Can Vaccine Confidence Survive in a Warp-Speed Infodemic?

The pace of COVID-19 vaccine development and testing is unprecedented, leading many experts in public health, social science, and social media to fear a fresh surge of misinformation and confusion. Among the concerns: The corporate vaccine race is veiled in secrecy; there have been early media and communication missteps around pre-review trial news; and active disinformation campaigns and groups with extreme anti-vaccine views and sophisticated campaigns threaten to impede uptake of a vaccine, when it is available.

These issues were at the heart of an online session hosted by the Earth Institute, Columbia University, featuring practitioners in the field of vaccine narratives and attitudes exploring steps that would need to be taken now to lessen odds of a misfire when a COVID-19 vaccine emerges from the global race. Environmental journalist Andrew Revkin, who is Director of the Initiative on Communication and Sustainability at the Earth Institute, led the discussion, which featured:

• Heidi J. Larson, who heads the Vaccine Confidence Project, an initiative using surveys and analysis to gauge vaccine confidence levels in communities around the world;
• Noel T. Brewer, Professor of Health Behavior at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina, whose research focuses on ways to increase human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine uptake; and
• Renée Diresta, research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, a cross-disciplinary programme of research, teaching, and policy engagement that studies the role tech platforms and curatorial algorithms play in the proliferation of disinformation and conspiracy theories across social networks.

The second part of the discussion focused on Larson's book Stuck: How Vaccine Rumors Start - and Why They Don't Go Away, which "examines how the issues surrounding vaccine hesitancy are, more than anything, about people feeling left out of the conversation." In the last chapter of the book, which was completed just before COVID-19 struck, Larson writes, "The world was lucky that the anticipated fatalities of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic were far less than expected. But if the world responds to the next high-risk pandemic with the same level of vaccine reluctance it did in response to H1N1, we may not be so lucky. It is time to not only understand what went wrong, but to start acting on it to build the public's trust - and the public health community's trustworthiness - before the next pandemic hits." As is clear, the next pandemic has now hit.