Blanket standards applied in research design, particularly those applied traditionally in a "peace time" setting are worth being carefully examined for their relevance now in this pandemic "war time" setting so that we don't hog-tie ourselves with irrelevant and unhelpful regulations. At the same time, we don't want the 'wild wacky west'. Everyone is under pressure in research to move quickly, but we need to ensure that if we change standards we do so intelligently so that the choices we make for more pragmatic design are perfect. The pandemic has shown how as experts we are so narrow minded. It is sad how little we really listen to each other. On a large scale COVID-19 has really shown up that many of us in medicine have become super-specialised, and it is very hard for us to think across different domains and to think with any range. codachange.org/podcasts