I don’t have much experience of explaining science to the lay public.
Lay public-in this case individuals who don’t have an academic background in the medical sciences.
…. this last year has been a massive learning curve for me!
Learning curve-in this situation it relates to the need to learn a lot in a short period of time.
So, what you then do is that you unblind the study and you look to see who the people who’ve been infected are and the vast majority of them received the placebo, so actually of the people who received the vaccine, very few caught COVID.
Unblind the study-at the start the study was a blind study, when a study is blind the participants do not know whether they are receiving the actual treatment, in this case the vaccine or a placebo.
It has moved phenomenally quickly; usually, vaccine development takes eight years plus to come to the market.
Come to market-available for sale/distribution.
Every medication has side effects, so if you think of something like paracetamol, a type of plaster, or a COVID vaccine, a small minority will react.
Side effects-in this case the vaccines’ purpose is to protect people against COVID but something that is not intended is that people might feel ill for a short while after being given the vaccine, for example they may have a slight fever, feel fatigued etc these are side effects of the vaccine.
mRNA technology is being used in cancer treatments, and they’ve published a study of mRNA technology used in an animal model of multiple sclerosis. So, it’s a really exciting technology.
Animal model-experimental living systems where treatments can be tested.
There are also some indications that natural immunity potentially does wane, its quite hard to interpret.
Wane-in this case strength of the response decreases.
There’s a lot of research into things like this; so, this is an example of a conspiracy theory there’s been quite a lot of research into the psychology of conspiracy theories.
Conspiracy theory-a theory that dismisses the standard interpretation of events and choses an explanation that points towards motives of personal/political gain.
Some people will come round; some people will not.
Come round-to change one’s opinion on something
People who are very anti-vaccine are very influential on social media; they sit at the center of social networks.
Social media-facebook, twitter, Instagram. Social networks-groups of people connecting via social media.
We need regular vox pops of people who’ve been vaccinated, starting with granny and working downwards.
Vox pops-voice of the people.
and inserting something as fact when it’s based on something that’s happened but delivered out of context.
Out of context-in this case only talking about certain facts so that it looks like their concerns are validated.
Rachel Does Interviews 