Speaker 1: I was never a Manhattan guy, but I was down
Speaker 1: in town before. You know, like a few times you
Speaker 1: couldn't make anything out like it was just everything was
Speaker 1: just snipe destroyed. I just stood like gigantic whole rubble everywhere.
Speaker 1: On September eleven, Jonathan Dematto was working as an emergency
Speaker 1: medical technician in the Bronx. By the time he was
Speaker 1: able to get from his station to the Financial District,
Speaker 1: it was dark. He helped search for people among the rubble.
Speaker 1: Lots of smoke, lots of uh yeah, I guess from
Speaker 1: the fires that were all They're lots of smoke. It
Speaker 1: was definitely something on the embassy. Again. He was a kid,
Speaker 1: only twenty two years old and on the job for
Speaker 1: maybe a year. John is now a lieutenant paramedic with
Speaker 1: the New York City Fire Department. He's grown a bit
Speaker 1: numbed to the daily stresses of his line of work.
Speaker 1: A lot of these things don't get to me. Not
Speaker 1: not that I don't I don't the late because I
Speaker 1: do relate. But if I let everything get to me,
Speaker 1: I would never be able to do this job. In
Speaker 1: two decades on the job, there had never been a
Speaker 1: day quite as insane as September eleventh, it stood out
Speaker 1: for him as maybe the most extreme moment in his career.
Speaker 1: That was until March. On this Monday night, ramping up
Speaker 1: the response to the COVID nineteen outbreak, we're seeing the
Speaker 1: epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak shift here to the United States.
Speaker 1: Bad News New York City coronavirus cases sore now accounting
Speaker 1: for one third of all cases in the US, and
Speaker 1: to stop the spread of the virus, government were taking it.
Speaker 1: John says the intensity of nine eleven doesn't even come
Speaker 1: close to what he has endured over the past year. Now,
Speaker 1: in addition to saving lives, it frequently feels like he
Speaker 1: is also risking his own. Clearly, when masked up, we
Speaker 1: have goggles on. You know that you're protected, but you're
Speaker 1: exposing yourself to this every single day versus that was
Speaker 1: a one time event. Since March, the looming threat of
Speaker 1: contracting COVID nineteen has been unyielding for John. This is
Speaker 1: every day. Hopefully you don't get it today, you know,
Speaker 1: hopefully you protect yourself properly and whatever the case is.
Speaker 1: Just after Thanksgiving, John shared an article from CNBC on Facebook.
Speaker 1: It suggested that doctors needed to warn people that vaccines
Speaker 1: might come with side effects. The article clearly annoyed him.
Speaker 1: He thought concerns about vaccines were overblown and people should
Speaker 1: just get there as soon as it was available. Here's
Speaker 1: John reading has posed. Of course you should know the
Speaker 1: side effects. Does it matter? Though the virus has shut
Speaker 1: the entire world down for almost a year. People have
Speaker 1: lost their way of life. Our kids are definitely going
Speaker 1: to be the stupidest generation for all the school they
Speaker 1: have missed. Families are ruined. But make sure you don't
Speaker 1: get vaccinated because of the side effects. I get it.
Speaker 1: Someone agree, but oh well. Then his ant texted him.
Speaker 1: She was like, you know, listen in the end, do
Speaker 1: what you want. But um, I'm gonna send you a
Speaker 1: few things. So my aunts and nurse. She's in disease control.
Speaker 1: So I said, all right, I said, let me look
Speaker 1: because I'm I say anti factor, I was never I'm
Speaker 1: still not an anti factor. Like I get my flu shot,
Speaker 1: I don't technically believe in it. It's only accurate. One
Speaker 1: video John's aunts to him was especially persuasive. Most of
Speaker 1: the information in the video was not true, but John
Speaker 1: didn't know that. Historically coronaviruses of vaccines for coronaviruses have
Speaker 1: had a terrible safety record. The video shows an older,
Speaker 1: bespectacled man in a boxing suit at a podium. We've
Speaker 1: decided to not name the person in this video in
Speaker 1: hopes of avoiding spreading this kind of misinformation. The concerns
Speaker 1: he raises would be pretty terrifying if they were true.
