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I want to tell you a little story about why I’m so very passionate about scientific literacy (thread)
When I was 11, my mum’s partner died of cancer. Before he died he’d been treated for many years at The Christie, Manchester’s world-leading cancer hospital.
I was terrified of cancer, this mysterious disease that made my mum so sad. For years before and after Roy died I would hold my breath if we even drove past a sign for The Christie, scared that somehow my proximity to cancer being just down there meant that it would ‘get me’.
I remember going past the actual hospital building on the bus, which was then only half of the size it is today, inconsolable in terror that I might catch cancer because of it. I lay awake at night, paralysed by fear based on a bit of what I knew, but mostly what I didn’t.
I went on, much later, to work at a cancer charity for five years, based in a research building on the actual Christie site and helping to tell stories based on their ground-breaking work ... just in case my colleagues are starting to question my current knowledge 
Anyway, I have had this experience in my mind during the pandemic. I talk to my kids about COVID. They understand that the virus is serious, but they also know what they can do to reduce their risk of catching it.
They know about research, about how trials of treatments work and about the vaccine. They understand that the virus made me very poorly, but that I got better. They know that not everyone has been so lucky, and some of the reasons why.
They are sometimes scared of the virus, aren’t we all, but they are scared because of what they know rather than what they don’t, and from there I can provide reassurance, and hope. We talk most days about the clever people who are trying to end the pandemic.
When I don’t know the answers we look them up together. So please, talk to your kids about science, talk to your family about science, help them to understand and make sense of as much of it as possible. Knowledge trumps fear. Eleven year old me says so anyway.
Roy died of bladder cancer, and my friend and excellent science communicator @oh_henry has written a really brilliant book on this very topic, out TODAY! I know his work will help me and others build their understanding of the disease. You can order it now https://www.waterstones.com/book/cross-everything/henry-scowcroft/9781472975126
