Can we have a big conversation about how badly much of the mainstream press has handled serious issues for ... <<pretty much my entire life and I'm 44>>? It feels like we'll have a hard time making progress on anything substantive with this kind of roadblock in place. There is a lot of good journalism out there! But the most influential press isn't that.
I agree with you, and I have chastised the mainstream media I read for this. Meanwhile, they are trying to maintain readership and adding far too many editorializing statements and emotion-stirring adjectives into their stories as a strategy. Who is gaining eyes and ears? Fox, and now Newsmax. The media I read are struggling. I just keep after them to be news. And subscribe.
Regarding reliable news, I subscribe to NewsGuard. They rate sites on credibility and transparency. Total points is 100. Anything under 70 is flagged as unreliable. MSNBC barely makes it. They lose points for not regularly correcting or clarifying errors and handling the difference between news and opinion responsibly. Only $2.95/mo. See https://www.newsguardtech.com/.
Same. I wish more would just do the journalism and be news, as you say, but understand all the forces that pull in other directions. I wish there were better answers but this has been a problem for such a long time, long before social media exacerbated it. It makes everything else intractable.
I think Fox and Newsmax had a bigger impact than social media, but I remember fussing at the NYT before Fox got so big for claiming to be the paper of record and no longer publishing transcripts of major speeches. They are still hard to find.
Both, honestly. Depends on the print, but, for example, the NYT debacle after the whole "weapons of mass destruction" thing lost a lot of trust. Access journalism is a problem for a lot of places, and again, I don't know of a good answer to that.
NYT corrected that error. Probably the biggest in their history. And it wasn't done out of malice. It was a very fearful time. They also corrected the errors they made in the 1619 Project. That was more ideologicaly driven, IMO.
Publications make errors. What makes them credible is they correct them. For political reporting at the NYT, reporters I trust include Maggie Haberman and David Sanger.
I think the NYT has a longstanding problem with fact checking (rather- not fact checking). That happened in their weapons of mass destruction articles- arguably, to catastrophic effect. More recently, and fortunately, less harmfully, was failure to fact check their podcast "Caliphate". This failure lead to the return of a Peabody Award. It boggles the mind that it didn't occur to them that like other journalism, podcasts need fact checking.
They do make errors! And I'm not trying to accuse the NYT of anything nefarious. I used to work in journalism and definitely know how hard it is. There *were* other outlets at the time, if I remember, that had different research and a lot more doubt, but it's just an example, not something I'm trying to litigate :) NYT does some great reporting, though I personally subscribe to the LA Times instead since I live in the West and their reporting tends to have more relevance to my life (fires, water issues, etc.). Regardless of what I think, however, fewer people read corrections than read initial articles and trust is a hard thing to rebuild. And no matter how hard they try, every outlet is prone to looking at metrics, whether headlines are clickbait or not.
There are a bunch of articles online about access journalism but they tend to focus on specific journalists' practices. The Wikipedia definition seems succinct though: "Access journalism refers to journalism (often in interview form) which prioritizes access—meaning media time with important, rich, famous, powerful or otherwise influential people in politics, culture, sports, and other areas—over journalistic objectivity and/or integrity." It's often discussed in terms of certain kinds of "insiderism" quoting that helps the reporter maintain access to a source without actually pushing back and engaging in investigative reporting. Obviously, protecting sources is important; the issue as I understand it comes when a reporter treats everything a source says as credible without actually doing any research or investigating because they want to maintain access.
I am talking about the New York Times and the Washington Post. I don't watch cable "news." I read the article about Rachel Maddow in the New Yorker, how she lands in the office, excoriates the staff, then decides what she might sincerely riff on for however long it is. I watched her interview of MJ Hagar, the Texas Senate candidate, and saw her disdain and how surprised she constantly was that Hagar could speak coherently.
Regarding #2, an article last week (possibly Washington Post?) noted a study that brought a group of the vaccine hesitant to talk with a medical expert (former head of the CDC?). The group asked their questions and discussed. later in the session they were asked if the session had been helpful, and how it compared to information different types of information they had heard before.
They said that what had been less helpful (they phrased it more strongly) was information from politicians. This was right when Biden was announcing plans to travel as a vaccine evangelist.
They were also leaning more toward getting the vaccine themselves, and following up on particular concerns they had.
Sorry I have lost the link.
My thoughts are to just not put everyone in our personal basket of deplorables. Whenever someone I am close to says "I don't plan to get the vaccine," my response is "You have plenty of company." They have always made a next statement, which gives me a chance to say "Here is why I decided to get it." So far that has always led to a discussion and I have been able to offer information that I can say was helpful to me. Often that part of our visit closes with them saying they just need more time and information, and want to see more experience with it.
Lately (because it matters to us) we seem to want to engage with other adults over our differences. That forces others to double-down and is not in our self-interest in the vaccination goal that matters to us or in our relationships with others.
I think we should never stop reaching out on such questions. People are complicated. Yes, there are anti-vax grifters out there, but for most people it is questions of anxiety and concern that deserve taking seriously. At least give them a chance! Some will never be convinced and some of those people may have views one finds odious, but others... It is genuine confusion, anxiety, lack of trust, having encountered misinformation... So agree. There has to be more ways to engage people even when where they stand is uncomfortable.
All great questions. In addition, I would ask: do you have a comprehensive plan for what we do if there is in fact a widespread fourth surge, despite the vaccines? Also, re. vaccine hesitancy: who are you consulting with specifically about this problem, and will that include social epistemologists, sociologists, bioethicists, activists and outreach groups, as well as experts outside the U.S.? My sense is there's tons of discussion and analysis and insight out there, but it's not necessarily taken up by leadership.