Speaker 1: He suggests that drugmakers were ignoring major safety issues in
Speaker 1: the interest of rushing a vaccine to market as quickly
Speaker 1: as possible. Once I saw that video and the literature
Speaker 1: she was sending me, I was like, man, how I
Speaker 1: didn't even consider not getting it? And I if I
Speaker 1: didn't know it was an R and A type sequence,
Speaker 1: what else do I know about it? You know? What
Speaker 1: John's referring to here is the fact that both the
Speaker 1: Maderna and Fiser covid vaccines use a technology called m RNA.
Speaker 1: A lot of vaccines people are familiar with, like the
Speaker 1: ones for polio and the measles, work by using a
Speaker 1: tiny amount of weakened or inactive virus to trigger an
Speaker 1: immune response. Initially, John had just assumed that's what the
Speaker 1: covid vaccines were, but m RNA vaccines instead teach the
Speaker 1: body how to produce proteins that spur an immune response.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like an instruction manual for how to
Speaker 1: fight COVID. There's a lot of excitement over m RNA
Speaker 1: vaccines because it's way faster and easier to develop them.
Speaker 1: They don't require growing large amounts of a virus and
Speaker 1: then taking the time to weaken or inactivate it, and
Speaker 1: m r n A vaccines have been studied before for
Speaker 1: the flu, zekea and rabies. Cancer research has also used
Speaker 1: mRNA to trigger the immune system to attack cancer selves.
Speaker 1: All of this is to say that this may be
Speaker 1: a newer technology, but it is definitely not an unknown one.
Speaker 1: Everything we know at this point suggests the m RNA
Speaker 1: vaccines are not only safe, but extremely effective. Still, it's
Speaker 1: true that there has never been an m RNA vaccine
Speaker 1: on the market, and the video pointed out to John
Speaker 1: that this was just yet another aspect of the pandemic
Speaker 1: that felt uncertain. I really don't know much about it,
Speaker 1: and to be honest, I'm I'm a little skeptical about
Speaker 1: the whole the way the RNA does its thing, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm a little skeptical about it. The video was convincing.
Speaker 1: Here was this guy whipping out all of these big
Speaker 1: scientific terms, speaking passionately, seemingly pleading to anyone who would hear,
Speaker 1: that we are putting everyone at risk with this vaccine.
Speaker 1: And then when my aunt sent me this video, when
Speaker 1: I was watching it, this one in particular, doctor I
Speaker 1: started talking about how he identified an issue with the protein.
Speaker 1: When John saw that video, it planted the tiniest seed
Speaker 1: of doubt in his mind about getting the vaccine. Suddenly,
Speaker 1: the potential side effects didn't seem that irrelevant anymore. What
Speaker 1: if I take it and something happens to me down
Speaker 1: the road, I'm torn between both, you know, I really
Speaker 1: am a torn between both. So then I started doing
Speaker 1: my research on the on the actual doctor who did
Speaker 1: the video, and everything came back like positive on the doctor.
Speaker 1: John felt like he needed to learn more about what
Speaker 1: the skeptics were saying about this vaccine. He spent hours
Speaker 1: researching them. And if you go looking for this stuff
Speaker 1: on the internet, it is not hard to find information
Speaker 1: that confirms your worst fears. It's very, very scary stuff.
Speaker 1: I've been a doctor for a long time. Before me,
Speaker 1: my father is a doctor. I'm not anti vaccine, definitely.
Speaker 1: You should not be calling this the COVID nineteen vaccines.
Speaker 1: The reason is, whatever you call it, it's experimental. I
Speaker 1: don't really want to be the first person to take
Speaker 1: grand new things when it comes to medicine. How many
Speaker 1: of those happily queuing up to be vaccinated, no that
Speaker 1: The list of possible adverse event outcomes what most people
Speaker 1: call side effects, includes the following on various syndrome transverse
Speaker 1: myelitis myelitis and capalo myelitis meningitis. And the game is
Speaker 1: to prevent the therapies till everyone is infected and push
Speaker 1: the vaccine. Convulsions, stroke, nocalypsy, cataplexy, and they'll kill millions,
Speaker 1: as they already have with their vaccines, kill millions, venus
Speaker 1: authoritis death. You really don't do the law sque The
Speaker 1: more he read and watched, the more John's tiny theed
Speaker 1: of doubt grew. One text from his aunt had taken
Speaker 1: John from vaccine advocate to full blown skeptic. I was
Speaker 1: so blind, I didn't even look to see what the
Speaker 1: other side, what the people who are not getting the vaccination,
Speaker 1: and why I didn't even consider it, like It wasn't
Speaker 1: even a thought in my head, like why would I
Speaker 1: not get the vaccination. I didn't know it was an
Speaker 1: RNA type vaccination. I still I thought it was a
Speaker 1: weekend fly virus. So after I started doing research, I
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, I understand why some people aren't getting it.
