Mobile vaccine clinics helped roll out shots in New York City in 2021 Photographer: Nina Westervelt/Bloomberg
Developing,
manufacturing and distributing Covid vaccines was a herculean effort,
costing close to $40 billion by one estimate. If Americans don’t trust
this work because of myths and rumors, then a significant amount is
wasted. What can
be done? Collins, who remains an adviser to President Joe Biden, has
some ideas. First off, he suggests an audit of the government’s
messaging about Covid. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has already engaged in some breast-beating on this, but other agencies along with the White House deserve scrutiny as well. While
Covid rumors seemed outlandish, they were largely predictable, Collins
said. Health officials didn’t do enough “pre-bunking” of the tall tales
that were likely to come. “We
were basically outgunned dramatically by lies and conspiracies in
social media,” he said. “We should have had our own version of flooding
the system with truth, instead of having the system completely flooded
with lies — we lost that one.” The
US may also consider creating a group dedicated to disseminating
reliable scientific information, Collins said, perhaps staffed by
graduate students, doctors and nurses. Health
officials should have been more forthcoming about how in an unfolding
crisis, their understanding of the virus and best responses were
constantly changing, he said. Every
bit of guidance should have been couched as “that’s the best we can do
right now and it may change tomorrow,” Collins said. “We didn’t say that
— we didn’t say it enough — and when it did change, people said: ‘These
people don’t know what they’re doing, they’re just making stuff up.’” Repairing
trust in science will be crucial, not only when dealing with the next
public health crisis, but to coordinate public cooperation in responding
to climate change. If not, we’ll remain slaves to passion,
misinformation and deadly forces of nature. — John Lauerman
|