Speaker 1: I can't believe it's the last episode.
Speaker 2: I can't either.
Speaker 3: It feels like the start of this semester was like
Speaker 3: twenty years ago, but then also yesterday.
Speaker 1: No sense of time here. We've covered quite a few
Speaker 1: things this semester, but the thread that has been just
Speaker 1: tying it all together has been COVID nineteen.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 3: Every single episode has been COVID adjacent because everything has
Speaker 3: been touched by this pandemic.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, back in February, we did not know it would
Speaker 1: be like this.
Speaker 2: No, you know, I wasn't ready.
Speaker 1: It was maybe the first week of February when we
Speaker 1: interviewed doctor Kismikia Corbett at the NIH and we saw
Speaker 1: everybody ramping up their efforts, working late, and we felt confident.
Speaker 1: We felt like the infrastructure was there. Based on what
Speaker 1: we saw, we said, surely the CDC will screen people.
Speaker 1: That's nothing new, That's what they're supposed to do, right,
Speaker 1: And that's where we left season two.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and imagine, to our souprise, everything went completely left
Speaker 3: after that.
Speaker 1: And some of you guys reached out. You said, hey,
Speaker 1: have really changed since your last episode. When are you
Speaker 1: gonna do something different? When are you gonna tell people
Speaker 1: what's going on. So here we are.
Speaker 3: I'm TT and I'm Zachiah and from Spotify. This is
Speaker 3: Dope Labs. Coronavirus has been like a pressure cooker on
Speaker 3: all things, all of the cracks in the foundation, all
Speaker 3: of the deficiencies in our infrastructures. It was brought to
Speaker 3: light because of the pandemic, things that we probably may
Speaker 3: have never found out in our lifetime or in this generation.
Speaker 3: Coronavirus said, here it is. I'm trying to light on
Speaker 3: it right now.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is a coronavirus update. Is about the advances
Speaker 1: in science and the public health plans to help communicate
Speaker 1: those advances.
Speaker 3: And what we want to do in this episode is
Speaker 3: better understand what has happened since COVID began, specifically from
Speaker 3: a science communication perspective.
Speaker 1: Everybody became an expert. There's information everywhere, people are making
Speaker 1: their own graphics, all kinds of things. It's hard to
Speaker 1: know what to believe. And so what we want to
Speaker 1: do is do a hard reset to say here's where
Speaker 1: we are and here's what's coming next. So let's jump
Speaker 1: into the recitation. What do we know?
Speaker 3: I think one thing that we do know is that
Speaker 3: we are experiencing another spike in COVID cases, so people
Speaker 3: being admitted into the hospital and deaths are all on
Speaker 3: the rise right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's really interesting. If you look at a map,
Speaker 1: the Midwest is being hit particularly hard, Wisconsin, North and
Speaker 1: South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, the whole area is dark red.
Speaker 3: In the US, there have been over twelve million COVID
Speaker 3: cases and two hundred and fifty seven thousand, sixteen deaths.
Speaker 1: The vaccines are here and things are happening. On November thirtieth,
Speaker 1: Moderna submitted an application to the FDA for authorization of
Speaker 1: this COVID nineteen vaccine, and then another committee just decided
Speaker 1: healthcare workers and nursing home residents will be the first
Speaker 1: people to get the coronavirus vaccines. Yeah, that's very true.
Speaker 3: And some folks are excited and some folks are not
Speaker 3: so excited about the vaccine rollout.
Speaker 1: So with that, what do we want to know?
Speaker 3: What do we need to know about these new vaccines
Speaker 3: that are going to be available what seems like very soon.
Speaker 1: And you know, this is one of the first urgent
Speaker 1: worldwide rollout of a vaccine, and I think people need
Speaker 1: to understand this is not going to be like a
Speaker 1: free for all, Right, how is this going to be distributed?
Speaker 3: Back in twenty nineteen, we talked about vaccine hesitancy in
Speaker 3: one of our episodes. So, when it comes to vaccines
Speaker 3: and getting vaccinated, there's like three flavors. There are people
Speaker 3: who are all the way on one end of the spectrum,
Speaker 3: and they will not get a vaccination regardless of the circumstance.
Speaker 2: There's no way you can convince them.
Speaker 3: Then you have people who will get the vaccine as
Speaker 3: soon as it's available. But then you have this huge
Speaker 3: chunk in the middle of people who are vaccine hesitant.
Speaker 3: I want to know how that has changed with the coronavirus.
Speaker 3: I'd imagine that people are feeling a little bit different
Speaker 3: about being vaccinated themselves for COVID.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that's a really good point vaccine hesitancy
Speaker 1: as it relates to coronavirus, vaccine hesitancy broadly, and has
Speaker 1: the game plan changed since twenty nineteen for combating vaccine hesitancy?
Speaker 3: And then I guess the question that I think everyone
Speaker 3: has now that we've all experienced a pandemic, will there
Speaker 3: be another pandemic like COVID? Nineteen and what have we
Speaker 3: learned that can get us through a pandemic better the
Speaker 3: next time?
