It's now circa 5 years since the Covid19 pandemic. Laura Spinney (science journalist) opines that the conspiracy 'theory' that "it's not the virus that ruined our lives but the response", now seems to becoming 'turbocharged' by predictable political circles. Science spokespeople, on both sides of the pond, have received repeated death threats. Spinney notes that scientists didn't get everything right in the pandemic. As she says, you wouldn't expect a perfect response in such a rapidly changing emergency, surrounding an unknown virus. Science deals in probabilities rather than absolutes. In the case of Covid19, medics and scientists had to essentially 'learn on the job'. Real progress was made in terms of vaccine production, as well as understanding how the virus is propagated (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/09/covid-five-years-right-narrative-outbreak). There's certainly room for improvement in any dialogue between individuals, society and government. Losing faith in science would, however, simply remove our ability to effectively respond to the next pandemic.
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