BTW, Maya Goldenberg's new book on hesitancy from a philosophy-of-science perspective is very worth checking out!
I'm also interested in the issue of vaccine hesitancy. It seems to me that some people are fearful of Pfizer and Moderna because of the newness of the technology. Would it be helpful for the government to remind/inform people that J and J and AZ are, essentially, "old technology" vaccines? I know someone who never misses her flu shot but says she won't get this vaccine. I wonder if such a strategy would work for people like her.
One problem is that J&J and AZ aren't really "old technology" - they both are viral DNA packaged in an adenovirus vector, which is a technique that has only been used for one or two vaccines approved before 2020 (I believe an ebola vaccine approved in 2019, and maybe something else).
Indeed. A lot of new technology here! One of the (less-spoken) issues is that a lot of vaccine hesitancy will be tragically “resolved” via ... natural infection. There will be outbreaks and lingering infections among those communities. So we need to figure out steady and ongoing outbreak. Data already suggesting vaccine immunity is way better than natural immunity so those people will likely be subject to more reinfection, too.
I imagine we'll see a lot where I live once all restrictions are lifted. Vaccine resistance is high and right now the state legislature is trying more than one angle to force counties or municipalities to lift any Covid restrictions stronger than state restrictions, including withholding federal funds if they can legally do it. It's so hard to know how it'll play out. An older and extremely conservative but generally healthy population in rural areas that are predominantly white ... a lot of different factors there.
Yeah, it’s in a name. I think they are both very safe, but if I had to bet on a single one, hard to imagine the mRNA one going wrong with just the messenger RNA coding for the spike. I can get more creative about the adenovirus (though I think that is also totally fine!)
Since the adenovirus is the one I got I'll stick with thinking it's totally fine unless told otherwise! But that is good information -- the people I've heard from who are vaccine hesitant are wanting to get the J&J shot because it's perceived as a design that's been around longer, which was my impression (though I got it because we had to a four-hour round trip to get a shot and doing that once was more appealing than having to go back for a second).
Congratulations! It's interesting: none of the people I know who are hesitant or reluctant have cited differences in technology at all. In my experience they are either 1) suspicious of all vaccination for COVID in general and completely uninterested in comparing the choices; 2) worried about simply masking the presence of the virus, making them more vulnerable to Long COVID while increasing asymptomatic spread; 3) focused on anecdotal reports of Moderna having worse side effects; 4) focused with the reported efficacy numbers (67% vs 95%), which Hilda Bastian rightly pointed out should not be dismissed. 3) and 4) are still very on board with vaccination, but obsessing about which one.
All this leads me to think we should be taking into account different groups of "vaccine-hesitant" concerned about very different issues.
I wonder if those concerns might in some cases reflect an inappropriate mental model (per Zeynep's idea) of computer technology, where it's more straightforward to assume new=better, with 2.0 resolving the flaws of 1.0. I would imagine with vaccines and human biology in general "new technology" functions very, very differently than in a computer.
I think with biology, there is reason for new=caution but on the other hand, we are not a blank slate here. They are using messenger RNA (not new!) and we have a solid understanding of the underlying mechanism. If we had created something totally new and novel, I’d be more wary myself, but here, the “new” part is that we are able to fully synthesize and mass produce something that is otherwise... well old and well-understood. But of course, communicating that requires a lot of underlying knowledge and trust so probably will not work well on people who are mistrustful in the first place.
I think it's useful to be sensitive to which particular issue/set of issues they are worried about. People who are digging deeper and getting into the wonky details of new vs old technologies might be alienated by other wonks and experts they don't trust. But by the same token, I could imagine someone sharing an impressive amount of knowledge and insight on that question *without* trying to sway anyone or position themselves in a particular camp, softening would-be skeptics through genuine scientific curiosity coupled with an obvious mastery of the subject.
Whereas for the group you described further down of people who haven't thought much about this stuff one way or the other, sharing your own personal example without explicitly arguing for a position ("For what it's worth I chose X because I believe it's really important, but that's just me") could be very powerful, since those folks are often searching for reference points and models in the absence of a strong opinion. Testimonial authority, I think they call it...
Exactly. I think that as a society we forget how much interpersonal trust can play a big role in how people choose to behave. The knowledge aspect is actually tricky where I live, because we have a high population of hospital staff (big employer here), and many of the nursing staff are pretty anti-vaxx. Like my neighbor, who doesn't work at the hospital but is a hospice nurse and uses her extensive knowledge and experience to argue against vaccinations, and often mask us, so that's a lot harder to counter. But at least by maintaining the relationship there might be benefits for other issues in the future, if not vaccinations.
This seems wise? I'm thinking along the lines of Zeynep's constant "shots in arms" message and that all the vaccines are essentially very good. If people aren't comfortable with the mRNA ones, explaining that the others are based on older technology might help. You just reminded me that I knew two people here who were holding out for Johnson & Johnson for just that reason.
I would personally be inclined to say whatever works, as long as what you tell them is actually true and this can be backed up. But I don't know that I would oversell the importance of old vs new technology since this isn't like a new iPhone or something; it's a tool which then hands over agency to the human immune system. Maybe just tell them for the record what the differences are and if that appeals to them, great.