Speaker 1: All right, let's jump into the dissection.
Speaker 3: Our guests today are doctor Rue, Polly Lamay, and Molly Sour.
Speaker 4: I'm Rue Poly Lamay. I am a Associate scientist at
Speaker 4: the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and I
Speaker 4: am in three departments Department of International Health, Epidemiology, and
Speaker 4: Health Behavior in Society.
Speaker 5: I'm Mollie Sower and I'm a research associate at the
Speaker 5: International Vaccine Access Center and the Department of International Health,
Speaker 5: also at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Speaker 1: Doctor LeMay is a repeat guest. We had her back
Speaker 1: on Lab four, Protect Your Neck, which was all about vaccines.
Speaker 3: Yes, and she told us all about how vaccines work
Speaker 3: and what happens when you take a vaccine. The vaccine
Speaker 3: is basically like a movie trailer. It's a preview of
Speaker 3: the viruses to come so you can recognize it when
Speaker 3: it actually comes. So it just prepped your body and says, hey,
Speaker 3: be on a lookout for this dude that's going to
Speaker 3: show up or who might show up.
Speaker 1: So we had doctor LeMay in Lab four with Protect
Speaker 1: your Neck. That was the introduction of vaccines. Then we
Speaker 1: had a chance to talk to doctor Kismikia Corbett who
Speaker 1: was working at the National Institute of Health, and she
Speaker 1: was working on the coronavirus vaccine that's actually the Maderna
Speaker 1: vaccine that's been getting a lot of press lately, and
Speaker 1: so we wanted our guests to walk us through how
Speaker 1: we got to a vaccine being ready for public distribution
Speaker 1: so soon from February to December.
Speaker 4: Here in the United States, what we can normally do
Speaker 4: from an administration perspective is do something called an emergency
Speaker 4: Use authorization through the FDA, and essentially what that does
Speaker 4: is that speeds up the process to get some sort
Speaker 4: of therapeutic to the market.
Speaker 1: People are hearing emergency Use authorization, it's easy to think
Speaker 1: this has been rushed through, and it doesn't help that
Speaker 1: the administration called this committee Operation Warp Speed.
Speaker 3: So what they're doing with the Emergency Use authorization is
Speaker 3: that they are shortening the process to approve the vaccine
Speaker 3: so that everybody can get it faster. This pandemic is
Speaker 3: going on, lots of people are getting sick, lots of
Speaker 3: people are dying, so there has to be a response
Speaker 3: to that, like, we can't have the same process that
Speaker 3: you would normally go through for a full FDA approval.
Speaker 1: But in fact, the emergency use authorization allows the FDA
Speaker 1: to focus more on shepherding this through, right, so devoting
Speaker 1: more resources here to this process. Whereas normally you have
Speaker 1: to wait they have a certain amount of time. They
Speaker 1: can now put everybody on this project. So for some
Speaker 1: of the rules that used to exist for these medical countermeasures,
Speaker 1: they might not be so necessary, or there may be
Speaker 1: some things that you don't actually need, or waiting periods
Speaker 1: that you can reduce in a safe manner. It helps
Speaker 1: you get to this place where you can have broad
Speaker 1: distribution earlier.
Speaker 4: So the reason that this is important for us when
Speaker 4: we're talking about this is that we can essentially break
Speaker 4: the cycle of the pandemic in two ways. Right, people
Speaker 4: can be exposed to the virus or they get a vaccine.
Speaker 4: Unfortunately a lot of people have already been exposed to
Speaker 4: the virus. We can increase her immunity by getting people
Speaker 4: the vaccine. And so with these two things together, we
Speaker 4: will be able to fingerish crossed. We will be able
Speaker 4: to break out of the pandemic. Because I think we
Speaker 4: talked about last time, what does a virus want to do?
Speaker 4: The literal reason that it's alive is because it wants
Speaker 4: to replicate. If there is not a host for it
Speaker 4: to replicate, it cannot continue to live and it dies out.
Speaker 4: So that's how we control outbreaks.
Speaker 1: So when we think about controlling the outbreak with the vaccines,
Speaker 1: and you consider this emergency use authorization, there are a
Speaker 1: couple of things you want to understand to measure how
Speaker 1: well a vaccine works.
Speaker 5: You've probably heard the term efficacy and heard the term effectiveness.
Speaker 5: We're throwing around a couple of different terms sort of interchangeably,
Speaker 5: but there is a bit of a difference that's important
Speaker 5: to note.
Speaker 3: Efficacy is basically how well the vaccine works in the last.
Speaker 5: So when we're talking about the information coming out of
Speaker 5: these clinical trials, these human trials that have been done
Speaker 5: over the last several months, we're looking at efficacy, which
Speaker 5: is in a.
Speaker 4: Controlled setting where we're setting.
Speaker 5: Up specific individuals who are receiving a placebo and the
Speaker 5: receiving a vaccine.
Speaker 4: We are getting a measure of how.
Speaker 5: That vaccine is working to prevent infection or prevent disease
Speaker 5: among those individuals.