Speaker 1: John is not alone. A February pupil found that about
Speaker 1: thirty of Americans did not plan to get vaccinated. That
Speaker 1: number was actually an improvement over earlier polls. Those numbers
Speaker 1: are troubling. Some experts suggest that they are probably not
Speaker 1: high enough for the vaccine to work. How do we
Speaker 1: get to this point, to a point where even healthcare
Speaker 1: workers are suspicious of the vaccines. If anybody understands the
Speaker 1: toll of this virus, it's people on the front lines
Speaker 1: like John Sure. Their online conspiracy theories and the way
Speaker 1: some coronavirus vaccines have been made is kind of new.
Speaker 1: But the thing is, this crisis in public confidence didn't
Speaker 1: start in March, or with the development of a COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen vaccine, or even with the misinformation heavy presidency of
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. It has been brewing for a long long time.
Speaker 1: I'm Christophe Brown, a healthcare reporter for Bloomberg News. This
Speaker 1: is Doubt, a podcast from Prognosis. We're going to tell
Speaker 1: you a story about how vaccines have gone from something
Speaker 1: viewed as harmless, routine, and life saving to something polarizing, protested,
Speaker 1: and feared. Over the past year has felt like the
Speaker 1: once fringe concerns about vaccines have suddenly gone viral. This
Speaker 1: is not a podcast about science. This is a podcast
Speaker 1: about how people come to hold their beliefs. We know
Speaker 1: vac scenes are safe and effective, but we'll show how mistrust, misinformation,
Speaker 1: and the Internet all undermine that fact. In the past year,
Speaker 1: we've seen that growing vaccine hesitancy has serious consequences. It
Speaker 1: has made it that much harder to control the pandemic.
Speaker 1: John the paramedic, still remembers the very first COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: case he treated. It was a gentleman who sick, not
Speaker 1: terribly sick, but sick, really weak, hell short of breath.
Speaker 1: This was April of last year. As a lieutenant, John's
Speaker 1: job involves a lot of paperwork. The virus had already
Speaker 1: been spreading for weeks before he went into the field
Speaker 1: and saw someone sick with what seemed to be COVID.
Speaker 1: When he got to the scene, he didn't know what
Speaker 1: to make of it. But not like you see some
Speaker 1: people that I just can't read. He was just short
Speaker 1: of you know. In the paramedics put the pulse socks
Speaker 1: on them and it was like sixty. Pulse socks is
Speaker 1: short for pul sock cimeter. It's a small device that
Speaker 1: slides onto a person's finger and can measure how well
Speaker 1: their heart is pumping oxygen through their body. Any reading
Speaker 1: below ninety is low. Someone with a reading of sixty
Speaker 1: like this man would usually be having a lot of
Speaker 1: trouble breathing if they were conscious at all. This guy
Speaker 1: was weak and pale, but only a little short of breath.
Speaker 1: I've never in my life seen somebody with a sixty
Speaker 1: like that looks fairly okay. But over and over throughout
Speaker 1: the last year, John witnessed patients his blood oxygen levels
Speaker 1: were dangerously low, yet looked relatively fine. It was weird
Speaker 1: every job the cruise, whether the patient was just sick
Speaker 1: or whether the patient was really short of breath or unconscious.
Speaker 1: Every job, the pulse oxes was seventies and eighties, and
Speaker 1: that's not something that you commonly see. When you're like
Speaker 1: the first line work of seeing someone who's that sick,
Speaker 1: and then the hospital doesn't even have to treat it,
Speaker 1: but yet you have to a lot of the cruise
Speaker 1: got nervous and panic. All of this uncertainty around COVID
Speaker 1: was a scary thing for John. He wasn't just worried
Speaker 1: about himself when he saw COVID spreading like wildfire. He
Speaker 1: was worried about bringing it home to his five kids,
Speaker 1: and especially to his four year old son, Nico. It
Speaker 1: was right after Nico was born they found some pretty
Speaker 1: severe are issues with his heart. We were leaving, we
Speaker 1: would leave in the hospital, were discharged, and that at
Speaker 1: hospital a few like two or three years probably had
Speaker 1: to implemented. A post office check comes down to the
Speaker 1: post office. Did a post office check and his was
Speaker 1: so if it's less than fifty, it gives an arrow
Speaker 1: like less than and he popped up less than. Oh no,
Speaker 1: I can't mean this keeps in the in the room
Speaker 1: with us today like he's not the quote cyanotic, he's
Speaker 1: not blue, he's not breathing heavy. How was this kid's
Speaker 1: post office less? So they did it with another one,
Speaker 1: the other machine, same thing that was it gone to
Speaker 1: come upstairs, you know, brush from upstairs. I su su
Speaker 1: did a whole bunch of tests. Within two hours. They
Speaker 1: were like, we have to transform out. We'll go on
Speaker 1: an ambulance. It turned out that Nico had multiple problems
Speaker 1: with his heart. He was born without a pulmonary valve
Speaker 1: and without the wall that divides the left and right
Speaker 1: chambers of the heart. Nico has had so many surgeries
Speaker 1: in his short life that John can't remember exactly how many.