Personally I'm probably more equipped for "mild encouragement" than anything else. A new category of "people who haven't thought much about Covid or vaccines recently either way" has been made clear to me recently, and there's been some success with a simple, "Oh, yes, definitely, we got the vaccine. I think it's a good thing to do" with people who just haven't given it much thought and didn't think it was important.
The ones we have approved are all new technologies... To be honest, I think the mRNA one is *safer* than older technologies. But people can definitely get J&J if that makes them feel comfortable.
My q is a bit different- whether in "marketing the vaccine" assuring people that they aren't all mRNA vaccines would make them more acceptable for some people. I received Pfizer and was happy to- but some people seem very scared by this technology.
Re #2- Do we know what the plans are to go forward with full approval of the vaccines rather than just emergency use authorization? It seems to me that such full approval is necessary to deal with vaccine hesitancy- both because some people still see these vaccines as experimental and want to "wait and see" and because in many settings vaccines can't be required- for instance for the military, and I'm guessing airplane travel, while they are only approved for emergency use.
Yes there are. They are gathering the safety data now (which looks great so should be no problem) and I believe all three companies will apply for regular authorization once enough time has passed. Usually, we need six months of safety data and the EUA's were given with two months and we are approaching the six month follow-up period for the earliest two (that were approved in December).
Thanks. I am hoping that getting a vaccine will be required for enough employment and other activities to insure that we, in fact, get to herd immunity.
Spouse and I got vaccinated last week -- much earlier than expected due to the generosity and amazing organization and outreach of the Blackfeet Nation -- and when the nurse gave me my vaccination card she said the rote "might be required to fly" and just hearing that made me weirdly hopeful for no particular reason.
I'm wondering if the president is the right person to be answering these questions? Perhaps the spotlight should be on other people in the administration? What other press conferences are they having?
Some of these are at least partially or fully political, though. Vaccine inequity, hesitation, mandates, passports etc. It's the kind of stuff you want to hear from the political leadership (not just the CDC). Some of these are costly! Some of these involve international relationships. But I think CDC-led press briefings are useful and should be held often as well.
Kudos to you, Zeynep, for raising these issues post press conference and also providing some specific questions that real journalists can ask, though who knows when the next time will be. It concerns me that none of these was asked and it concerns me that the current "WH press corps" is not going to do their jobs and ask the tough questions. I am am thankful that I can read something on this site that isn't just a mouthpiece for the Administration a la a "press conference," with apparently hand-picked journalists throwing soft balls to Mr. Biden.
Regarding our overall list, Biden commented after the Press Conference that he had expected more coronavirus questions. He did lead off with a lengthy statement on the coronavirus response.
He also at least mentioned school ventilation (among a zillion other things) in his pivot to infrastructure from the gun control question that he was asked.
Regarding your question #1, there was apparently a press release today about increased funding to reach unserved areas.
I think he appreciated the diversions to filibuster as a safe zone for him. It seems to me that he has been hesitant about having a press conference, possibly because he didn't want to make too many of his famous gaffes.
Are you sure 2 is a question that can even theoretically be solved by politics? With the current tools (such as the Democrats' reliance on what they think are celebrities) and given the current polarization? I can hardly imagine Biden's admin being of much help here, despite their so-far quite good job on COVID.
I'd be a lot more interested in
11. What will be done to turn the FDA and the CDC from roadblocks into helpers next time?
(Admittedly this is at least somewhat included in 6, but with such questions it's important to be concrete, as it's unlikely an unspecific question will get a specific response.)
Like most thorny problems, this isn't going to have an easy answer but it's the kind of thing we should try to do something about. There are many people who aren't on the left but who are very pro-vaccines who could be mobilized, and most of the public wants the pandemic to end. Whatever the (various) reasons for the hesitancy, we should think about how to at least try to convince people by addressing their concerns. These things are never absolute: there may be a small and immovable contingent but I bet many people who are hesitant now would be open to changing their mind.
That. That's the key. I'm afraid you'll have to be explicit about it, though, or else the answers you will get will be not of the "addressing concerns" variety. It's not exactly a muscle that has recently seen much exercise in our political class.
The Germans, of all people, have done a good job at covid communication: Two of our most famous immunologists, Alexander Kekulé and Christian Drosten, have regular podcasts on public radio in which they talk earnestly and bluntly about the state of the pandemic. They don't shun speculation, but never leave it unqualified; even the most conspiratorial questions from the audience get steelmanned and addressed without much ridicule and ad-hominem. Kekulé's views on the AZ vaccine have been as nuanced as anything I have read in Western media. It would be great if the US had something similar, but I'm not sure this is something you could just decree into existence; you can give Fauci a weekly feature on CNN, but if his response to every question will be "no, it's not safe" and "wear a mask", what will be gained?
Re: #2 - They could employ right-leaning celebrities instead of the same usual suspects and try to bridge the political divide in ways that might actually work. It's an important question and yes, it can and should be solved politically. I think if he focuses on that and on joint "wins" around a return to normalcy (focus on excitement and positivity, not shame and lecturing), he could actually do a lot of calm the political division and bring people together.
Good thinking, but I'm not keen on it working out. Lots of people (particularly from the very-online contingent) have grown an allergy to political messaging and will more likely reject the messengers than they will approve of the message. Plus, the Right is currently heavily fractured (and when/if it reassembles, the Democrats will have a bigger problem at their hand). Not sure where I'd even start reaching out, as the parts I am familiar with are not the ones that distrust the vaccines.
Counter-question: do we *want* to do any nudging before everyone has been offered a jab? I have never seen anyone compare the willingness of people to get vaccinated over time, but common sense tells me it can only increase (at least in the US, where AstraZeneca is not at issue). By May, it's not clear to me whether there will be a problem any more.
