Science changes -- and so should rational behaviour

By Ruth Stewart, Professor: Evidence-Informed Decision-Making, University of Johannesburg
Carina van Rooyen, Senior researcher at the Africa Centre for Evidence, University of Johannesburg

The world around us, and the way researchers study and understand it, changes all the time. The constant change means that what we know through science also shifts.

Take the airborne nature of SARS-CoV-2: early in the COVID-19 pandemic key advisory groups, such as the World Health Organisation, assumed that respiratory droplets were the dominant mode of transmission. This led to advice on and practices of social distancing, hand-washing, wiping surfaces, wearing plastic face shields, and putting up plastic barriers between customers and servers in shops.

As more research…

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