Speaker 1: He's gone through eight on nine surgeries, you know, um,
Speaker 1: and still needs some down the road. People with heart
Speaker 1: issues are especially at risk of developing severe cases of
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen. The disease can also damage the respiratory system
Speaker 1: and make it harder for the heart to work. If
Speaker 1: I if I brought him in the room, you would
Speaker 1: lookt him. You never even know he had all these surgeries.
Speaker 1: He's like, amazing, But I don't want to get him sick,
Speaker 1: you know. Back in the spring of John's job felt
Speaker 1: especially dangerous. There was so little information about exactly who
Speaker 1: was most at risk for the virus, and Nico was
Speaker 1: waiting on a critical surgery to repair his heart. The
Speaker 1: Fire Department offered hotels to first responders who are worried
Speaker 1: about bringing the virus home to their families. I debated
Speaker 1: taking this these hotels because they had them in every
Speaker 1: borrow that they had, But but then I'm like, you know,
Speaker 1: am I gonna see my kids for weeks? On him? That?
Speaker 1: And John couldn't very well leave his wife at home
Speaker 1: with five kids to take care of by herself. John
Speaker 1: has close cropped, dark hair and a thin mustache. He
Speaker 1: looks young and projects the sort of zen attitude of
Speaker 1: chillness about the state of everything. But when I talked
Speaker 1: to him over Zoom, I can tell that he is tired,
Speaker 1: reclining against the headboard in his bedroom. Other times, when
Speaker 1: we talk kids, often in our the conversation that Nico
Speaker 1: is that Nico Lorenzo. Why John now has more overnight workshifts.
Speaker 1: They can go for sixteen hours, and he's constantly dealing
Speaker 1: with his kids when he's home. It's not a stretch
Speaker 1: to say that John is anxious for the pandemic lifestyle
Speaker 1: to be over. He might be wary of the vaccines,
Speaker 1: but he understands better than most people how serious the
Speaker 1: virus is, and he's tried hard to protect his family
Speaker 1: from it. And of course the clearest path out of
Speaker 1: this for John and for everyone is mass vaccination. If
Speaker 1: people get vaccinated, a virus like COVID just doesn't have
Speaker 1: enough hosts to keep on surviving and thriving. Eventually, you
Speaker 1: can't find anywhere to live, so it dies out. That's
Speaker 1: how polio was eliminated from the US and many other countries.
Speaker 1: That's why we don't really worry about tetanus or whooping cough,
Speaker 1: or at least until recently, the measles. And yet one
Speaker 1: deceptively convincing video started John down a path that led
Speaker 1: him to decide against getting a vaccine. So let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about that video, the one John's
Speaker 1: aunt sent him. The man talking in this video is
Speaker 1: a staunch vaccine skeptic. He's not a medical doctor, but
Speaker 1: the head of an arcane research institute that supports research
Speaker 1: into topics, including the risks of several vaccines. But his
Speaker 1: first hit on Google suggested he was affiliated with a
Speaker 1: well known university as well as the founder of a
Speaker 1: medical journal. It's not a single vaccine manufacturer took heed
Speaker 1: of my warning to remove those unsafe epitopes from thevaccines.
Speaker 1: It's easy to see how a video like this might
Speaker 1: make vaccines seem confusing and scary to anyone, especially in
Speaker 1: a time plagued by the uncertainty of the past year.
