Two Covid vaccines have been approved via Emergency Use Authorizations. But, many scientists, health professionals, and regulatory members alike are left wondering how to best ensure the American and global public opt-in to getting vaccinated.

During Friday, December 18th Coronavirus Conversation hosted by the Duke Initiative for Science & Society, honored guests Anthony Fauci (M.D.) and Alan Alda discussed the restoration of faith in public science agencies, moderated by Hank Greely (J.D.). You can view the entire program here (40 min.)

Dr. Fauci has become a household name this year as a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force but is more widely regarded as one of the most trusted U.S. medical figures and has been director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease since 1984.

Mr. Alda, though popularized through his acting career, has been a life-long advocate for science. He hosted PBS show “Scientific American Frontiers,” founded the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at SUNY Stony Brook, and recently released a podcast titled “Soldiers of Science.” At Stanford, Mr. Greely is director for the Center for Law and Biosciences and the Program in Neuroscience and Society, as well as a Professor of Law.

Greely asked about the public’s current level of trust for science and what must be done to get it “where it should be.” Alda said that there “seems to be this awful fall off of trust in science … at the worst possible time.” But Dr. Fauci pointed out that we have seen the evolution of lack of trust in science over the previous couple of years. The pandemic fell in the middle of extreme American divisiveness, he said, leading to individuals “developing their own set of facts instead of interpreting [actual] data that exists.”

Alda and Fauci both emphasized the need for transparent and clear scientific communication as a main tactic for increasing public faith in science. This includes use of the words “I don’t know,” particularly in response to the question of vaccine longevity, a question Dr. Fauci said will be answered “in due time.”

Alda said scientific communicators should “communicate with audience[s] with respect … with personal contact where trust builds up more quickly.” He pointed out that this means communicators must become more familiar with their audiences, what terms would be best to use, and what their audiences are “ready to hear.” Dr. Fauci added that when someone is “speaking science” to any group, the objective should not be to “impress the [audience] as to how smart [they] are.” The two major objectives laid out by Fauci: 1) Know the audience and 2) know your message, avoiding granularity and inaccessible language.

Greely interjected that the though all three panelists agree on trust in science, they were three white guys “of mature years.” He continued to say that, “One of the saddest ironies [is that] people getting hammered hardest by [Covid] tend to be people from racial and ethnic minorities … those are also [the same] groups of people that have understandable historic reasons to have less trust [in scientific agencies].” How do we reach these groups?

To do this, Dr. Fauci proposed that we need to get messengers for vaccination to “to look like and understand to whom [we] we are delivering the message.” Leaning into an idea by Alda – that we should get celebrities and widely-respected and admired individuals to get vaccinated on television – Fauci described how Surgeon General Jerome Adams got publicly vaccinated Friday morning.

Adams also delivered a message to his “Black and Brown sisters and brothers” in support of vaccination. Dr. Fauci believes more positive messaging like this will be effective. Alda reinforced that “we can’t guess about the people we’re trying to talk to.” We have to know about their biases and cause for hesitancy in order to meet them where they are, as well as address their concerns in genuine, non-condescending ways.

Alda also proposed that individuals snap a quick shot of themselves getting vaccinated and post it to social media as a #vaccie – a play on the #selfie sensation – which Greely said was “brilliant.”

Alda and Fauci concurred that the most powerful proponents of restoring faith in science may lie in the impact of individual civilians who share their trust in and compliance with vaccination amongst family and friends. Fauci said individuals should not “underestimate the impact that they have in their own immediate environment.”

Sandra Lindsay, an Intensive Care Unit nurse in New York, was one of the first people in the U.S. to receive the Pfizer Covid vaccine.

This impact could be either positive or negative, though, as Alda pointed out the problem with social media algorithms. While working on “Soldiers of Science,” he learned that social media sites are designed to “keep your eyeballs on the screen” as long as possible. This means that social media sites keep “showing you what you want to see,” which is your own bias and affirmation that your ideas are correct. If #vaccie starts trending, this might provide necessary momentum for widescale vaccine uptake.

However, because we have become “addicted to [our] bias” and convinced “over and over again that only our view is right,” according to Alda, we must work intentionally to see commonalities across seemingly alienating lines. Reflecting on his work with AIDS, Dr. Fauci suggested that we take what scientific communicators and regulatory bodies learned during that time. “What do we all want?” Fauci said, ”And how do we get there in a way that is synergistic [instead of] opposing?”

In his parting thoughts, Alda stated simply that “science will save us.” It has and will continue to allow us to “counterattack the attacks we get from our mother nature.” Dr. Fauci said that in dealing with the current pandemic, “biomedical research and science has given us something that just a decade ago would have seemed unimaginable.”

“When this is over, and it’s going to be over,” Fauci said, “We’re [going to] look back and say, ‘It was science that got us out of this, pure science.’”

Greely said we have learned a lot about science communication this year – invaluable information that we must carry forward with us.

I, like so many others around the world, can’t wait for my turn to get the Covid vaccine and to kiss 2020 and the pandemic goodbye.

Post by Cydney Livingston