On the first Saturday of this month, Professor Iain Buchan was subject to online death threats.
He was one of the leading figures on a major pilot in Liverpool that was aiming to show how large-scale events could once again take place safely as the country emerges from the coronavirus pandemic.
The previous day had seen thousands of clubbers pack into the Circus rave event in the city's north docks, with a second similar event set to take place on the Saturday.
A business conference had already been held in Liverpool in the week and on the Sunday evening, 3,000 music lovers would head to Sefton Park to watch Stockport band Blossoms belting out their set.
The events in Liverpool were a huge moment for the country - videos of young people jumping around, dancing and having the time of their lives flooded the internet and gave people hope that a more normal time was returning.
But obviously not everyone agreed with the tests being carried out - and wanted to let Professor Buchan know.
Receive newsletters with the latest news, sport and what's on updates from the Liverpool ECHO by signing up here
He said: "You keep faith that you are doing the right thing, on Easter Saturday I had death threats about the events testing.
"But you have to rise above that if you know you are doing the right thing and you have a good team around you, you just get on with it - but it has been prickly at times."
Professor Buchan is Executive Dean of the Institute of Population Health at the University of Liverpool. He was part of a broad team of academics, public health officials and others involved in organising the pilot events and crucially, analysing and providing the data from them.
And as we found out this week, that data was hugely encouraging.
The team found that the trial events held across the city did not cause any detectable spread of the virus, with Liverpool's overall infection rate actually falling in the weeks since the events.
The process saw five people unable to attend after testing positive, four being identified as possibly having the virus at an event and seven having the virus four to seven days after they attended.
Of those who tested positive afterwards, two people had been to the gig at Sefton Park and nine had attended the club events.
While between 25% and 43% of those attending returned PCR tests after the event, the operation crucially saw every Covid-19 test result for the 2.6m population of Cheshire and Merseyside examined before and after the events, with 96% of tickets linked to test results.
Professor Buchan said this innovative approach was only made possible because of the remarkable network of scientists, academics, public health officials and others in the city.
He said: "Event organisers, public health teams, university folk, everyone worked together and delivered evidence that is really needed to write a practical guide of how to build a safety net around events - and Liverpool is the only place in the country that has managed to do that.
"That's why international policy makers have been in touch with us, because Liverpool just gets on with it.
"We've probably got the world's most integrated data now across the city's NHS, public health and local government - it's all carefully handled and respects people's privacy, but it is a huge network and a huge amount of people working towards a single point of truth."
That network was established long before the recent pilot events, because Liverpool has been at the forefront of pioneering work since early on in the pandemic.
When a cluster of cases of the virus was traced back to the Princes Park area of the the city last summer, Liverpool was one of the first areas to employ a community-led contact tracing approach.
Influential community figures, door knocking and various other localised techniques were used in an approach that saw the outbreak quickly flattened.
Matt Ashton had only become Liverpool's new Public Health Director shortly before Covid-19 arrived and he says the work done in Princes Park was an important early example of how crucial it is to bring the public with you.
He said: "What we showed in Princes Park was an important platform of how you put communities at the very heart of any approach to public health.
"It is so important that we are doing things with communities - not doing things to them."
That idea of community buy-in would be even more essential a few months later when Liverpool became the first place in the country to trial a pilot of city-wide coronavirus testing.
An enormous undertaking, those involved with the pilot knew it would only work if the people of the city got on board.
Mr Ashton said: "You're not going to get everyone on board, people are different - but if you can bring the majority of people with you then that puts you in a solid position.
"When you look at mass testing, Liverpool absolutely smashed it - we took 20% of infections out of the city, nowhere else did that."
He added: "I am very, very proud of everything this city has achieved in the most difficult of circumstances.
"The most beautiful thing is how everyone worked together to achieve it, the response from everyone - and most importantly from the public - has been phenomenal."
What makes Liverpool's pioneering success in these areas all the more impressive - and important - is the fact that the city has faced such a difficult time at the hands of the virus.
High levels of deprivation, crowded housing and a huge number of people in public facing service roles all contributed to soaring virus numbers and sadly a very high death toll.
Mr Ashton said: "Liverpool as a city has big challenges and the pandemic made them a lot worse.
"So as a city we had to work twice as hard as other areas to try and protect people. I'm so proud of how everyone has pulled together."
Professor Buchan said: "None of us will ever forget what has happened. The risks were very high, a background of many years of a lack of investment, inequality, deprivation - all the risk factors to make health outcomes worse, amplifying the effects of a pandemic.
"The cards were stacked against Liverpool, but the way the city and the wider region have come together, mucked in and produced the actions needed is incredible.
"I think people will look back and say Liverpool responded to those incredibly difficult circumstances and innovated its way into mitigating those risks, much more than many other places - and that was through teamwork at all levels, a sense of community spirit, civic pride and people pulling together."
He added: "But as a city Liverpool begs forgiveness rather than permission and that sometimes leaves you holding the high voltage cables - but at all times in my experience of the last year, people have done the right thing - when it would have been a dis-benefit to wait a long time for permission to do something.
"There are very few places in the world that could have moved as quickly on this stuff as Liverpool, we have shown world leadership."