Speaker 3: The effectiveness of a vaccine is once a vaccine is
Speaker 3: put out into the population, how well it works in
Speaker 3: the real world.
Speaker 5: When we go into a broader population, we can start
Speaker 5: to measure effectiveness, which is sort of taking out that
Speaker 5: controlled component of the environment that we're testing.
Speaker 1: It in effectiveness. We can't know that until the vaccine
Speaker 1: is distributed because there are a couple of other things
Speaker 1: that we don't consider host factors. So we're the hosts,
Speaker 1: humans are hosting this virus. When you get infected with coronavirus,
Speaker 1: are you older, are you younger? Which underline medical conditions
Speaker 1: have better outcomes after being vaccinated. Do you have a
Speaker 1: history of other prior infections? What's your other vaccination record
Speaker 1: that may give you some additional benefits, right, And so
Speaker 1: we'll start to get more of this data when we
Speaker 1: get a larger data set. We can only get a
Speaker 1: larger data set when we distribute this broadly. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: need more people to participate so we can kind of
Speaker 1: understand some of these host factors and how they're involved.
Speaker 1: The other thing is virus factors. It may depend on
Speaker 1: your viral load, what you're exposed to.
Speaker 3: If other people in your community are more likely to
Speaker 3: get the vaccine. The effectiveness in your community may be higher,
Speaker 3: but then in another community it might be lower.
Speaker 1: Right, that's basically cocooning. If everybody around you is vaccinated,
Speaker 1: the virus can't replicate in them and they can't give
Speaker 1: it to you.
Speaker 2: My cousin did this.
Speaker 3: We had a Christmas party in Chicago and my cousin
Speaker 3: had just had a baby. She told us, if you
Speaker 3: plan on being around the baby, which we all did
Speaker 3: we're very excited, you have to get a flu shot.
Speaker 3: So we all got flu shots.
Speaker 1: Right, And so what your cousin is doing, She's saying, Hey,
Speaker 1: my baby can't get a flu shot because the flu
Speaker 1: shot isn't recommended for anybody under six months, So you
Speaker 1: guys have to get a flu shot so you won't
Speaker 1: be a host that brings the flu virus to my child.
Speaker 1: She was making sure that you guys were creating a cocoon.
Speaker 3: So we asked doctor LeMay about the specific vaccines that
Speaker 3: have been recently developed to combat the coronavirus, What are
Speaker 3: their efficacy rates and what should we expect.
Speaker 4: So in the case of vaccines, the good news is
Speaker 4: is for both the Pfizer product as well as the
Speaker 4: Maderna product. Is that when we are seeing these initial
Speaker 4: numbers right of ninety percent effectiveness ninety five percent effectiveness.
Speaker 4: To be honest, I think most of us that work
Speaker 4: in vaccine science these numbers are astonishing.
Speaker 3: So the Maderna vaccine has an efficacy rate of ninety
Speaker 3: four point five percent. The Fiser vaccine has an efficsc
Speaker 3: rate of ninety five percent. So on November twenty third,
Speaker 3: Astrazenica announced their vaccine had an average efficacy rate of
Speaker 3: seventy percent. Remember that's in the lab doing the tests.
Speaker 3: Moderna came out and said they had a vaccine with
Speaker 3: an efficacy rate of ninety four point five percent, and
Speaker 3: then Piser came out and said that they had a
Speaker 3: vaccine with an efficacy rate of ninety five percent. This
Speaker 3: sounds very good ninety five cent a in my book,
Speaker 3: but I don't know what that means in comparison to
Speaker 3: other vaccines.
Speaker 5: I believe the typical effectiveness for the flu vaccine is
Speaker 5: somewhere around fifty to sixty percent. Measles is a vaccine
Speaker 5: that is much higher in the levels of effectiveness and evaccine,
Speaker 5: but it has to be because we have to have
Speaker 5: such community conferred among these communities to actually protect people.
Speaker 1: I think the flu vaccine is a perfect comparison to
Speaker 1: what we know about the coronavirus vaccine. The effectiveness, remember
Speaker 1: that's in the community. Out in the real world, the
Speaker 1: effectiveness of the flu vaccine is lower, is fifty to
Speaker 1: sixty percent. And the reason that kind of changes is
Speaker 1: because of host factors. So did you get your flu
Speaker 1: vaccine early? Did you go to Walgreens like they told
Speaker 1: you to get that flu vaccine? Did you wait too late?
Speaker 1: But a lot of people are waiting later for the
Speaker 1: flu vaccine. That's more available host for that virus to
Speaker 1: replicate in, and the effectiveness in the community would be
Speaker 1: lower because the flu has already spread earlier in the season.
Speaker 1: Another thing to consider is that vaccines have to be
Speaker 1: produced ahead of time for distribution, So they're forecasting. They're saying,
Speaker 1: based on what we see in the beginning of the year,
Speaker 1: these are the flu strains that we think we need
Speaker 1: to vaccinate against. Now things change and the flu strains
Speaker 1: that become most rampant aren't in that vaccine, then the
Speaker 1: effectiveness is lower. So by getting vaccinated earlier, you can
Speaker 1: influence the overall effectiveness of the flu vaccine. You have power.
