13 November 2020: Epidemiologist Salim Abdool Karim, who has led South Africa s scientific response to the Covid-19 pandemic, posing for a portrait in Durban, his home city.
Epidemiologist Salim Abdool Karim, the scientific leader of South Africa’s Covid-19 pandemic response, is amused by the common public perception of how scientific progress works. In this imagined version of the process, sombre eggheads nod gravely over each other’s infallible findings in a march of relentless consensus.
“People get worried when they hear that we disagree on some things,” he says. “‘The scientists are fighting!’ they will say. And I always say to them, listen, if the scientists don’t fight, you’re in big trouble.”