TWiV

Over the past few months, I've been contacted a few times by one of our members sending information about Covid from the popular podcast TWiV - This Week in Virology. The podcast is hosted by Dr Vincent Racaniello with a number of co-hosts. Dr Racaniello has spent 40 years in virus research at Columbia University.

Recently, Dr Racaniello gave a lecture at ETH Zurich - a public research university in Switzerland. The talk is titled “An inordinate fondness for viruses”, which is a call back to JBS Haldane's quip about the idea of a creator and that there are a greater number of species of beetle than any other group living animals.

The talk is available on YouTube and is well worth watching. (It's around an hour long, and starts at about 9 minutes in.)

The talk centres around public communication of science by scientists, and covers some of the misconceptions around Covid that have made their way into the public understanding, or lack thereof..

Dr Rananiello does make some interesting claims. One prominent one is that the variants of the Covid virus don't have differences in transmissibility - at least, the claim is that there's no evidence that they do. At the time of emergence of the Delta variant it was suggested by various people in the media that it was more transmissible. Dr Racanciello's stance is that the differences were due to “host behaviour” - i.e. how people behaved, rather than something intrinsic in the variant, and that variants are more “fit” from an evolutionary standpoint and therefore become dominant, replacing previous less fit variants. One question I would ask is whether fitness includes variations in transmissibility. But, I'm not a virologist! (However, from brief discussions I've had with a couple of local scientists, it would appear that this opinion on transmissibility is a bit of an outlier.)

Another misconception is around whether the protection from the Covid vaccine is waning. This has, in the minds of the public, communicated that the vaccine is somehow defective. It is not - the point is made that even the very first vaccine is effective against all variants. The point is that all vaccines prevent serious illness and disease - they don't prevent infection. But, in the public's mind, there's the idea, strongly promoted by the anti-vaxxer crowd, that the Covid vaccine isn't very protective, that the benefits don't outweigh the risks.

Covid tests were also discussed. The PCR test and the more recent Rapid Antigen Tests detect Covid infection but don't test infectivity. He makes the point that detecting infection doesn't necessarily translate into some being infectious. And, in fact, being vaccinated means that you'll shed less virus, and for a shorter period of time than if you weren't vaccinated. However, in fairness, he does mention that infectivity tests are difficult - and we have to use the technology that's available to us at the time.

He talks about the fact that Covid is here to stay and has to be managed. The expectation in the minds of the public that there will be endless boosters for everybody is probably misplaced. Instead, boosters should be reserved for those in particular groups that require more of an immunity boost.

Finally, he talks about the efficacy of mask wearing and explains that masks work by trapping the respiratory particles that contain the virus. From my interpretation of this, it means that masks are much more effective at preventing escape of the virus from an infected person than to prevent infection by breathing in the virus. I'm sure that there's some benefit to both mechanisms. The big takeaway is that masks work, but he then takes a somewhat disingenuous shot at “hygiene theatre” from the early days of the pandemic, in being very careful about touching surfaces and potentially contracting Covid that way. I think, at that stage, we still didn't know all about Covid's transmission mechanisms, so we were taking a precautionary approach.

The talk is about science communication, and that the public should get their science from scientists - that it is scientists' responsibility to communicate their scientific findings to the public.

I think there's room for both scientists and science communicators. There are always nuances, and not all scientists are natural communicators. Science communication is an important skill, not the least being able to judge when something needs to be simplified so as to get the salient points across.

Additionally, the danger of listening to any single scientist is that there are always scientific disagreements, and it's very easy to attach oneself to an outlier whose opinions happen to resonate with your biases.

As we always say, trust science, not scientists.