Speaker 3: That is such a great comparison because it really puts
Speaker 3: into perspective how well this vaccine can work if we
Speaker 3: all kind of buy into it. But what we know
Speaker 3: is that not everyone's gonna take the vaccine right. There
Speaker 3: are a lot of people who are vaccine hesitant. We
Speaker 3: talked about vaccine hesitancy in the Protect Your Neck episode
Speaker 3: and the reasons why people are vaccine hesitant, but the
Speaker 3: reasons for why people don't want to take the COVID
Speaker 3: vaccine they're different pre COVID.
Speaker 4: You know, generally people's concerns fell into four categories when
Speaker 4: we're talking about hesitancy. So one would be ingredients. People
Speaker 4: were really concerned about ingredients that are in vaccines. Two
Speaker 4: would be things related to the schedule, and this is
Speaker 4: related to children vaccines. People are just concerned about the
Speaker 4: number of vaccines and doses that children were getting. The
Speaker 4: third thing that we found is sort of I think
Speaker 4: the elephant in the room misperception that vaccines can cause
Speaker 4: serious adverse events such as autism, even though this has
Speaker 4: been refuted soundly over and over and over again that
Speaker 4: there is no causal link at all between exposure to
Speaker 4: a vaccine and autism. And the fourth is really risk perception. Right,
Speaker 4: so people are like, we've never seen polio before, why
Speaker 4: do I need to get a polio vaccine?
Speaker 1: That is a really good point. People are like, we've
Speaker 1: never seen polio before, why do I need to get
Speaker 1: a polio vaccine? And I think we saw this same
Speaker 1: type of mentality with I don't know anybody who has coronavirus,
Speaker 1: why do I need to wear a mask? Exactly now
Speaker 1: in our post COVID world, we're seeing that same vaccine hesitancy,
Speaker 1: but for different reasons. One of those is scientific mistrust.
Speaker 3: That is such a good point, and Zakiah and I
Speaker 3: wrote an article in Scientific American about this topic, about
Speaker 3: why folks are vaccine hesitanting. We'll put a link in
Speaker 3: the show description and in our show notes. Go check
Speaker 3: out that article. It's called why so many ers are
Speaker 3: skeptical of the coronavirus vaccine?
Speaker 1: And some of the main points that we hit in
Speaker 1: that editorial. Doctor LeMay also mentions that she and her
Speaker 1: other public health communicators that they're considering those same things.
Speaker 1: The first of these is distrust in information.
Speaker 4: I don't know who came up with this name Operation
Speaker 4: Warp Speed, but it does not convey a sense of
Speaker 4: like systematic scientific thoroughness with regards to the process. That
Speaker 4: science has taken a backseat. You could see when administration
Speaker 4: officials would come up and say something, and then doctor
Speaker 4: Fauci would come right after and say, well, actually that's
Speaker 4: not exactly right. So I think it is sowed. I
Speaker 4: would say this distrust.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, for real, let's call a spade a spade.
Speaker 3: The administration really fumbled the ball.
Speaker 1: If I think about what we were expecting based on
Speaker 1: our visit to NIH in February, and what we got
Speaker 1: is like how it started and how it ended up.
Speaker 1: That's not right, right, that's not right exactly.
Speaker 3: Like if you go back and listen to that episode
Speaker 3: Don't Pass the Corona, we sound very relaxed when we're
Speaker 3: talking about coronavirus.
Speaker 2: We're like, wash your hands, wash your hands, cover your
Speaker 2: mouth when you cough with your elbow.
Speaker 3: We sound very relaxed, like, oh, you know, it'll be fine,
Speaker 3: everything will be fine. And if we had known what
Speaker 3: was going on behind the scenes, I'm like, panic, panic, panic.
Speaker 1: Well, I think that's the thing, right, and that's what
Speaker 1: doctor Lamay is saying when she says the science took
Speaker 1: a backseat because we were there with the scientists who
Speaker 1: were working on that ninety four point five percent efficacy
Speaker 1: vaccine in the same building, right, And when we saw that,
Speaker 1: I said, oh, yes, I have full confidence. Right absolutely,
Speaker 1: the lab coats on the ground knew what was going on.
Speaker 1: They knew what needed to happen. They had the right information.
Speaker 3: And they were were king honey. We were there late.
Speaker 3: I was like, it is dinner time. These people are like, okay,
Speaker 3: let's do one more. I'm like, well more what I'm hungry?
Speaker 1: I said, If I see another mini prep, I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's time for me to retire to the boudoir.
Speaker 1: And so I think seeing that gave us this sense
Speaker 1: of comfort, and because we knew that potential, it felt
Speaker 1: even worse to see it all just crumble in execution.
Speaker 1: And I think that's part of why people still have
Speaker 1: some of this hesitancy, because even if they trust the science,
Speaker 1: they don't trust it as administered in the right way
Speaker 1: or that is not politicized or being held hostage for
Speaker 1: political motivations, especially in an election year.
