During all this fuss and craziness with the coronavirus pandemic, there are those who reject science who have criticized and ridiculed Dr. Fauci for making definitive statements about the disease, and in a few weeks changing his mind and saying something different. Well, dear friends, that’s the way science works. It is not a fault of the system, or that Dr. Fauci and other epidemiologists are making things up to mess with your head, but the way the scientific process plays out in the face of each and every challenge.

To understand the scientific principles involved, and how the scientific process works, we need to start from the beginning with how we as a species have dealt with medical/health crises, and what helped us to survive.

When we as a sentient being stepped out of the forests onto the open savannah we entered a wholly new world filled with untold unknowns. When the first family member got sick and died from eating something there was a period before anyone figured out what it was that killed them. Eventually they figured out it was the bitter fruit and stopped eating it. It took a while before they made the connection, because it was a trial and error method of looking a lot of different things to figure it out, and lots of people died in the interim. Once the connection was made with that particular food, it was just a matter of alerting everyone to avoid eating it. This same process of questioning what caused the death and seeking links to something in their world was used with every next thing that was a health hazard. It was a long and arduous process of asking the question, “What…?” and gathering information, deciphering data, coming up with possible answers, and sharing what was known with others, and recommending behaviors for safety. It involved asking again and again “what?” and gathering information, and with new information, altering what was known and what was found to work to avoid the deaths.

The way the scientific process works is to ask, gather, interpret, figure out what,  share, recommend doing, ask more, gather more, interpret the new, assess the known, share the new, recommend doing newer, ask yet again, gather even more, reinterpret the newer, refine the known, refine the sharing, refine the doing, keep asking, keep gathering, keep reinterpreting new, until you maybe develop the cure if there is any. That’s the scientific process.

When the coronavirus went world-wide and spread beyond China, the scientific and epidemiological communities identified elements of the disease that were known at the time and shared them with the wider world community, along with suppositions as to the nature of the disease and how it spread. Included were preliminary ideas as to how to protect oneself from contracting the disease and passing it along.

As research procedures progressed and more was learned of the coronavirus, adding more thoughts as to its nature and how it spread, recommendations were given that changed slightly from earlier procedures because more was then known. Always thoughts were given to learning more about how the disease spread and how to protect oneself, and research continued renewed.

Always the questions “What?” and “How?” were persistently asked, and more information was gathered. And, because new information that clarified previously unknown elements to the problem came to light, recommendations for what to do now also changed. It’s how the scientific process works. Look at every historical epidemiological crisis and you find the same process, and as more was known, more clearly were recommendations for protection made as each pandemic unfolded. Really, people, Dr. Fauci and all the epidemiologists are the good guys…