Covid pandemic has demonstrated the life-saving importance of science – Scotsman comment

In these days of conspiracy theorists, populist politicians who disdain “experts”, and nonsense about “alternative truths”, it is good to see the people who know what they are talking about demonstrating just how much we need them.

Professor Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, receives the Oxford University/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine from nurse Sam Foster at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford (Picture: Steve Parsons/PA)

When the Covid pandemic hit, scientists put their minds to the task and developed effective vaccines in double-quick time.

And, after new genetic variants of the virus that could make those vaccines less potent appeared, they are now working to make new ones that will protect us just as well.

Professor Andrew Pollard, of the Oxford Vaccine Group, made something incredibly complicated sound simple: the “actual work on designing a new vaccine is very, very quick because it’s essentially just switching out the genetic sequence for the spike protein”. The updated vaccine should be available this autumn.

A new study has found a first dose of the existing Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine offers protection of 76 per cent for up to three months, and may cut transmission of the virus by 62 per cent.

And that means lives that would otherwise have been lost are now being saved.

It is scientists who have built the modern world, who have taken us to the Moon, who have found ways to beat cancer and achieved a myriad of wonders that once would have been regarded as magic.

And how have they done this? By observing the natural world, developing theories to explain what they see and then doing their best to disprove them – in stark contrast to conspiracy theorists who see only what they want to see and bend the facts to fit their views while arrogantly insisting they are right.

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