Speaker 4: And we were looking at tracking of how hesitancy has
Speaker 4: changed related to COVID from March until about now, and
Speaker 4: what we have found is that confidence or trust in
Speaker 4: the vaccine development process have dropped by an average of
Speaker 4: about fifteen percent. There is this perceived political influence, this
Speaker 4: fact that it's an expedited timeline, even though, as we
Speaker 4: try to communicate as clearly as we can, even though
Speaker 4: it's expedited, it's still the exact same steps that any
Speaker 4: sort of product would go through with regards to vaccine development.
Speaker 4: So I think all of these factors together have caused
Speaker 4: this huge change and hasency.
Speaker 2: That is such a good point.
Speaker 3: And I think another reason why folks are feeling unsure
Speaker 3: about the COVID vaccine is because it's a two dose vaccine,
Speaker 3: so that means that you would be getting two different
Speaker 3: injections and that's something that most people are.
Speaker 2: Not used to.
Speaker 1: And this is changing very quickly. When we wrote that article,
Speaker 1: it was around fifty percent. Now we're talking two thirds
Speaker 1: of people, so what sixty seven percent? We need a
Speaker 1: harder reset. We got to turn some things around very quickly.
Speaker 3: This widespread hesitancy around the COVID vaccine has really serious implications.
Speaker 3: For trying to achieve community protection or herd immunity.
Speaker 5: We know that as much as two thirds of the
Speaker 5: population is already saying they're not going to get a
Speaker 5: vaccine for the foreseeable future at least. What does that
Speaker 5: mean for our ability to control the pandemic and to
Speaker 5: control these things that people are also raising concerns about.
Speaker 5: So the longer it takes us to get a vaccine
Speaker 5: to enough people, the longer we're going to need to
Speaker 5: keep these other restrict like masks, like controlling social gathering
Speaker 5: things like that, which are similar interventions and areas where
Speaker 5: people are raising concerns as well.
Speaker 3: We're going to take a quick break and when we
Speaker 3: get back, we're going to talk all about what we've
Speaker 3: learned so far and what the new game plan should be.
Speaker 1: So we're back and we're talking vaccine hesitancy and what
Speaker 1: the new strategies should be. So right before the break,
Speaker 1: we were talking about the increase or the rise in
Speaker 1: vaccine hesitancy over the past couple of months.
Speaker 3: According to doctor LeMay and Molly, effective communication is all
Speaker 3: about transparency and empathy.
Speaker 4: COVID is new. However, what's amazing and awesome about science
Speaker 4: is that we're learning about it every day, which means
Speaker 4: we should communicate recommendations as they change. Perfect example that
Speaker 4: we had to deal with early on was that first
Speaker 4: the CDC did not recommend the wearing of masks. Right
Speaker 4: a few months later, the CDC was like, you know,
Speaker 4: it's really important for us to wear masks. And one
Speaker 4: thing that we tried to do very much with our
Speaker 4: communication that we were advising the mayor's office was that
Speaker 4: we need to talk about that if we have new recommendations.
Speaker 4: That is how science should be working. So being very
Speaker 4: upfront and saying this is what I know today, right,
Speaker 4: this is what the science has told me today with
Speaker 4: regards to protective measures, and really being transparent and saying
Speaker 4: that we're learning something new every day based on the science.
Speaker 4: And I think transparency is going to be such a huge,
Speaker 4: huge issue here.
Speaker 3: I think with transparency, it's important for folks to understand
Speaker 3: that science is ever changing. Every day, the science is changing,
Speaker 3: and I think part of the reason why folks were
Speaker 3: kind of like confused, like huh, what is going on
Speaker 3: is because there is no window into that world to
Speaker 3: see like, Okay, we learned something new, so now we're
Speaker 3: going to change the guidance. And I think that that's
Speaker 3: something that as scientists in the lab, if we pull
Speaker 3: back this curtain a little bit, there's not anything crazy
Speaker 3: going on. It's just that as scientists learn new things,
Speaker 3: they have to change what their communication to us is.
Speaker 1: I feel like the documentary Totally under Control on Hulu
Speaker 1: really captured this. I think what we saw was this
Speaker 1: push and pull. We've talked about it TT on some
Speaker 1: other people's podcasts about science communication and effective communication and
Speaker 1: this need to understand this dynamic nature of things changing daily.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mesh well with how our leaders speak
Speaker 1: to our nation, or in smaller buckets, how our governors
Speaker 1: and mayors speak to the populations. Right, so they want
Speaker 1: to say something definitive. You may feel like you're not
Speaker 1: powerful or you're not doing what's right. If you say, hey,
Speaker 1: actually we don't know what's going on right now, we'll
Speaker 1: get back to you when we figure something out. That
Speaker 1: doesn't and inspire confidence in the people listening. But that's
Speaker 1: actually manipulative, right, because you're trying to control how people feel,
Speaker 1: so you tell them something different. And I think that's
Speaker 1: the transparency that was missing that Rupali and Molly were
Speaker 1: talking about the other half of this is empathy.