Speaker 1: Videos like this are designed to seem plausible. The man
Speaker 1: spits off a litany of figures and complicated sounding biological terms,
Speaker 1: insides research that he says is peer reviewed, but he
Speaker 1: doesn't leave a whole lot of time for you to
Speaker 1: think too hard about what you're watching. Before you can
Speaker 1: sift through each scary claim, he's moved on to another.
Speaker 1: The only single data point, the datum that we have
Speaker 1: on what percentage of patients exposed human patients exposed to
Speaker 1: a coronavirus vaccine have had serious adverse events. He's from
Speaker 1: lit Darna trial and that number. It's big statements like
Speaker 1: this that people got seriously ill to make the video
Speaker 1: so persuasive, but it's also just not true. In data
Speaker 1: submitted to the FDA for authorization, Moderna reported that out
Speaker 1: of more than fifteen thousand patients that received the vaccine,
Speaker 1: about one experienced any serious adverse events, a number that
Speaker 1: was about the same as people who received a placebo shop.
Speaker 1: The number of serious potential side effects has been even
Speaker 1: lower since distribution of it began. But the video was
Speaker 1: recorded in October, before any of this data was out,
Speaker 1: and the man in the video seems to be cherry
Speaker 1: picking numbers from a very early trial of the vaccine
Speaker 1: involved just fourteen people. But for John, there was now
Speaker 1: doubt percolating in his mind where there had not been
Speaker 1: any before. To be honest, the big game changed to
Speaker 1: me was that that video I saw, and the fact
Speaker 1: that I checked that doctor's credentials and it all checked out.
Speaker 1: That was a big game change to me. I want
Speaker 1: to be clear about a few things here. There is
Speaker 1: still a lot we don't know about both COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: and the vaccines intended to prevent it. It is easy
Speaker 1: to see how people fall down the rabbit hole like
Speaker 1: John did and wind up scared or skeptical, But there
Speaker 1: is also a lot that we do know. These vaccines
Speaker 1: have been tested thoroughly and appear safe. That information can
Speaker 1: just sometimes be hard to find. John says the newness
Speaker 1: of it all made him a bit skittish. The doctor
Speaker 1: had said that he identified an issue with it, but
Speaker 1: and he works in this field. But they chose they
Speaker 1: were They were so far into the process with the
Speaker 1: with making the vaccine. He said that they just continued
Speaker 1: to go along with it. When John did his homework,
Speaker 1: he told me he found both good and bad things
Speaker 1: about this misinformation spreading researcher. I felt even if half
Speaker 1: of his concerns were correct, it was enough to worry about.
Speaker 1: John told me he recognized the limits of what he
Speaker 1: could learn by simply googling, so he tried to get
Speaker 1: the fire department to host some kind of information session
Speaker 1: about the vaccines. He also consulted with the fire department doctor.
Speaker 1: She too, told him she was skeptical about the vaccine.
Speaker 1: She says she was opting out because she doesn't trust
Speaker 1: an RNA type vaccine vaccination because it's there's a lot
Speaker 1: of unknowns to an RNA type vaccination. They've been working
Speaker 1: on if he is, but there's a lot of unknowns.
Speaker 1: At the end of the day, though, it seems like
Speaker 1: the biggest issue is that John just couldn't bring himself
Speaker 1: to trust the people meant to calm his doubts the vaccine.
Speaker 1: The president, he means, Donald Trump here swear it was
Speaker 1: going to be in by a certain time. Every One
Speaker 1: said it will never be ready by that never ready,
Speaker 1: and this is going on and on and on. It's
Speaker 1: gonna be ready by this time. It's gonna be ready
Speaker 1: by this time. It will never be ready. Boom, it
Speaker 1: was ready by the time. These are medical professionals that
Speaker 1: you're supposed to trust, but they can't even get on
Speaker 1: the same page. So why should I believe them about
Speaker 1: an RNA virus? The tricky thing about vaccines is that
Speaker 1: they require public trust in order to work in an
Speaker 1: environment in which the facts keep changing. What version of
Speaker 1: them do you even believe? At the start of the pandemic,
Speaker 1: public health officials in the US went on record thing
Speaker 1: masks were not necessary. While face masks are currently required
Speaker 1: in some parts of China to prevent the spread of
Speaker 1: the deadly coronavirus here in the US, the Centers for
Speaker 1: Disease Control is not yet recommending them for the public. Then,
Speaker 1: more study of the virus revealed masks were in fact
Speaker 1: critical instruments and slowing its spread. Doubt about masks naturally followed,
Speaker 1: so did protests in the US. None of this was
Speaker 1: helped by a president who promoted claims not backed by science.
