Yes. She didn't understand what the child was actually asking about.

Because to her, oxygen tanks are for other people who use them. To her, any information about it and the contexts of it is not relevant, it is not important for her, and it's not very interesting to her. To her it is a weird question, despite her stated interest in not wanting to make it seem weird. Normal people do not need oxygen tanks and don't need to concern themselves with them.

I want to really emphasize that all information like this is genuinely seen as trivia, and only gets to feel like it's really worth having someone knowing the very moment it becomes tangibly useful, and when the usefulness of the information expires, it becomes trivia again.

Respect for a researcher wavers in almost the exact same way, although a great achievement would be respected possibly for a lifetime if the public understands and appreciates it. Still, anything they learn after that is going to be treated like trivia again.

You want me to pump the brakes? Why would I? Our entire civilization is incapable of pumping the brakes on self inflicted and wholly deserved extinction by way of choking our world in the emissions of our desperate works to create decorative steel flowerpots and heavily marketed plastic garbage, because we cannot stomach the thought of feeding a man that does not create his share of junk.