Speaker 5: People have been dealing with us for a really long time.
Speaker 5: We're looking at communities that have been facing not only
Speaker 5: the burden of disease, but the economic impacts dealing with
Speaker 5: missed schooling as.
Speaker 4: The education system has been affected. So there's a lot
Speaker 4: of impacts.
Speaker 5: On families and communities and individuals. But there's a light
Speaker 5: at the end of the tunnel, and we're doing everything
Speaker 5: we can to help address this.
Speaker 1: When we consider empathy and we consider the people who
Speaker 1: are doing this communication, we also need to hold some
Speaker 1: folks accountable if we're going to be truly empathetic. Right,
Speaker 1: there's empathy where you say, oh, I know your kids
Speaker 1: are at home, but we still need you to work
Speaker 1: and do all this stuff. But then there is also
Speaker 1: empathy with action, and empathy with action says stay at
Speaker 1: home and we will make sure that there's for all. Right,
Speaker 1: it says, reduce your interactions with folks, don't go out,
Speaker 1: don't get together with people, but make sure that people
Speaker 1: who are staying alone have the supplies that they need.
Speaker 1: Making sure that people who are at higher risk don't
Speaker 1: have to go out to get what they need, but
Speaker 1: that we have services that will support them.
Speaker 3: So setting up an infrastructure that is beneficial to all people,
Speaker 3: not just a few of us.
Speaker 1: Right if you say, who has the least individual infrastructure
Speaker 1: for support? Right, if we ensure that there is infrastructure
Speaker 1: level support for them, we are building empathy into our
Speaker 1: systems so you don't have to scramble in the case
Speaker 1: of a disaster.
Speaker 3: Right, I don't want your thoughts in prayers. I need
Speaker 3: somewhere to live, I need food to eat. Like thoughts
Speaker 3: and prayers don't really get those things to me. Right,
Speaker 3: their infrastructure set up. When the power goes out, PEPCO
Speaker 3: is on the move, honey, Like they know exactly what
Speaker 3: they're supposed to do. They have protocols and procedures in
Speaker 3: place to make sure that you will not be without power.
Speaker 3: We need to keep that same energy when it comes
Speaker 3: to the prosperity of all people in the world. Let's
Speaker 3: have things in place to ensure that when things like
Speaker 3: this happen. Because the thing about pandemics is that they
Speaker 3: are going to happen. They will happen, they are guaranteed
Speaker 3: to happen. And all of these officials know that there
Speaker 3: should be policies and procedures in place to ensure that
Speaker 3: all of us are able to make it through this
Speaker 3: and that the rates of cases and deaths and hospitalizations
Speaker 3: are as low as possible.
Speaker 1: You've made a really good point. You said, we know
Speaker 1: this is going to happen. It's happened before. It's happened
Speaker 1: in smaller scenarios that maybe were just little blips on
Speaker 1: our news radar because they were controlled really quickly. But
Speaker 1: there are playbooks for this right And I think another
Speaker 1: part beyond transparency and empathy is who's giving the message.
Speaker 1: Because you're more likely to listen to some folks than others.
Speaker 4: We're going to have to identify influencers that people trust.
Speaker 3: When doctor LeMay says influencers, it's not what you think.
Speaker 3: She's talking about people that you trust and would listen
Speaker 3: to when we're talking about things like vaccines, so not
Speaker 3: Kylie Jenner.
Speaker 4: We were talking to someone from the CDC. I was
Speaker 4: on a different panel, and this poor individual from the
Speaker 4: CDC was like, why am I not a trusted voice?
Speaker 4: And I said, the reason you're not a trusted voice
Speaker 4: is not your fault. It has to do with the
Speaker 4: fact as how the CDC has reversed guidelines. People think
Speaker 4: the process has been tainted. So as a result, we
Speaker 4: need to identify other voices that can come out and
Speaker 4: can talk about this and that perhaps can start to
Speaker 4: rebuild that trust between the public and public health institutions
Speaker 4: at large.
Speaker 3: Even though COVID is a global pandemic, there's been success
Speaker 3: by approaching communication strategies through a more local lens, focusing
Speaker 3: on the most effective ways to reach smaller at risk communities.
Speaker 5: So we've in Baltimore and in some of the nearby communities,
Speaker 5: we have looked at ways to leverage social media for
Speaker 5: different settings. There was a need to engage people and
Speaker 5: share information from long term care facilities, senior housing where.
Speaker 4: Families outside were really concerned.
Speaker 5: About what was happening to their family members inside, but
Speaker 5: there was no way to really be directly engaged. And
Speaker 5: we knew that Facebook was a tool that they were
Speaker 5: using on both ends of that kind of telephone line, right,
Speaker 5: So we were able to work with the city and
Speaker 5: support them in doing some videos and some engagement using
Speaker 5: that tool to reach the people who needed the information.