I don't think it's easy or even likely to succeed, but that doesn't mean there aren't ways to try (to reach out across the aisle, that is). If there's two things that all Americans can agree on right now, it's that we want the virus to be gone (the other is that everyone seems to like free government money, hah). I would leverage that as much as possible and push the positive messaging much further, instead of just taking credit and doing the usual "the virus isn't over! Wear your mask!" lecturing that turns people off and is falling on deaf ears to the people who need to hear it. Anyone still listening to that message is already keeping their mask on.
Make it patriotic and optimistic - do your American duty, get a vaccine, and let's get life back to normal! I think that would hit home with the right-leaning side of the country.
Oh sure, the "virus isn't over" messaging cannot stop fast enough; everyone has gotten the point by last fall. I'm just skeptical that the Democrats as they currently stand are able to "push" any "positive messaging" that will elicit any reactions other than cringe across the aisle. "American duty" in particular... suffice it to say the intended recipients have their own idea of who is shirking their duty here.
An example of good across-the-aisle messaging was Michael Osterholm's Joe Rogan episode back last March (JRE #1439, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3URhJx0NSw ). I'm 100% it was not orchestrated or sponsored politically, as no one in charge took the virus seriously enough to justify straying with Joe Rogan (not long after Sanders's appearance on JRE has been ruled "beyond the pale" by Vox among others). Anyone who was willing to listen got served a candid and timely discussion with a high signal-to-noise ratio. It would probably do a lot of good to do something like that again on the topic of vaccines. Yet I can bet that anything that comes out of the Democrat media apparatus will be nowhere as informative, chock-full of progressive shibboleths and will get instantly lampooned on alt-right twitter. My hope is that Rogan reaches out to Osterholm (or maybe one of the creators of Biontech) on his own and they have another earnest chat. Good messaging does not come from a committee, and certainly not from *those* committees.
That was one of the only JRE episodes I listened to last year, and considering how little we knew then I found it really useful and was grateful he'd done it. One thing Joe Rogan is really useful for, I've found, is giving someone like that an enormous platform and as many hours as they want to explain something in depth (also used for less positive people and purposes, but still, it's there).
> That was one of the only JRE episodes I listened to last year
Same here. Much as I admire Joe Rogan, I rarely managed to sit through a full episode. Most guests will run out of interesting things to say after far less than 3 hours; some episodes actually left me with a worse opinion of the guest than I had before. The only times I got to the end of it were Osterholm #1439 and Harrington #1571 (never heard of her before, found the episode by accident, figured why not check it out, turned out great). Recommendations?
16. I think I am speaking for just about everyone when I say "We don't want to go through this again". Will you promote and secure world-wide PPE kits for individuals, so that we have an immediate way to provide pathogen-free air for everyone as soon as a pathogen is identified? That will give aerosol experts, source control experts, and vaccine experts time to do their work.
14. Who is going to organize the production and distribution of worldwide (for every person in the world) high filtration masks, vaccines, and air filtration units (it will take a lot of high filtration polypropylene for all of these filters)
11. Our aerosol experts have demonstrated that covid is spread primarily by aerosols. In order to control aerosol transmission, they recommend high filtration masking, open air room ventilation and active air filtration of enclosed spaces. Will you, President Biden, commit to supplying N95 masks or equivilent quality masks to everyone, establish air quality parameters for enclosed spaces, verified by CO2 monitoring, as emergency infrastructure projects?
12. Monoclonal antibodies have been shown to reduce severe covid disease in over 85% of covid patients. Will you have PSA'a, newspaper ads, and, more importantly, establish monoclonal infusion 'camps' to run 18 hours a day across the nation?
13. Will you have those vaccinated given high filtration masks for themselves and all family members? With instruction re masking, home ventilation, air filtration, and living with a covid + family member?
All excellent questions. Most important to me is #6. It was a national emergency. Isn't it standard practice in emergency management to have "after-action reports"? Could there NOT be one?
Great questions! I’d add a “6A“: what institutional guard rails are going to be put in place to make sure that the FDA and CDC act effectively, independently and are obliged to voice disagreement with the executive when necessary.
Interestingly the COVID-19 WH briefings have had pretty decent, substantive questions, esp in comparison to Psaki’s WH briefings or the press conference.
Zeynep, what are your thoughts as to where we are going at this stage in the pandemic? Will there be another surge this late Spring or Summer? And what after that? At what point, in your opinion, do we reach endemic status? What are some things that will hasten this process or is it simply one in which the virus is going to run its course through us? Just your best educated guess, I won't hold you to predictions about the future.
Many, many years ago I heard Jane Pauley interview the performer Sting. She asked"How do you reach out to a large audience?" He seemed surprised by the question. He said "You don't. You leave a space for the audience to come to you."
I have made such good use of that. Just leaving out the one more point I could have made in an article or a memo or a note, not saying what I could have pushed in a conversation, just leaving that space, welcomes the other party to you and leaves room for discussion.
Can we have a big conversation about how badly much of the mainstream press has handled serious issues for ... <<pretty much my entire life and I'm 44>>? It feels like we'll have a hard time making progress on anything substantive with this kind of roadblock in place. There is a lot of good journalism out there! But the most influential press isn't that.
I agree with you, and I have chastised the mainstream media I read for this. Meanwhile, they are trying to maintain readership and adding far too many editorializing statements and emotion-stirring adjectives into their stories as a strategy. Who is gaining eyes and ears? Fox, and now Newsmax. The media I read are struggling. I just keep after them to be news. And subscribe.