Speaker 1: Former President Trump suggested the possibility of ingesting bleach to
Speaker 1: combat the virus. He also promoted the wonders of a
Speaker 1: drug called hydroxy chloroquine to treat COVID without any credible
Speaker 1: evidence to back it up. Worse yet was the lack
Speaker 1: of agreement between the White House and public health figureheads
Speaker 1: such as Anthony Fauci, the most senior expert on infectious
Speaker 1: diseases in the country. Like John said, who do you
Speaker 1: trust when the people you are supposed to trust can't
Speaker 1: agree with each other. Heidi Larson studies mistrust of vaccines.
Speaker 1: She's the founder of the Vaccine Confidence Project at the
Speaker 1: London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. It's a nonprofit
Speaker 1: that looks at how rumors about vaccines spread and why
Speaker 1: a time like COVID is really full of rumoring. For
Speaker 1: a good reason actually, because even the scientists are learning
Speaker 1: every day, and if you look at the formal definition
Speaker 1: of a rumor, it's a piece of yet unverified information,
Speaker 1: so it has the potential to actually be true or
Speaker 1: come true, but it also it I sometimes say rumors
Speaker 1: have a bad reputation because we always assume they're bad,
Speaker 1: but but actually people are trying to figure out based
Speaker 1: on bits and pieces of information, what's the story? So
Speaker 1: I think they've particularly thrived in the context of COVID
Speaker 1: more than any other scientists or public health expert I
Speaker 1: interviewed for this podcast Heigh he preaches empathy an understanding
Speaker 1: of people who are skeptical of vaccines. She doesn't like
Speaker 1: the phrase anti vaxer. She says it's too polarizing, too
Speaker 1: ignorant of the broad spectrum of opinions people have on
Speaker 1: this subject. I think one of the problems with the
Speaker 1: framing of the pro and the antie is that it
Speaker 1: kind of pushes out this middle group that are undecided
Speaker 1: but there are still open and I think if there
Speaker 1: if they're not getting a reasonable answer, or even feeling
Speaker 1: like they're judged or as some say, demonized for just
Speaker 1: asking questions, it hardens them and they're more vulnerable to
Speaker 1: some of the more extreme views. We've taken a cue
Speaker 1: from Heidi here. You'll notice that we don't use the
Speaker 1: term anti vax are very often in this series. Sometimes
Speaker 1: the rumor is not really about the rumor. It's about
Speaker 1: a lot of distrust, and people are because of their
Speaker 1: distrust the system, they make assumptions. Their default is distrust.
Speaker 1: If people trust the system. They're not out there looking
Speaker 1: for rumors. But if you don't trust the system, you
Speaker 1: are much more gullible to conspiracies and others. The rumors
Speaker 1: that have cropped up over the past year are not
Speaker 1: unique to the pandemic. Conspiracy theories have circulated that five
Speaker 1: G wireless technology is the real culprit of the virus. Similarly,
Speaker 1: three G was suspected to cause stars in two thousand three,
Speaker 1: and four G was linked as wine flew in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine. The rumors have less to do with any
Speaker 1: particular disease than a general distrust of the system. The
Speaker 1: tensions that underlie those ideas pre d the rise of
Speaker 1: Donald Trump or the emergence of a deadly and highly
Speaker 1: contagious virus in Wuhan, China. The pandemic, though, has allowed
Speaker 1: those rumors to spread more than ever. What has been
Speaker 1: interesting to me, and more than I expected, was the
Speaker 1: way that that COVID rumor UH and broader anti vaccine
Speaker 1: narratives have gone way beyond the usual circles. These groups
Speaker 1: are looking for others who feel like them because it
Speaker 1: strengthens their numbers, and they really maybe care less about
Speaker 1: the vaccines and more about the principle of my choice,
Speaker 1: my freedoms um, which is very deep in the in
Speaker 1: the anti vaccine groups these days, it's as much about
Speaker 1: that for many of them as it is any particular vaccine.
