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2020 was a year like no other, especially for science.

During 2020 alone.

There have been more papers written about COVID-19 than there have been on many other diseases

that we've known about for a much longer time, things like polio and Ebola.

And that's astonishing.

Ed Young is a staff writer for The Atlantic.

And in a recent piece, he explores the massive shifts the pandemic has caused in scientific

research.

You know, we have only known about this disease for a year or so, and yet it has totally

consumed the attention of the world scientists.

Many, many scientists have pivoted from whatever they were previously focused on to study

COVID-19.

He says, Pink Jennifer Daudan, for example.

She's a 2020 Nobel Prize winner and a pioneer of CRISPR gene editing technology.

And she told me about how, in February, she was sitting on a plane, headed to a conference,

crammed into a middle seat.

And she realized like, this is crazy.

This doesn't feel safe.

And this is probably the last time I'm going to travel for a while.

We had the sense that her life was about to change and change it did.

The next month, her university shut down.

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