Judy Woodruff:
As we reported, the U.S. passed another tragic pandemic milestone. Three-quarters-of-a-million Americans have died from COVID-19.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta is focusing in part on what we could have done differently.
Here’s the second part of my conversation with him about his book “World War C: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic and How to Prepare for the Next One.”
Welcome to the “NewsHour.” We appreciate your joining us.
You spent several hours last month talking to Joe Rogan, who is a talk show host, part of his podcast, essentially trying to change minds, to explain to people what the vaccine is.
Did you come away from that with a better understanding of why people have this reluctance, of how ingrained these views are?
Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Author, “World War C: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic and How to Prepare for the Next One”,: Well, I have a better understanding that it is very real, the skepticism.
I think, sometimes, you think that, look, logic will prevail, right? I mean, this is a vaccine that can save lives. It was the moonshot of scientific developments. That should win the day, ultimately.
But you come to find out, that there is a significant amount of resistance, reluctance, hesitancy, whatever you want to call it.
There’s two things that really came out of — from my conversation with Joe Rogan.
First of all, as we have democratized information more and more, it’s really hard for people to tell good information from bad information, good information from misinformation. And there is true disinformation out there, which is purposeful misinformation. And it’s really hard for the average opinion to sort of parse it out.
If you were to just Google anything right now, “vaccines can kill you,” if you were to just Google that, you would find a few papers and lots of Web sites to sort of validate your beliefs.
What are we going to do going forward, especially in situations like this, when the quality and the veracity of that information really matters?
The second thing is, who do we trust, and why has there been an erosion in trust in pharmaceutical companies, in mainstream media, in large institutions overall? And, as a result, when you suddenly say — you get these vaccine requirements that are coming out, there is a significant pushback, because there’s already this distrust there that’s been festering to begin with.
Those two things, in combination, Judy, can make a very, very toxic environment for people who are trying to sort of navigate this through. It’s not everybody, and maybe it’s not even the majority of people, but it’s enough people out there who have the distrust, fueled by bad information, to lead them to these decisions.