Speaker 1: All of the uncertainty of COVID nineteen has heightened the
Speaker 1: tensions that were already fueling concern earns about vaccines. Many
Speaker 1: people cite the newness of the vaccines as the root
Speaker 1: of their hesitancy. They doubt because they feel there isn't
Speaker 1: a convincing argument to prove the vaccines are safe. In fact,
Speaker 1: there is a horde of data provided to the FDA
Speaker 1: and vetted by independent experts that all suggests that authorized
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen shots are not only extremely safe, but extraordinarily effective. Still,
Speaker 1: all that data can be hard to parse. It isn't
Speaker 1: easily understandable to most people. But a misleading headline about
Speaker 1: elderly Norwegians who died shortly after getting their job, well
Speaker 1: anyone can infer what that means. The fictions at times
Speaker 1: are just more accessible than the facts. But for vaccines
Speaker 1: to work, most people have to take them. As soon
Speaker 1: as enough people lose confidence that system falls apart. Heigh
Speaker 1: he says is that COVID nineteen is an opportunity for
Speaker 1: the public health community to correct the record on vaccines.
Speaker 1: I see COVID as an absolutely huge opportunity because if
Speaker 1: we get this right, we can shift the landscape around confidence.
Speaker 1: If we get it wrong, it's also going to shift
Speaker 1: it into not a very good place. She says that
Speaker 1: to win the trust of people like John first, the
Speaker 1: public health community needs to listen if we want to
Speaker 1: get enough people vaccinated to stop COVID. As a public
Speaker 1: health community, we need to be listening and getting back
Speaker 1: to the people who do have emerging concerns that are
Speaker 1: specific to COVID that even if we don't have a
Speaker 1: perfect answer, we engage with them, because if we don't,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of other eager groups trying to engage them.
Speaker 1: The number of frontline health workers who have declined the
Speaker 1: vaccine is maybe one of the most surprising stories of
Speaker 1: the past few months. Heidi made me think about John
Speaker 1: and all of his fellow first responders who opted out
Speaker 1: of the vaccine. In February, f D and Y said
Speaker 1: that more than half of its paramedics and e m
Speaker 1: t s declined vaccination. A March pole by The Washington
Speaker 1: Post and Kaiser Family Foundation found that three in ten
Speaker 1: frontline health workers so they were either unsure about getting
Speaker 1: vaccinated or didn't plan to at all. When we talk,
Speaker 1: John continually brings up that he feels he wasn't supported
Speaker 1: by the fire department during the pandemic. He feels he
Speaker 1: wasn't given enough training and that testing wasn't a priority
Speaker 1: at his station. He also brought up nine eleven. He
Speaker 1: says he and other responders were not prepared with equipment
Speaker 1: like respirators to protect them from all the debris in
Speaker 1: their He have health issues like sleep apnea now disorder
Speaker 1: in which breathing stops and starts while you're sleeping, and
Speaker 1: a chronic sinus problem. At the end of the world,
Speaker 1: this is what I gotta wear a seat machina if
Speaker 1: I want to see in the bed because my wife
Speaker 1: doesn't want to hear me. It wasn't just public health
Speaker 1: officials John didn't trust. He was also wary of the
Speaker 1: authorities at the job giving him access to the vaccine.
Speaker 1: John isn't the only first responder who feels like the
Speaker 1: advice coming from the top can't totally be trusted. My
Speaker 1: name is Anthony almagera, I am the vice president of
Speaker 1: the f D and y E M S Offices Union
Speaker 1: Local thirty. I'm a lieutenant paramedically f D and y
Speaker 1: E M S Coument and explaining why so many of
Speaker 1: his colleagues have trepidation about the vaccine. Anthony also brought
Speaker 1: up nine eleven. We're a little leary about the c
Speaker 1: D c S advit. They told us the air was
Speaker 1: good at nine eleven, and so people didn't wear masks
Speaker 1: or respirators, and look at how many people got sick
Speaker 1: from that based on their advice. Anthony says that many
Speaker 1: of his union members have expressed concerns about the speed
Speaker 1: of vaccine development. Some of his female coworkers say they're
Speaker 1: worried about how it might impact their ability to have children.
Speaker 1: People would you know had trepidations about taking it, and
Speaker 1: rightfully so right We've never produced a vaccine this quickly
Speaker 1: in human history. I had my own trepidations. Rather than
Speaker 1: falling down a YouTube rabbit hole, Anthony read pharmaceutical industry
Speaker 1: publications to learn how RNA based medicines work. He also
Speaker 1: read both the studies from the Maderna and FSER Clinical trials.
