“We’re behind this,” said Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health. “We did not do a good job to get it [coronavirus vaccine] information there. “
“Speaking for myself, I think I underestimated the level of public opposition,” Collins said. “I did not expect it to be so widespread.”
A spokesman for “Operation Warp Speed”, the Trump administration’s attempt to get a coronavirus vaccine on the market, said a public education campaign “will soon focus” on vaccine training.
“We see more hesitation in getting vaccinated with the Covid vaccine than with other vaccines. We know that. This concerns us, of course,” said Michael Caputo, an assistant secretary to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
There is not much time to educate Americans about the Covid vaccine. Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and others say they expect a vaccine to be on the market in December or January.
“We know it’s really important, especially for a new vaccine, to start this conversation early,” said Chelsea Clinton, who does vaccinating work with the Clinton Foundation. “We saw how important that was many decades ago when the vaccine for polio first emerged in the mid-1950s. That we know what to do. We just do not.”
No word from the CDC
Traditionally, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been the federal agency for developing vaccine development programs.
In June, CDC Director Dr Robert Redfield said a plan was in the works.
CNN asked a CDC spokeswoman what happened to that plan called by Redfield, and what the CDC has done to educate Americans about the Covid vaccine. She did not answer.
CNN asked Clinton what kind of job the CDC has done to educate Americans about the Covid vaccine.
“They don’t do jobs,” she said. “I wish [this] were done work from the Centers for Disease Control, but it just does not happen. “
Collins also notes that the CDC has been uncharacteristically inactive on this front.
“This is critical, and I know it [the CDC has] tried to get the word out in their own way, but they have not been particularly successful, “Collins said.
In recent months, Operation Warp Speed has taken over some of the features of CDC.
Operation Warp Speed ”is developing a robust public health information campaign” that has already begun announcing public health services to solicit plasma donors, Caputo said, adding that “this campaign will soon focus on fax safety, effectiveness and hesitation.”
He added that the program worked on the effort with industry and community leaders and non-governmental organizations, and it will announce public service announcements with health experts and celebrities discussing various topics related to Covid-19.
But the announcements for public services that handle the vaccine will only come out until November.
Caputo said to build trust, they need to know which faxes will come out first and if some faxes can work particularly well for a particular group, such as the elderly. Six fax companies have received funding from Warp Speed.
Private groups, such as vaccinating your family and voting for faxes, have begun Covid-19 vaccination work to promote fax confidence.
But Clinton said a larger-scale vaccination training should take months to come, given the anti-vaxxers have flooded social media with narrow lies about vaccines against Covid-19.
“Nothing is really happening in our country on this front on a coordinated level,” Clinton said.
Those lies include memes from social media claiming that the vaccine leaves an invisible digital, traceable tattoo; that Dr. Anthony Fauci, a leader in the fax effort, is actually Satan; and that the vaccine will refine your face terribly.
The power of the anti-vaccine movement
Clinton noted that the power of the anti-vaccine movement should not be underestimated. Last year, the outbreak of measles, the largest in nearly 25 years, was largely fueled by the anti-vaccine movement, which has proliferated on social media.
“Unfortunately, the anti-wax content is much more viral, much stickier than the pro-vaccine, pro-public health, pro-scientific content,” she said.
Collins said he thought anti-vaccine efforts that enabled last year’s measles outbreak were effective because the measles vaccine has been so successful for decades that many people do not know how deadly the virus can be. to be.
“People stopped believing it could kill a child,” Collins said. “But I think I thought, because Covid-19 kills people every day and thousands of them, it would be less of a tendency to say ‘Oh, well, maybe we do not need this.’ But I had obviously wrong. “
CNN’s Wesley Bruer and John Bonifield contributed to this story.
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