Maybe a start is with a subscriber thread in a forum like this where where people talk about where they go for reliable news, and why.
Regarding reliable news, I subscribe to NewsGuard. They rate sites on credibility and transparency. Total points is 100. Anything under 70 is flagged as unreliable. MSNBC barely makes it. They lose points for not regularly correcting or clarifying errors and handling the difference between news and opinion responsibly. Only $2.95/mo. See https://www.newsguardtech.com/.
That's cool!
Glad you liked it!
Same. I wish more would just do the journalism and be news, as you say, but understand all the forces that pull in other directions. I wish there were better answers but this has been a problem for such a long time, long before social media exacerbated it. It makes everything else intractable.
I think Fox and Newsmax had a bigger impact than social media, but I remember fussing at the NYT before Fox got so big for claiming to be the paper of record and no longer publishing transcripts of major speeches. They are still hard to find.
You are talking about cable news, yes? Not print?
Both, honestly. Depends on the print, but, for example, the NYT debacle after the whole "weapons of mass destruction" thing lost a lot of trust. Access journalism is a problem for a lot of places, and again, I don't know of a good answer to that.
NYT corrected that error. Probably the biggest in their history. And it wasn't done out of malice. It was a very fearful time. They also corrected the errors they made in the 1619 Project. That was more ideologicaly driven, IMO.
Publications make errors. What makes them credible is they correct them. For political reporting at the NYT, reporters I trust include Maggie Haberman and David Sanger.
What is access journalism?
I think the NYT has a longstanding problem with fact checking (rather- not fact checking). That happened in their weapons of mass destruction articles- arguably, to catastrophic effect. More recently, and fortunately, less harmfully, was failure to fact check their podcast "Caliphate". This failure lead to the return of a Peabody Award. It boggles the mind that it didn't occur to them that like other journalism, podcasts need fact checking.
They do make errors! And I'm not trying to accuse the NYT of anything nefarious. I used to work in journalism and definitely know how hard it is. There *were* other outlets at the time, if I remember, that had different research and a lot more doubt, but it's just an example, not something I'm trying to litigate :) NYT does some great reporting, though I personally subscribe to the LA Times instead since I live in the West and their reporting tends to have more relevance to my life (fires, water issues, etc.). Regardless of what I think, however, fewer people read corrections than read initial articles and trust is a hard thing to rebuild. And no matter how hard they try, every outlet is prone to looking at metrics, whether headlines are clickbait or not.
There are a bunch of articles online about access journalism but they tend to focus on specific journalists' practices. The Wikipedia definition seems succinct though: "Access journalism refers to journalism (often in interview form) which prioritizes access—meaning media time with important, rich, famous, powerful or otherwise influential people in politics, culture, sports, and other areas—over journalistic objectivity and/or integrity." It's often discussed in terms of certain kinds of "insiderism" quoting that helps the reporter maintain access to a source without actually pushing back and engaging in investigative reporting. Obviously, protecting sources is important; the issue as I understand it comes when a reporter treats everything a source says as credible without actually doing any research or investigating because they want to maintain access.
I am talking about the New York Times and the Washington Post. I don't watch cable "news." I read the article about Rachel Maddow in the New Yorker, how she lands in the office, excoriates the staff, then decides what she might sincerely riff on for however long it is. I watched her interview of MJ Hagar, the Texas Senate candidate, and saw her disdain and how surprised she constantly was that Hagar could speak coherently.
:(
Regarding #2, an article last week (possibly Washington Post?) noted a study that brought a group of the vaccine hesitant to talk with a medical expert (former head of the CDC?). The group asked their questions and discussed. later in the session they were asked if the session had been helpful, and how it compared to information different types of information they had heard before.
They said that what had been less helpful (they phrased it more strongly) was information from politicians. This was right when Biden was announcing plans to travel as a vaccine evangelist.
They were also leaning more toward getting the vaccine themselves, and following up on particular concerns they had.
Sorry I have lost the link.
My thoughts are to just not put everyone in our personal basket of deplorables. Whenever someone I am close to says "I don't plan to get the vaccine," my response is "You have plenty of company." They have always made a next statement, which gives me a chance to say "Here is why I decided to get it." So far that has always led to a discussion and I have been able to offer information that I can say was helpful to me. Often that part of our visit closes with them saying they just need more time and information, and want to see more experience with it.
Lately (because it matters to us) we seem to want to engage with other adults over our differences. That forces others to double-down and is not in our self-interest in the vaccination goal that matters to us or in our relationships with others.
I think we should never stop reaching out on such questions. People are complicated. Yes, there are anti-vax grifters out there, but for most people it is questions of anxiety and concern that deserve taking seriously. At least give them a chance! Some will never be convinced and some of those people may have views one finds odious, but others... It is genuine confusion, anxiety, lack of trust, having encountered misinformation... So agree. There has to be more ways to engage people even when where they stand is uncomfortable.
All great questions. In addition, I would ask: do you have a comprehensive plan for what we do if there is in fact a widespread fourth surge, despite the vaccines? Also, re. vaccine hesitancy: who are you consulting with specifically about this problem, and will that include social epistemologists, sociologists, bioethicists, activists and outreach groups, as well as experts outside the U.S.? My sense is there's tons of discussion and analysis and insight out there, but it's not necessarily taken up by leadership.
BTW, Maya Goldenberg's new book on hesitancy from a philosophy-of-science perspective is very worth checking out!
