Immunologists on failures of communication in a pandemic: when you express appropriate uncertainty ("we don't know for sure!") in a global crisis, you may leave people believing that a very unlikely outcome is in fact guaranteed. https://www.jimmunol.org/content/205/9/2342

"Consider the statement, 'We don’t know how long immunity will last.' As a comparison, consider the alternative statement, 'We don’t know for sure how long immunity will last, but if it is anything like the first SARS coronavirus, it will last for at least several years.'"

"Given the evidence, a statement of, 'It is unlikely that COVID-19–recovered patients who develop antibodies can be reinfected,' would have conveyed a message of assurance rather than hysteria and would have been entirely consistent with the accumulated evidence."

"Importantly, robust responses to SARS-CoV-2 in older adults give us hope that this population can be protected by both immunomodulation and vaccination. ... new generation of vaccines, adjuvanted ..., have been shown to induce highly efficient immune responses in older adults"

"The purpose of this article is not to paint an excessively rosy picture of the ... pandemic. ... There are many highly problematic ... aspects of this virus, but we do not believe that subversion of fundamental immunological principles is among them."