[jdavis703]

This is the kind of education that needs to be done in high school during health and biology classes. We can’t hope the general public will become epidemiologically literate on 240 character tweets and 30-second television quotes. Heck, my old high school biology teacher remains a source of coronavirus FUD, so maybe that’s not even enough.

[dfsegoat]

I think most high school (USA) biology courses probably touch on the concept of viruses? This level of detail was certainly taught in high school Advanced Placement (AP) Biology when I took it many years ago.

[jdavis703]

I took both high school and university biology. We had two or three chapters on viruses in each textbook. But it was mostly discussed in terms of cellular and chemical levels. It was mostly abstracted from disease and epidemiology. Epidemiological concepts were barely taught, except for maybe a brief mention of exponential growth.

[DangitBobby]

We didn't learn much about bacteria and viruses, we learned much more about cells with human DNA. We definitely didn't touch on rapid evolution of microscopic life, even in courses where we did spend a little bit of time talking about viruses.

[spuz]

I believe I heard about this in this Radiolab episode from last year. It does a good of explaining how the virus replicates in the body and how it behaves differently if the patient is immunocompromised.

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/dispa...

[brianmcc]

I don't disagree with you, but I think the more root cause thing is - people should be more humble in listening to the advice and guidance of epidemiologists, and indeed other experts and specialists.

We as a society tacitly "outsource" the task of becoming an expert to a bunch of mostly smart and well-meaning folks, in all sorts of areas, because we cannot all know "everything" - and for some reason on vaccines and epidemiology great swathes of the population, including senior leaders politically, now choose to ignore their clear guidance on how best to act.

[mateo1]

Much of it is already on an optional biology module in my country. Of course we don't do anything quantitative about mutation rates etc, but at least you know what mRNA is instead of relying on politicized news pieces written by someone who doesn't even know what chirality is.