On the evening of January 24, 2020 I called my partners in crime, Jacky Suen and Gianluigi Li Bassi with an idea…

At the time, we had a young student from Wuhan, China working in our labs in Brisbane, Australia. He had mentioned that some of his colleagues back home had witnessed a few cases of a virus that, while presenting like pneumonia or influenza, wasn’t responding to any of the traditional treatments. I offered a little advice, a few pretty vague suggestions, and to be honest, didn’t think too much more about it.

Then the phone started ringing. And it didn't stop…

I was Chair of the Asia Pacific Extracorporeal Life Support Organization (APELSO) - perhaps an odd position for a Scotsman to hold, but one that I will forever be grateful for. In this role, I had had the great fortune to meet many dedicated clinicians from across the Asia-Pacific region and camaraderie had grown quickly. Through many late night calls, frantic WhatsApp messages, and distressing emails, it soon became apparent that what our student had reported was getting bigger and bigger. And we knew we had to do something to help and do it fast.

The initial idea was maybe to help by collecting some data, have a little look-see, a nice little study, perhaps a few papers… how naïve I was.

So after the call with Gianluigi and Jacky, we drafted a protocol to collect data about “this thing in Wuhan” and how it was affecting patients. What became apparent very quickly was that this disease was different to anything we’d ever seen, and that because we were all so isolated, no one really knew what was going on. We didn’t have time to try and solve this, data was going to be the only thing that could fill in the blanks.

Inspired by the great Scotsman and philosopher, Winston Churchill, we decided to “Never waste a good crisis”. We quickly set up the infrastructure to collect data, we assembled a stats team to help decipher it, and a Steering Committee to help write about it. Still at this stage I thought we’d be working with five, six countries.. max.

As news of the Consortium spread, more and more groups joined our weekly drop in calls. We had to upgrade our Zoom subscription over and over again to allow more people to join the call. Organically, a global community was growing in our living rooms and studies, creating a space where clinicians would feel safe and were actively encouraged to ask questions and seek advice. These calls became cathartic for many as they offered the opportunity for tired doctors and nurses to laugh, cry, grieve and recover in the midst of one of the greatest emergencies of our generation. We received a message from a Consortium member in those early days that summed this up perfectly - these meetings were the only time each week his team could come together and just stop.

Working tirelessly in the background, supporting this project from the onset, has been Aridhia DRE. “The Davids”, David Allan, General Counsel, and David Sibblad OBE FRSE, Chief Executive Officer, believed in us and understood the “need” for this from the start. Thank you to you and your team for sticking with us.

There are many, many people to thank, among them, our Steering Committee, led by the inimitable Professor Robert Bartlett; COVID Critical Co-Founders Associate Professor Gianluigi Li Bassi and Dr Jacky Suen, Project Managers and support staff from the Critical Care Research Group; our financial backers including The Prince Charles Hospital Foundation, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Minderoo; supporters and advisors from all ELSO Chapters, the World Health Organization, University of Oxford and ISARIC, but above all I thank you - each and every member of the Consortium. From the most senior department directors to the most junior research assistants, this project demanded time, passion and empathy from you at a time when all were in scarce supply.

The 30-odd publications are great, and there are more to come, but what you should be extremely proud of and humbled by is the enduring impact this group and your research will have globally. This will benefit generations of patients and their caregivers for many, many years to come.

While this is not ‘the end’ for this community, I would like to leave you here with a quote bestowed upon me by Dr John McCarthy and penned by Ralph Waldo Emerson:

“To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition.
To know that one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.”

I commend each and everyone of you for building what none of us could have done alone - you have all made this world a bit better.

Thank you,
John Fraser