I'm also interested in the issue of vaccine hesitancy. It seems to me that some people are fearful of Pfizer and Moderna because of the newness of the technology. Would it be helpful for the government to remind/inform people that J and J and AZ are, essentially, "old technology" vaccines? I know someone who never misses her flu shot but says she won't get this vaccine. I wonder if such a strategy would work for people like her.
One problem is that J&J and AZ aren't really "old technology" - they both are viral DNA packaged in an adenovirus vector, which is a technique that has only been used for one or two vaccines approved before 2020 (I believe an ebola vaccine approved in 2019, and maybe something else).
Indeed. A lot of new technology here! One of the (less-spoken) issues is that a lot of vaccine hesitancy will be tragically “resolved” via ... natural infection. There will be outbreaks and lingering infections among those communities. So we need to figure out steady and ongoing outbreak. Data already suggesting vaccine immunity is way better than natural immunity so those people will likely be subject to more reinfection, too.
I imagine we'll see a lot where I live once all restrictions are lifted. Vaccine resistance is high and right now the state legislature is trying more than one angle to force counties or municipalities to lift any Covid restrictions stronger than state restrictions, including withholding federal funds if they can legally do it. It's so hard to know how it'll play out. An older and extremely conservative but generally healthy population in rural areas that are predominantly white ... a lot of different factors there.
Interesting. I didn't know that. But some people fear the mRNA technology specifically.
Yeah, it’s in a name. I think they are both very safe, but if I had to bet on a single one, hard to imagine the mRNA one going wrong with just the messenger RNA coding for the spike. I can get more creative about the adenovirus (though I think that is also totally fine!)
Since the adenovirus is the one I got I'll stick with thinking it's totally fine unless told otherwise! But that is good information -- the people I've heard from who are vaccine hesitant are wanting to get the J&J shot because it's perceived as a design that's been around longer, which was my impression (though I got it because we had to a four-hour round trip to get a shot and doing that once was more appealing than having to go back for a second).
It looks more than fine from the data we have! Congratulations!
Congratulations! It's interesting: none of the people I know who are hesitant or reluctant have cited differences in technology at all. In my experience they are either 1) suspicious of all vaccination for COVID in general and completely uninterested in comparing the choices; 2) worried about simply masking the presence of the virus, making them more vulnerable to Long COVID while increasing asymptomatic spread; 3) focused on anecdotal reports of Moderna having worse side effects; 4) focused with the reported efficacy numbers (67% vs 95%), which Hilda Bastian rightly pointed out should not be dismissed. 3) and 4) are still very on board with vaccination, but obsessing about which one.
All this leads me to think we should be taking into account different groups of "vaccine-hesitant" concerned about very different issues.
Gotcha.
I wonder if those concerns might in some cases reflect an inappropriate mental model (per Zeynep's idea) of computer technology, where it's more straightforward to assume new=better, with 2.0 resolving the flaws of 1.0. I would imagine with vaccines and human biology in general "new technology" functions very, very differently than in a computer.
I think with biology, there is reason for new=caution but on the other hand, we are not a blank slate here. They are using messenger RNA (not new!) and we have a solid understanding of the underlying mechanism. If we had created something totally new and novel, I’d be more wary myself, but here, the “new” part is that we are able to fully synthesize and mass produce something that is otherwise... well old and well-understood. But of course, communicating that requires a lot of underlying knowledge and trust so probably will not work well on people who are mistrustful in the first place.
That last sentence is the key issue, right? Circling back to how to talk about these with people who are hesitant.
I think it's useful to be sensitive to which particular issue/set of issues they are worried about. People who are digging deeper and getting into the wonky details of new vs old technologies might be alienated by other wonks and experts they don't trust. But by the same token, I could imagine someone sharing an impressive amount of knowledge and insight on that question *without* trying to sway anyone or position themselves in a particular camp, softening would-be skeptics through genuine scientific curiosity coupled with an obvious mastery of the subject.
Whereas for the group you described further down of people who haven't thought much about this stuff one way or the other, sharing your own personal example without explicitly arguing for a position ("For what it's worth I chose X because I believe it's really important, but that's just me") could be very powerful, since those folks are often searching for reference points and models in the absence of a strong opinion. Testimonial authority, I think they call it...
Exactly. I think that as a society we forget how much interpersonal trust can play a big role in how people choose to behave. The knowledge aspect is actually tricky where I live, because we have a high population of hospital staff (big employer here), and many of the nursing staff are pretty anti-vaxx. Like my neighbor, who doesn't work at the hospital but is a hospice nurse and uses her extensive knowledge and experience to argue against vaccinations, and often mask us, so that's a lot harder to counter. But at least by maintaining the relationship there might be benefits for other issues in the future, if not vaccinations.
This seems wise? I'm thinking along the lines of Zeynep's constant "shots in arms" message and that all the vaccines are essentially very good. If people aren't comfortable with the mRNA ones, explaining that the others are based on older technology might help. You just reminded me that I knew two people here who were holding out for Johnson & Johnson for just that reason.
I would personally be inclined to say whatever works, as long as what you tell them is actually true and this can be backed up. But I don't know that I would oversell the importance of old vs new technology since this isn't like a new iPhone or something; it's a tool which then hands over agency to the human immune system. Maybe just tell them for the record what the differences are and if that appeals to them, great.
Personally I'm probably more equipped for "mild encouragement" than anything else. A new category of "people who haven't thought much about Covid or vaccines recently either way" has been made clear to me recently, and there's been some success with a simple, "Oh, yes, definitely, we got the vaccine. I think it's a good thing to do" with people who just haven't given it much thought and didn't think it was important.
