3 ms·

In the latest episode of This Week in Virology[1] five virologists discuss this issue. Some points they made: "It's a variant. It's not a strain. A strain i

In the latest episode of This Week in Virology[1] five virologists discuss this issue. Some points they made: "It's a variant. It's not a strain. A strain is a virus with a new biological property. There have been no new properties ascribed to this isolate other than sequence differences, which is not enough to make a strain.. nor have we seen any other new strains of SARS-CoV-2 that anybody's demonstrated to be biologically different. None. It hasn't happened yet. I'm not saying it couldn't but it hasn't." "Nobody's done any experiments to determine the effects of these changes on any property of the virus. Yet when a journalist calls up a scientist and say "What do you think?" and the scientist says "These could have an effect on virulence or transmission or antibody neutralization," somehow that gets translated in to "It's making the virus more virulent" and that's what's circulated and a dozen people this week said to me "What do you think about these mutations in the UK that make the virus more virulent, more transmissible, more resistant to neutralization by antibodies?" None of that has been shown, folks! It's speculation. There's no paper on any of this." [1] - Starting at about 54 minutes in to episode 696: https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-696/ https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-696/

Guthur 6y ago
I hope we look back critically at mainstream media role in all aspects of covid analyse and reactions. Commercial news media is so far from critical analysis that it's dangerous that we allow it anywhere near our decision making processes.
Exmoor 6y ago
>Yet when a journalist calls up a scientist and say "What do you think?" and the scientist says "These could have an effect on virulence or transmission or antibody neutralization," somehow that gets translated in to "It's making the virus more virulent" This has been an incredibly large issue for almost a year now and it's ridiculous. Journalists not understanding the way scientists speak was vaguely understandable ten months ago, but after a year straight of science being the number one news maker in the world it's obvious that the media is just use it as an excuse to scare-monger and increase their clicks. Literally every day in the last few weeks I've had to explain to someone that vaccines will almost certainly have a profound impact on if people can transmit the virus because the news articles keep taking the "We don't have data yet on how it impacts transmission" and reporting that as the worst case scenario, when in all likelihood it will profoundly diminish people's ability to transmit the virus.
- m-ee 6y ago
  They go on to say that in this case it's probably the opposite, scientists calling up journalists. Which seems relevant given the OP in this thread linking to a scientist making a number of statements based on unproven hypotheses.
  - deet 6y ago
    Seems as though it would go both ways. Scientists have career-advancing reasons to have their opinions and research--whether confirmed by evidence and peer reviewed or not--distributed by the media. And the media has incentive to amplify concerning or controversial information. What's tragic is that these hypotheses or conjectures are being used to make public policy decisions that affect millions or billions of people. And it seems that public servants and officials lack the scientific aptitude or inclination to truly understand how solid the data and conclusions are before acting on them. Or, perhaps more cynically, the officials know the conjecture is unverified but--being accountable to a public who will likely not read beyond the headlines and who will believe any article that starts with "Scientists find ..."--are forced to take action purely to hold the appearance of doing something. Regardless of the directionality, I agree with the parent that 2020 is demonstrating serious flaws in the relationships between the scientific community, journalism, public policy makers, and the public.
    - m-ee 6y ago
      Yes I agree completely. The recent TWiV has some great discussion on this between this new variant and that ridiculous "sars-cov-2 is reverse transcribing into the human genome" preprint. The scientific publication process and science journalism has always been somewhat broken it just rarely had serious consequences, now it's another broken system the pandemic is shining a light on. I think the media has a real problem with reporting uncertainty. What's interesting is that there was a collective effort not to jump to conclusions and be careful when reporting on the presidential election. They showed they're capable of restraint when they think it's warranted, but with the pandemic they can't help but reach for the "Because of [unproven report] [consequence] is very likely" formula.
    - 6y ago

Guthur 6y ago

I hope we look back critically at mainstream media role in all aspects of covid analyse and reactions. Commercial news media is so far from critical analysis that it's dangerous that we allow it anywhere near our decision making processes.

Exmoor 6y ago

>Yet when a journalist calls up a scientist and say "What do you think?" and the scientist says "These could have an effect on virulence or transmission or antibody neutralization," somehow that gets translated in to "It's making the virus more virulent" This has been an incredibly large issue for almost a year now and it's ridiculous. Journalists not understanding the way scientists speak was vaguely understandable ten months ago, but after a year straight of science being the number one news maker in the world it's obvious that the media is just use it as an excuse to scare-monger and increase their clicks. Literally every day in the last few weeks I've had to explain to someone that vaccines will almost certainly have a profound impact on if people can transmit the virus because the news articles keep taking the "We don't have data yet on how it impacts transmission" and reporting that as the worst case scenario, when in all likelihood it will profoundly diminish people's ability to transmit the virus.

m-ee 6y ago
They go on to say that in this case it's probably the opposite, scientists calling up journalists. Which seems relevant given the OP in this thread linking to a scientist making a number of statements based on unproven hypotheses.
- deet 6y ago
  Seems as though it would go both ways. Scientists have career-advancing reasons to have their opinions and research--whether confirmed by evidence and peer reviewed or not--distributed by the media. And the media has incentive to amplify concerning or controversial information. What's tragic is that these hypotheses or conjectures are being used to make public policy decisions that affect millions or billions of people. And it seems that public servants and officials lack the scientific aptitude or inclination to truly understand how solid the data and conclusions are before acting on them. Or, perhaps more cynically, the officials know the conjecture is unverified but--being accountable to a public who will likely not read beyond the headlines and who will believe any article that starts with "Scientists find ..."--are forced to take action purely to hold the appearance of doing something. Regardless of the directionality, I agree with the parent that 2020 is demonstrating serious flaws in the relationships between the scientific community, journalism, public policy makers, and the public.
  - m-ee 6y ago
    Yes I agree completely. The recent TWiV has some great discussion on this between this new variant and that ridiculous "sars-cov-2 is reverse transcribing into the human genome" preprint. The scientific publication process and science journalism has always been somewhat broken it just rarely had serious consequences, now it's another broken system the pandemic is shining a light on. I think the media has a real problem with reporting uncertainty. What's interesting is that there was a collective effort not to jump to conclusions and be careful when reporting on the presidential election. They showed they're capable of restraint when they think it's warranted, but with the pandemic they can't help but reach for the "Because of [unproven report] [consequence] is very likely" formula.
  - 6y ago