Incredibly irresponsible and inaccurate reporting by @News24 about Bill Gates involvement in testing a vaccine in Africa has made the lives of science communicators so much more difficult and so much more urgent in the short term.

#Scicomm #covid19 #Covid19SA

1/

We need to be so careful now balancing the need of acknowledging the insidious history and exploitatory practice of science on the continent while still maintaining the value and necessity of a vaccine and medical solutions. All in tiny tweets.

#Scicomm #covid19 #Covid19SA

2/

Historically: mistrust in politicians, the powerful and scientists has both been incredibly justified (eg. Tuskegee syphilis experiment) and created countless unnecessary deaths (eg. vaccine avoidance after Spanish flu).

3/

We need to ENSURE that any testing of medical solutions is done with transparent and consenting models of volunteering AND that the final products/solutions are not mistrusted due to rogue conspiracy theories.

4/

Even now I feel pressure to have both statements in every tweet i write just in case one gets seen out of the full context of this thread.

A completely avoidable disaster.

5/5