I think that category is way bigger than hyper-aware people realize! Same thing with the 2020 U.S. election.
I'm going to run with that assumption and hope for the best!
I don't know if it is wise or not. I've vacillated on the question myself and, Zeynep, would love your thoughts.
The ones we have approved are all new technologies... To be honest, I think the mRNA one is *safer* than older technologies. But people can definitely get J&J if that makes them feel comfortable.
My q is a bit different- whether in "marketing the vaccine" assuring people that they aren't all mRNA vaccines would make them more acceptable for some people. I received Pfizer and was happy to- but some people seem very scared by this technology.
Re #2- Do we know what the plans are to go forward with full approval of the vaccines rather than just emergency use authorization? It seems to me that such full approval is necessary to deal with vaccine hesitancy- both because some people still see these vaccines as experimental and want to "wait and see" and because in many settings vaccines can't be required- for instance for the military, and I'm guessing airplane travel, while they are only approved for emergency use.
Yes there are. They are gathering the safety data now (which looks great so should be no problem) and I believe all three companies will apply for regular authorization once enough time has passed. Usually, we need six months of safety data and the EUA's were given with two months and we are approaching the six month follow-up period for the earliest two (that were approved in December).
Thanks. I am hoping that getting a vaccine will be required for enough employment and other activities to insure that we, in fact, get to herd immunity.
Spouse and I got vaccinated last week -- much earlier than expected due to the generosity and amazing organization and outreach of the Blackfeet Nation -- and when the nurse gave me my vaccination card she said the rote "might be required to fly" and just hearing that made me weirdly hopeful for no particular reason.
For very good reason! I was told the same thing and started having images of being on the plane to Paris!
😀
I'm wondering if the president is the right person to be answering these questions? Perhaps the spotlight should be on other people in the administration? What other press conferences are they having?
Some of these are at least partially or fully political, though. Vaccine inequity, hesitation, mandates, passports etc. It's the kind of stuff you want to hear from the political leadership (not just the CDC). Some of these are costly! Some of these involve international relationships. But I think CDC-led press briefings are useful and should be held often as well.
Kudos to you, Zeynep, for raising these issues post press conference and also providing some specific questions that real journalists can ask, though who knows when the next time will be. It concerns me that none of these was asked and it concerns me that the current "WH press corps" is not going to do their jobs and ask the tough questions. I am am thankful that I can read something on this site that isn't just a mouthpiece for the Administration a la a "press conference," with apparently hand-picked journalists throwing soft balls to Mr. Biden.
Yeah! I am not at all for asking softball questions!
Regarding our overall list, Biden commented after the Press Conference that he had expected more coronavirus questions. He did lead off with a lengthy statement on the coronavirus response.
He also at least mentioned school ventilation (among a zillion other things) in his pivot to infrastructure from the gun control question that he was asked.
Regarding your question #1, there was apparently a press release today about increased funding to reach unserved areas.
I think he appreciated the diversions to filibuster as a safe zone for him. It seems to me that he has been hesitant about having a press conference, possibly because he didn't want to make too many of his famous gaffes.
Are you sure 2 is a question that can even theoretically be solved by politics? With the current tools (such as the Democrats' reliance on what they think are celebrities) and given the current polarization? I can hardly imagine Biden's admin being of much help here, despite their so-far quite good job on COVID.
I'd be a lot more interested in
11. What will be done to turn the FDA and the CDC from roadblocks into helpers next time?
(Admittedly this is at least somewhat included in 6, but with such questions it's important to be concrete, as it's unlikely an unspecific question will get a specific response.)
Like most thorny problems, this isn't going to have an easy answer but it's the kind of thing we should try to do something about. There are many people who aren't on the left but who are very pro-vaccines who could be mobilized, and most of the public wants the pandemic to end. Whatever the (various) reasons for the hesitancy, we should think about how to at least try to convince people by addressing their concerns. These things are never absolute: there may be a small and immovable contingent but I bet many people who are hesitant now would be open to changing their mind.
> by addressing their concerns
That. That's the key. I'm afraid you'll have to be explicit about it, though, or else the answers you will get will be not of the "addressing concerns" variety. It's not exactly a muscle that has recently seen much exercise in our political class.
The Germans, of all people, have done a good job at covid communication: Two of our most famous immunologists, Alexander Kekulé and Christian Drosten, have regular podcasts on public radio in which they talk earnestly and bluntly about the state of the pandemic. They don't shun speculation, but never leave it unqualified; even the most conspiratorial questions from the audience get steelmanned and addressed without much ridicule and ad-hominem. Kekulé's views on the AZ vaccine have been as nuanced as anything I have read in Western media. It would be great if the US had something similar, but I'm not sure this is something you could just decree into existence; you can give Fauci a weekly feature on CNN, but if his response to every question will be "no, it's not safe" and "wear a mask", what will be gained?
Yeah. Those things only appeal to the already-convinced.
Very good points. This way of thinking is helpful even for me to just engage in personal conversations.
Re: #2 - They could employ right-leaning celebrities instead of the same usual suspects and try to bridge the political divide in ways that might actually work. It's an important question and yes, it can and should be solved politically. I think if he focuses on that and on joint "wins" around a return to normalcy (focus on excitement and positivity, not shame and lecturing), he could actually do a lot of calm the political division and bring people together.