Speaker 5: So it's really about targeting those strategies and then tailoring
Speaker 5: the messages. We've also done a ton of work and
Speaker 5: seen in a number of places, not just here in Baltimore,
Speaker 5: looking at some of the other ways people get information.
Speaker 5: The city's in particular because we're covering a huge population
Speaker 5: as many ways as we can.
Speaker 4: So there's been.
Speaker 5: Everything from targeted radio work to share information, to setting
Speaker 5: up press conferences, to talking to food delivery entities or
Speaker 5: ways that people are getting some of their basic and
Speaker 5: leveraging those people to share some of the important health information.
Speaker 1: I think that's a really good strategy. At some point
Speaker 1: I had to turn the news off. I was not
Speaker 1: watching any more press conferences right but I was getting
Speaker 1: Uber eats.
Speaker 3: I've had a lot of Uber eats. I've eaten a
Speaker 3: lot of bonshon in the quarantine. If you follow me
Speaker 3: on Twitter, you know that I've had bon chon, probably.
Speaker 2: More than I should have. What have you been getting
Speaker 2: from overeats?
Speaker 1: I'm getting ramen from uber eats, and my goodness, I
Speaker 1: have been enjoying that. Now you've put a sticky note
Speaker 1: on the top of that ramen or a flyer that
Speaker 1: says here's what you should be doing right now, effective
Speaker 1: I won't see it. I'm gonna see it.
Speaker 3: Yes, have every door dash person be handing out a flyer.
Speaker 1: And compensate them for doing it.
Speaker 2: Exactly if we think.
Speaker 1: About making these strides, whether it's general awareness of vaccines,
Speaker 1: whether it's disputing misinformation and clarifying some missing points, the
Speaker 1: next step after that information is the action. Yes, and
Speaker 1: I think that is what feels the most unknown to me.
Speaker 1: So we know about vaccine hesitancy. Considering what we know,
Speaker 1: what does this mean for the rollout the delivery of
Speaker 1: a vaccine?
Speaker 5: I think moving forward this idea of how we distribute
Speaker 5: the vaccine, and more importantly, how we talk about how
Speaker 5: we're going to distribute it is going to be such
Speaker 5: a challenge. We're starting with, ideally, those highest risk categories,
Speaker 5: the people who are most likely to be exposed and
Speaker 5: to be exposed frequently, and who are going to potentially
Speaker 5: have the greatest risk of serious disease from that. So
Speaker 5: right now, the first tier includes things like frontline healthcare
Speaker 5: workers like EMTs and nurses, who are exposed to.
Speaker 4: This all the time and who we really rely on.
Speaker 5: To continue to help control the pandemic. But as we
Speaker 5: move down those tiers, it does get a bit more
Speaker 5: complicated and we start to raise a lot of ethical
Speaker 5: questions and questions about how people are going to perceive this.
Speaker 3: Okay, So Business Insider they put out a chart of
Speaker 3: what we might be expecting for rollout of the coronavirus vaccine.
Speaker 3: I'm saying in December of this year to January of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty one, approved vaccines start to go out to
Speaker 3: the four priority groups, which is healthcare workers, frontline workers,
Speaker 3: people over sixty five, and people with pre existing conditions.
Speaker 3: And that distribution continues through April of twenty twenty one,
Speaker 3: and then from April to June of twenty twenty one,
Speaker 3: the vaccines become more widely available to young, healthy members
Speaker 3: of the general population, and then July to September of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty one, most adults in the US who want
Speaker 3: the vaccine will likely have access to it.
Speaker 2: At that point.
Speaker 3: By this time next year, herd immunity through vaccination could
Speaker 3: be reached in the US if seventy five percent of
Speaker 3: people or more get their shots. And we'll have more
Speaker 3: information about all of these different tiers, who's going to
Speaker 3: be first, last, and everything in between in our show notes,
Speaker 3: So make sure you check that out.
Speaker 1: We're just so deep in the pandemic and seeing all
Speaker 1: these numbers rise as we move into the holiday season,
Speaker 1: it's hard to think about what moving out of it
Speaker 1: will be. Like I'm ready to move out of it, yes,
Speaker 1: but it's hard for me to see the clear path
Speaker 1: to that, right.
Speaker 2: And then it.
Speaker 3: Also makes me think, what will we do differently if
Speaker 3: this happens again?
Speaker 2: Because it will happen again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's all we do. We're scientists. That's what you
Speaker 1: do is how do I optimize this? How do I
Speaker 1: make it better? What variables stay the same? What variables
Speaker 1: will we change? I think this was really a wake
Speaker 1: up call because seeing these multiple waves and spikes, I'm like,
Speaker 1: behavior is not changing. The model tells us what's going
Speaker 1: to happen if we don't change these things.
Speaker 3: Right, Because I mean even when you think of like
Speaker 3: pandemics from the past, over one hundred years ago, people
Speaker 3: weren't traveling the same way, people weren't interacting, like we
Speaker 3: didn't have this globalization that we do have now, right,
Speaker 3: which is what facilitated the really rapid spread of the coronavirus.
