One thing Covid has really taught me is that there's a v widespread and fundmental misunderstanding of what "science" is amongst smart people - which I think helps explain why a lot of the reporting has been so problematic (esp re: vaccines).

Science is not a synonym for "factually true" it's a process to try and get closer to the truth. The "science" very rarely has a consensus view and even when nearly all scientists agree on something ("lockdowns are useful") there's huge variance in the detail of what they think.

This is obviously not helped by politicians saying they are "following the science" or people demanding they "follow the science" given the "science" isn't a set of true statements but a constantly shifting set of evidence that can be interpreted in different ways.

Media reports play into this by reporting each new piece of evidence as if its definitive without reference to the other pieces. So you see one piece saying "Report says cases rising" and another saying "PHE data shows cases falling" causing deep confusion.

On top of that there's a tendancy for the uncertainty to be stripped out of any particular report or study that's being reported on. "AZ is 10% effective against the SA strain" not "AZ is somewhere between -50% and 60% effective against the SA strain".

Not sure what the answer is but we do really need to find ways to report new information in a way that a) highlights the key caveats and b) contextualises within the existing evidence base rather than treating every new study as a thing-in-itself.

(There is some v good and nuanced reporting on it too of course. I'm generalising. But it is alarming how confused about it all most people I speak to are.)