Good thinking, but I'm not keen on it working out. Lots of people (particularly from the very-online contingent) have grown an allergy to political messaging and will more likely reject the messengers than they will approve of the message. Plus, the Right is currently heavily fractured (and when/if it reassembles, the Democrats will have a bigger problem at their hand). Not sure where I'd even start reaching out, as the parts I am familiar with are not the ones that distrust the vaccines.
Counter-question: do we *want* to do any nudging before everyone has been offered a jab? I have never seen anyone compare the willingness of people to get vaccinated over time, but common sense tells me it can only increase (at least in the US, where AstraZeneca is not at issue). By May, it's not clear to me whether there will be a problem any more.
I don't think it's easy or even likely to succeed, but that doesn't mean there aren't ways to try (to reach out across the aisle, that is). If there's two things that all Americans can agree on right now, it's that we want the virus to be gone (the other is that everyone seems to like free government money, hah). I would leverage that as much as possible and push the positive messaging much further, instead of just taking credit and doing the usual "the virus isn't over! Wear your mask!" lecturing that turns people off and is falling on deaf ears to the people who need to hear it. Anyone still listening to that message is already keeping their mask on.
Make it patriotic and optimistic - do your American duty, get a vaccine, and let's get life back to normal! I think that would hit home with the right-leaning side of the country.
Oh sure, the "virus isn't over" messaging cannot stop fast enough; everyone has gotten the point by last fall. I'm just skeptical that the Democrats as they currently stand are able to "push" any "positive messaging" that will elicit any reactions other than cringe across the aisle. "American duty" in particular... suffice it to say the intended recipients have their own idea of who is shirking their duty here.
An example of good across-the-aisle messaging was Michael Osterholm's Joe Rogan episode back last March (JRE #1439, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3URhJx0NSw ). I'm 100% it was not orchestrated or sponsored politically, as no one in charge took the virus seriously enough to justify straying with Joe Rogan (not long after Sanders's appearance on JRE has been ruled "beyond the pale" by Vox among others). Anyone who was willing to listen got served a candid and timely discussion with a high signal-to-noise ratio. It would probably do a lot of good to do something like that again on the topic of vaccines. Yet I can bet that anything that comes out of the Democrat media apparatus will be nowhere as informative, chock-full of progressive shibboleths and will get instantly lampooned on alt-right twitter. My hope is that Rogan reaches out to Osterholm (or maybe one of the creators of Biontech) on his own and they have another earnest chat. Good messaging does not come from a committee, and certainly not from *those* committees.
That was one of the only JRE episodes I listened to last year, and considering how little we knew then I found it really useful and was grateful he'd done it. One thing Joe Rogan is really useful for, I've found, is giving someone like that an enormous platform and as many hours as they want to explain something in depth (also used for less positive people and purposes, but still, it's there).
> That was one of the only JRE episodes I listened to last year
Same here. Much as I admire Joe Rogan, I rarely managed to sit through a full episode. Most guests will run out of interesting things to say after far less than 3 hours; some episodes actually left me with a worse opinion of the guest than I had before. The only times I got to the end of it were Osterholm #1439 and Harrington #1571 (never heard of her before, found the episode by accident, figured why not check it out, turned out great). Recommendations?
16. I think I am speaking for just about everyone when I say "We don't want to go through this again". Will you promote and secure world-wide PPE kits for individuals, so that we have an immediate way to provide pathogen-free air for everyone as soon as a pathogen is identified? That will give aerosol experts, source control experts, and vaccine experts time to do their work.
14. Who is going to organize the production and distribution of worldwide (for every person in the world) high filtration masks, vaccines, and air filtration units (it will take a lot of high filtration polypropylene for all of these filters)
11. Our aerosol experts have demonstrated that covid is spread primarily by aerosols. In order to control aerosol transmission, they recommend high filtration masking, open air room ventilation and active air filtration of enclosed spaces. Will you, President Biden, commit to supplying N95 masks or equivilent quality masks to everyone, establish air quality parameters for enclosed spaces, verified by CO2 monitoring, as emergency infrastructure projects?
12. Monoclonal antibodies have been shown to reduce severe covid disease in over 85% of covid patients. Will you have PSA'a, newspaper ads, and, more importantly, establish monoclonal infusion 'camps' to run 18 hours a day across the nation?
13. Will you have those vaccinated given high filtration masks for themselves and all family members? With instruction re masking, home ventilation, air filtration, and living with a covid + family member?
All excellent questions. Most important to me is #6. It was a national emergency. Isn't it standard practice in emergency management to have "after-action reports"? Could there NOT be one?
Great questions! I’d add a “6A“: what institutional guard rails are going to be put in place to make sure that the FDA and CDC act effectively, independently and are obliged to voice disagreement with the executive when necessary.
Interestingly the COVID-19 WH briefings have had pretty decent, substantive questions, esp in comparison to Psaki’s WH briefings or the press conference.
Zeynep, what are your thoughts as to where we are going at this stage in the pandemic? Will there be another surge this late Spring or Summer? And what after that? At what point, in your opinion, do we reach endemic status? What are some things that will hasten this process or is it simply one in which the virus is going to run its course through us? Just your best educated guess, I won't hold you to predictions about the future.
One more round on question two.
Many, many years ago I heard Jane Pauley interview the performer Sting. She asked"How do you reach out to a large audience?" He seemed surprised by the question. He said "You don't. You leave a space for the audience to come to you."
I have made such good use of that. Just leaving out the one more point I could have made in an article or a memo or a note, not saying what I could have pushed in a conversation, just leaving that space, welcomes the other party to you and leaves room for discussion.