Bridging the Generation Gap: Interviewing a Senior Citizen about Adolescence Concept: Students will learn about adolescence by interviewing senior citizens about adolescence. This

On what basis did you form your views about the severity of COVID-19? Comment on how dangerous you thought it was, so the likelihood of hospitalization and and/or death. Discuss why you thought what you did about the severity of COVID-19. Was your view based on the body of evidence? What was the evidence? To what extent was your view based in non-evidentiary factors that contribute to dogmatism. So for instance, fear, anxiety, personal experience, anecdotal stories or accounts, media reports, political messages and announcements, etc.
Some of the best evidence we have of the severity of COVID-19 comes from the vaccine trials. In the first Pfizer trial submitted to the FDA, 18,500 subjects received a placebo and were followed for 10 weeks after receiving the placebo. So these are “untreated” subjects. Make your best guess as to the number of “untreated” subjects that died of COVID-19 in this 10 week period. Also, make your best guess about how many of the 18,500 untreated subjects were hospitalized due to COVID-19. How confident are you in your guesses?
If your guess is close, this shows that your understanding of one of the best scientific results we have is accurate and so your views do represent at least part of the evidence. But if your guess is very far from what was observed, this shows something as well. What might it show about the relationship between scientific evidence and public opinion about the scientific evidence? If there is a difference, why might that be do you think?