But science — especially New science — often faced with obstacles. At the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, scientists discovered HIV, virus which causes disease. “There are people here in the United States, around the world, who have said, ‘Well, I know they’ve identified this virus, and they say it causes AIDS, but I don’t believe it. is true,'” Brandt.
“Not surprising,” he continued. “During pandemics, there are always these kinds of debates. But very quickly everyone was convinced. “
While it may feel like Covid-19 has plagued us forever, in reality, it took scientists just two years to understand the disease and educate the public about it. Jamieson’s team at the Annenberg Center for Public Policy has surveying on scientific knowledge throughout the pandemic. They asked participants about their thoughts on the effectiveness of vaccines, masks, and other behaviors. And, despite the maelstrom of active false beliefs against Jamieson finds that people are in fact learning. In two surveys of approximately 800 random Americans conducted in July and November 2020, the majority of respondents said they accept that wearing a mask helps prevent the spread of respiratory illness. That number increased from 79 to 85% over a five-month period. In a separate survey from March and April this year, 75 percent says it is safer to get the Covid-19 vaccine than to get the virus. “Most people get the answer right,” says Jamieson. “And they didn’t have any of those answers pre-Covid because these answers are Covid-specific.”
However, that is not 100 percent. But for Jamieson, it’s a surprising number worth celebrating. “People are not just accepting new vaccines,” she said. “If they do, we will have a higher chance of absorbing the HPV vaccine. We will have a higher ability to absorb the flu vaccine. It’s a sign that they’ve learned something.”
Participants in Jamieson’s study who were hesitant about vaccines showed that they also learned something new about public health. The 2021 survey comes after the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines received emergency use authorization from the FDA, but before the Pfizer vaccine received full approval. “People tell us, ‘It hasn’t been authorized yet. No, wait a minute! I do not mean that. It did not work acceptance Jamieson said. “Now they know something about the approval process and the authorization process.”
Exposure to this new term led Sneller to become hooked on the linguistics project. “One thing that surprised me was the understanding of the science, especially among our teenage participants, about things like mRNA vaccines,” says Sneller. In their weekly audio diaries, the participants talked about their daily lives and some teenagers talked about mRNA vaccines and How are they different from other formulas?. It’s cutting-edge science, not something that has long been part of school curricula. “That happened directly due to the pandemic,” Sneller said.
Young children are also learning more about health sciences. Early in the pandemic, researchers surveyed children aged 7 to 12 from the UK, Sweden, Brazil, Spain, Canada and Australia. The team created an online survey to ask children and their parents what they know about the outbreak — and what they want to know. Lucy Bray, a pediatric nurse and professor of child health insights at Edge Hill University in the UK who led the study, said: ‘Really very early on, the kids were saying, ‘ When will there be a vaccine?’ The children asked why the pandemic started. They asked if their family was safe. “The questions are really reasonable, quite informative,” she said.
