Carl Zimmer: evaluation

Transcript context

…At least there, the church is an opponent, so you might be persecuted. It’s easier for me to understand that mistake, but even that one broke through. It did break through, yes. I think part of the issue is the structure of science. When I’m telling you this story about this British doctor who’s flying kites trying to catch pollen grains, it’s just one guy. It’s just one person who’s really miserable with hay fever, who’s trying to understand it for himself. Science really works by numbers. You actually have to study lots and lots and lots of people, and then, if you’re going to try to tie people’s symptoms to the environment in some way, well you’re actually going to have to track them over months, years, and so on, because the environment is changing all the time. Everybody who suffers from hay fever will tell you, “Well, I don’t know. For some reason, this spring it’s not so bad. I don’t know why.” That doesn’t mean they don’t have hay fever. It just means that the environment that’s causing the hay fever is changing a lot. So, there are some basic challenges to really appreciating how what we’re breathing in is affecting us. Why was it so hard, at least at first, for the WHO and CDC to talk about and admit the airborne transmission of COVID-19? That, to me, also seems inexplicable.…

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