HEALTH & MEDICINE

Michael Rosen, children’s author and poet, was in an induced coma with coronavirus

2021 can’t be worse than 2020. I’m optimistic that my big toenails lost to Covid will be fully grown and that on the anniversary of my coming out of the induced coma, I’ll be able to compare my immobile weakened state then with where I have got to. I’m also optimistic that the vaccines and discovery of successful medications will reduce Covid-19 to a manageable illness, that the NHS will flourish and that, once we have put the pandemic behind us, there’ll be an evaluation of why the UK was not as good at handling it as some other countries.

Author and former doctor Adam Kay predicts a renewed respect for science

I’m looking forward to the retirement of the armchair epidemiology community. Despite being a qualified doctor, I don’t have anything like the expertise to make the pronouncements on Covid from conspiracist uncles on Facebook. I’m looking forward to seeing the amazing work of scientists, clinicians and trial participants in getting the country back to normal and looking in the back mirror at the anti-vax community. Kay’s Anatomy: A Complete (and Completely Disgusting) Guide to the Human Body (Puffin) is out now in hardback, ebook and audio

Activist Katie Piper is happy her life’s work will finally see fruition

My charity the Katie Piper Foundation opened the UK’s first burns and scar rehabilitation centre at St Helens in Merseyside in January 2019 and, next year, I’m looking forward to safely visiting and mentoring patients and staff and getting involved in the community, which hasn’t been able to happen yet. Making that centre happen has been a huge part of my life, and took 11 years. In-person connection is so important for healing and recovery when you’ve had a life-changing incident, like a lot of burns survivors have.