who did not know.

Most medical professionals, who were supposed to be the experts, did not know either.

They failed to detect the virus early.

They were completely unprepared for a crisis of such magnitude even though the warning bell of a virus outbreak has been sounding for years.

They had no clue about the best therapy to use for treatment.

They merely made stuff up as they went along, which resulted in tens of thousands of needless deaths.

To be fair to medical professionals they honestly did not know what to do.

This brings us to a key question of this article, why didn’t the medical professionals know what to do?

MEDICINE IS A MYSTERY, NOT A PUZZLE

In his book Reshaping National Intelligence for an Age of Information, Gregory Treverton introduced the puzzle vs. mystery framework.

According to Mr. Treverton, a puzzle is a problem with a missing piece, i.e. information.

When there is a piece of missing information, such as the question, “Where has Osama Bin Laden been hiding?” that is a puzzle to solve.

A mystery, on the other hand, is a problem that is not necessarily solved by additional information. Such additional information only thickens the cloud of misinformation.

When a patient enters a surgeon’s clinic feeling unwell with unusual symptoms, it is a mystery.

The coronavirus is a mystery.

In reality, most of the diseases the medical profession face these days are a mystery.

The tools for medical diagnosis have advanced far beyond our imagination.

Big problem.

The majority of medical professionals still lack the knowledge and ability to effectively use those tools.

This is the reason medicine remains a mystery.

THE CASE FOR MODERNISING MEDICAL EDUCATION

If a pilot from the 50s or even the 1990s was to enter a modern aircraft, he would be amazed at the level of sophistication of the aircraft.

He would have no clue how to operate it.

Aviation has advanced beyond recognition, so is the training of pilots and aviation staff.

When a new aircraft is built, the pilots, engineers, and the entire crew are retrained to operate the new aircraft.

Like aviation, many industries are constantly updating their training to take into account new information, new processes, and new methods.

Except medicine.

The current medical curriculum and structure of medical training have been in existence since the last century.

The syllabus and structure were developed to serve different medical requirements for a different time.

The types of disease, the level of advancement, and patient’s access to information have evolved and are completely different from the ones the current medical education architecture was designed to tackle.

When the current medical education structure was designed, medicine was trying to solve puzzles.

The problem modern medicine faces is not the lack of information, but too much of it.

21st-century medical training needs to be focused on the analysis and interpretation of data.

It is this inability of medical professionals to adequately analyse information (or solving mysteries) that was the reason for over two million coronavirus deaths.

Medical professionals are woefully ill-equipped to address the demands of 21st-century medical requirements.

The sooner medical institutions realises this, the better it would be for all of us.