Speaker 3: So when I think what fifty years from now or
Speaker 3: another one hundred years from now, which I do care
Speaker 3: about those folks. I am one of those people who
Speaker 3: care about even when I'm dead and gone. I want
Speaker 3: to make sure that the things that we leave behind
Speaker 3: will set people up for success.
Speaker 2: Yes, what were there? How different will their lives be?
Speaker 3: Can we project and be able to put policies in
Speaker 3: place in order to facilitate them getting through a pandemic safely?
Speaker 1: Or will we have short term memory? Because I see
Speaker 1: people forgetting what we learned in March and here we
Speaker 1: are just at the cusp of December.
Speaker 4: The sad part is we know that this is not
Speaker 4: the last in terms of a pandemic. At Hopkins, we
Speaker 4: have been working on modeling and thinking about this pandemic.
Speaker 4: We do this exercise every year that essentially do like
Speaker 4: a simulation, but look at transmission, that look at you
Speaker 4: different types of pathogens, that look at the reproductive rate,
Speaker 4: all of these different things. So we have been kind
Speaker 4: of practicing for this for a long time, and once
Speaker 4: we get out of COVID, my biggest concern is, let's
Speaker 4: not forget lessons learned here.
Speaker 1: So what have we learned?
Speaker 4: One thing that we have definitely one hundred percent learned
Speaker 4: is how do we make sure that leaders are transparent
Speaker 4: and accountable. But for this to work, we have to
Speaker 4: be better as humans. We cannot go around and just
Speaker 4: as essentially not say things that are incorrect, be inaccurate,
Speaker 4: put people at risk because you're trying to put your
Speaker 4: economic whatever sort of as the priority. And to me,
Speaker 4: that is the one thing we have learned. This is
Speaker 4: a great opportunity for us to rehaul the partnership between
Speaker 4: public health and public officials. How do we redefine this
Speaker 4: relationship and how do we make sure that people are
Speaker 4: held accountable.
Speaker 1: That is so beautifully sid right, because it really captures
Speaker 1: a lot of the things we've been talking about this
Speaker 1: entire season. It's not just are you sick, but do
Speaker 1: you have the things you need to keep your risk
Speaker 1: low to keep you away from possibility of future sickness.
Speaker 3: Exactly because what we know is is that the effects
Speaker 3: of coronavirus is not just oh do you have to
Speaker 3: go to the hospital, do you stay home? Are you
Speaker 3: contagious or not? It has trickled down effects on all
Speaker 3: aspects of our life. We've talked about how it affects
Speaker 3: us socially, how it affects housing, how it affects our food, infrastructure,
Speaker 3: all these different things are affected by a virus.
Speaker 1: Yeah, affected by this vaccine and our response to it.
Speaker 1: We failed that test, right, Yes, we failed that test,
Speaker 1: and we failed it really quickly. And so now we've
Speaker 1: got to stand up and really say, how do we
Speaker 1: rebuild without those same disparities, without those same inequities that
Speaker 1: were in our system and that coronavirus so quickly exposed.
Speaker 3: Right, we have to be realistic with ourselves and say,
Speaker 3: these are the things that we did wrong. How can
Speaker 3: we do the right thing moving forward? That's it for
Speaker 3: semester three. I cannot believe we have already finished the
Speaker 3: third semester.
Speaker 1: It went by so fast, and I just have so
Speaker 1: many more things I want to explore with you. Guys.
Speaker 3: We're gonna miss you so much, but make sure that
Speaker 3: you stay in touch and let us know what you
Speaker 3: want to hear from us in semester four, and we'll
Speaker 3: be back as soon as we can can. Stay safe,
Speaker 3: be positive and stay COVID negative.
Speaker 1: Yes, and keep your distance, wear your masks and wear
Speaker 1: your mask.
Speaker 3: That's it for Lab thirty six and semester three. But
Speaker 3: we have so much more for you to dig into
Speaker 3: on our website. So head on over to Dope Labs
Speaker 3: podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: On our website you can find a cheat sheet for
Speaker 1: today's lab, along with a ton of other links and
Speaker 1: resources in the show notes.
Speaker 3: And if you want to stay in the no with
Speaker 3: Dope Labs, don't forget to sign up for our newsletter
Speaker 3: on our site.
Speaker 1: Too special thanks to our guests experts today Doctor Rupali
Speaker 1: Lamay and Molly Sour.
Speaker 3: Make sure you check out our show notes on Dope
Speaker 3: labspodcast dot com to find out more about their work
Speaker 3: and how you can follow them.
Speaker 1: Also, we love hearing from you. What did you think
Speaker 1: about today's lab? Do you have ideas for future labs?
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Speaker 1: And Zakiah Wattley. Do you think that works? I think
Speaker 1: I might have been too flustered when I was saying it.
Speaker 1: I might need to take it again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, try one more time.
Speaker 1: Thank you friend, Mam.
Speaker 4: Do you hear that?
Speaker 1: Do you hear it?
Speaker 5: Just?
Speaker 1: Oh, great support I have. My eyes are watering. It's
Speaker 1: just so patient