OPINION:Â Having opinions is a glorious thing. Having them without bearing the responsibility for delivering upon those opinions, or formulating them in a broader context, is even better.
I’m well aware that, when it comes to a centralized response to the current Covid pandemic, that those making policies are confronted with a highly dynamic environment, incomplete information, and the reality that this is a nuanced topic.
At every turn, these policymakers are confronted by situations that force them to choose between two options, neither of which are particularly palatable. To mandate vaccinations widely and, in doing so, lessen peoples’ sense of self-determination and a right of personal choice or to bend to the pressures of personal will and run the risk of having vaccination rates that are so low that they’re ineffective to provide sufficient cover?
Or the choice between locking down parts of the country to lessen the spread of Coronavirus and, in doing so, to risk the very real economic and social impacts that protracted lockdowns bring, or instead to open up, risking an unchecked spread of Covid and the impacts that has on the health system? Two examples of really difficult problems with no perfect answer.
I’m also well aware (and who, looking at the media reports could not be aware) of the fact that this is the worst possible situation to develop policy and govern through. Every decision made has negative impacts in other areas. Every policy shift is guaranteed to annoy a significant proportion of the electorate. And every decision, when analysed ad nauseam through the lens of hindsight, could have been made differently.
But all of this angst about policy shifts and the like is made worse by the huge number of people who are happy to believe the message heard through social media and spread by some random charlatan with a personal interest in spreading disquietude. This is the bigger-picture issue and one which we, as a society, should be thinking about.
As I’ve been thinking about bigger picture stuff of late I’ve been considering my own reaction to Covid vaccination and, by extension, some peoples’ reluctance to partake in what is (to me, at least) the obviously right thing to do.
I was recently chatting about this topic with Michelle Dickinson, better known as Nanogirl. Nanogirl is a scientist turned science-communicator. Her raison d’etre is to make science more understandable to the masses – be it giving children what is potentially their first exposure to the fun that science and STEM can be, or educating the educators themselves on how to make science education more fun.
As I expressed my frustration at the attitudes of the hardened anti-vaxxers and those who believe their messages of DNA-manipulation, Bill Gates’ conspiracies and widespread vaccine impacts, Nanogirl reminded me that there is ignorance – and then there are poor levels of science literacy.
When people start from nothing it’s easy to be sucked into something that sounds believable. It’s easy for those of us who have enjoyed a reasonable level of education (and by that, I don’t mean university degrees, merely a few years of secondary school education should do the trick) to assume that there would be a general understanding of how the human body generally, and vaccination specifically, work. However, this isn’t just about the science, it’s about critical thinking, understanding the scientific process, and accessing peer-reviewed information, much of which is behind a paid firewall.
But as Nanogirl, who spends most of her time helping teachers become more science literate pointed out, when she started in 2016, 85 per cent of the primary schools she worked with didn’t teach science as it is not compulsory at that level. For many people, high school is the first time they encounter science and that is their only association with it. For those individuals, the dearth of general scientific awareness will shape them for life. Cue the tinfoil hat-wearing, chemtrail espousing, and 5G insertion pseudo-science.
Possibly frustrated having seen how powerful the anti-science messaging has become over the pandemic period, Nanogirl believes that, until we change the issues around the dearth of science education, and provide educational examples that are applicable and relevant rather than dusty and textbook-based, we will always have this issue move up into adult life.
So, what is a pandemic ravaged society to do? I hate to give our minister of everything, Chris Hipkins, yet another job to do, but as the Minister of Education, this should be keeping him up at night. Sure, we have to think about short-term reactions to the pandemic, but we also have to think about the things that will result in our society similarly being led astray next time something calamitous occurs.
In much the same way that we desperately need to introduce compulsory civic education in our schools, so people understand how the Government, the executive branch, the judiciary, and other parts of our Western democracy work, so to do we need to double down on ensuring that young people are given at least the basic building blocks of science to help them formulate rational viewpoints later in life.
We can’t control when the next pandemic will strike but, in addition to making sure our health and other systems are ready for it, we need to ensure our citizenry is similarly prepared.
Ben Kepes is a Canterbury-based entrepreneur and professional board member. He appreciates the grounding his early teachers gave him, especially Mr. Bartholomew in Third form science…