Speaker 1: Like John, he spent a lot of time trying to
Speaker 1: figure out how he felt about the vaccines. You wound
Speaker 1: up convinced that any risk that might be connected to
Speaker 1: them was worth it. He decided get the shot. In
Speaker 1: this day and age, with so many ways to verify something,
Speaker 1: people just aren't doing it, and they go on feeling
Speaker 1: instead of fact. So I feel that vaccine is not
Speaker 1: going to be good for me, and then when I
Speaker 1: respond why, they don't have a scientific answer. They don't
Speaker 1: have an answer that's deduced from some type of reasoning.
Speaker 1: It's based in feeling. When Anthony did get vaccinated, he
Speaker 1: made sure to share the news widely. I don't know
Speaker 1: how to break through other than by example. So when
Speaker 1: I went and got my shot, I posted it everywhere.
Speaker 1: I encouraged others to go get it. I updated people
Speaker 1: in real time on our message boards. Hey, I'm twenty
Speaker 1: four hours after this, after the shot. I have a
Speaker 1: little soreness in the arm, but otherwise I feel fine.
Speaker 1: So John and Anthony both started out in the same place.
Speaker 1: Both are doubts about this revolutionary vaccine. They wanted to
Speaker 1: learn more, but the sources they found led them to
Speaker 1: different conclusions Anthony when I hadn't got it, and John
Speaker 1: he chose to skip it. There were too many questions
Speaker 1: that I have out there. I'm not I'm not going
Speaker 1: to get it until maybe down the road, if I
Speaker 1: even do. John is still worried about Nico, but over
Speaker 1: the summer his son had a surgery the doctors told
Speaker 1: the family made him far less vulnerable to the disease.
Speaker 1: If Nico hadn't gotten that surgery, John says, he may
Speaker 1: have gotten the vaccine. I don't have a risk factor,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't have a risk factor, so all
Speaker 1: other than being a little heavy, I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: have high blood pressure, diabetes, and he kind of cardiac
Speaker 1: me personally, So for me to survive the disease, it's
Speaker 1: like n versus taking something that they really haven't given
Speaker 1: out before. John is clear that he is not an
Speaker 1: anti vaxer. People like John are exactly who heigh he
Speaker 1: is talking about. He is not against vaccination. He just
Speaker 1: has some concerns. In fact, he says he sometimes argues
Speaker 1: with his wife's best friend, who he says is extremely
Speaker 1: against vaccines. He's not opposed to ever taking a COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen vaccine in a few months. If it's all going well,
Speaker 1: he might reconsider his stance. When I see like, are
Speaker 1: there any adverse reactions? Um, stuff like that, and I
Speaker 1: seem more I may reconsider. I don't know, but whenever
Speaker 1: a friend or family member or colleague asked John about
Speaker 1: his decision to not get vaccinated, he sends them that
Speaker 1: same YouTube video that has answent him, the one that
Speaker 1: first made him doubt. I always tell them I don't
Speaker 1: want to jade your decision, like I want your decision
Speaker 1: to be your decision, you know, especially me, who was
Speaker 1: going to get it at first and then I changed
Speaker 1: my mind. John says that so far he sent that
Speaker 1: video to seven or eight other people. If you're the
Speaker 1: guy in the video, do you hope the seven or
Speaker 1: eight people John sent it to pass it on to
Speaker 1: another seven people, and then they sent it to another
Speaker 1: seven people after that, and soon enough her message is everywhere,
Speaker 1: person by person, the skepticism spreads. It's contagious. It's designed
Speaker 1: to be that way. People like that guy know what
Speaker 1: they are doing. They know how to ryle folks up.
Speaker 1: Next time on doubt, we'll go back in time, tell
Speaker 1: all of this started. We'll show how a select few
Speaker 1: have exploited anxiety and uncertainty to make people believe misinformation,
Speaker 1: and to make that misinformation and go viral. That story
Speaker 1: is the story of a man named Andrew Wakefield. Doubt
Speaker 1: is written and reported by Me Christ and v Brown.
Speaker 1: So for Foreheads is our senior producer. Molly Nugent is
Speaker 1: our associate producer. Our theme was composed and performed by
Speaker 1: Hannis Brown. Special thanks to Bloomberg editors Rick Shine and
Speaker 1: Tim Anette and my colleague Angela colo Veto. Francesco Levi
Speaker 1: is the head of Bloomberg Podcast. Be sure to subscribe
Speaker 1: to Prognosis if you haven't already, And if you like
Speaker 1: our show, please leave us a review. It helps others
Speaker 1: find out about the show. Thanks for listening, See you
Speaker 1: next time.