Social distancing

摘要

EVEN IN THE days of the internet, conferences remain the lifeblood of science. Young thrusters can meet old fogeys and lobby them for jobs. Ideas can be swapped in the knowledge that no electronic trail will come back to haunt you. And journalists can swoop, scoop up a bundle of interesting stories and, with luck, provide an update to their readers and viewers of developments in whatever field the conference was about. The International aids Conferences, the first of which was held 35 years ago, in Atlanta, Georgia, have done all these jobs well. But they have also had two others. One is to bang a drum which reminds the world that aids is still a curse on humanity-hence the particular welcome offered to journalists. The second is to mix experts and activists from rich countries and poor for the better exchange of problems and solutions. Much of this mixing is serendipitous face-to-face contact. It is therefore poignant that one consequence of a different viral pandemic, covid-19, is that the organisers of this year's aids conference decided not to hold it in San Francisco after all. Instead, they transferred everything to cyberspace.