Remember those pre-pandemic days when everyone walked around maskless, had physical contact with strangers without fear of contagion and the words “social distancing” had no significance?
Now that roughly 29% of Americans have been fully vaccinated and vaccine eligibility has expanded to everyone 16 and older, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), familiar routines seem to be coming back.
But while the U.S. moves closer to its return to normality, there are still people who believe masks are useless and COVID-19 vaccines do more harm than good.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General, explained that as the pandemic unfolded, so did an “infodemic” of misinformation.
An “infodemic” is the rapid spreading of misleading or false news and media, according to WHO’s Infodemic webpage.
“We’re not just battling the virus,” Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a Aug. 25, 2020 WHO newsroom article. “We’re also battling the trolls and conspiracy theorists that push misinformation and undermine the outbreak response.”
The largest driver behind this infodemic was former president Donald Trump and the media under his administration, according to a September 2020 study titled “Coronavirus misinformation: quantifying sources and themes in the COVID-19 ‘infodemic.’ ”
“Trump mentions comprised 37.9% of the overall misinformation conversation, well ahead of any other topics,” study’s researchers state. “Only 16.4% of the misinformation conversation was ‘fact checking’ in nature, suggesting that the majority of COVID misinformation is conveyed by the media without question or correction.”
According to various experts and sources, the battle against misinformation is a multifaceted and complex issue. Many could argue this was one of the leading causes for new cases and deaths over the year, which makes having to fight an ever-evolving virus that much harder for scientists.
“It is just extraordinary what we’ve been through in the past year,” said Eric Topol, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in a Jan. 25 Chemical & Engineering News article. “If you were to write a script about how to destroy the credibility of science, we just saw it. It couldn’t have been more of a comprehensive, systematic takedown, because it happened at every level.”
But it was this distrust in science that caused more than half a million U.S. deaths. So the question remains – why are people believing misinformation about the virus and how can the public trust scientists so the world can be better prepared against future global pandemics?
Politics and personal beliefs play a role
Resa Kelly, a San Jose State chemical education professor, said while there are scientists and news outlets doing their best to relay accurate COVID-19 information, politics contributes to fostering echo chambers.
According to the Oxford Dictionary, Echo chambers are closed environments where people's beliefs are amplified or reinforced by communication and repetition inside a closed system. Kelly said these echo chambers play a huge role in limiting the information people are exposed to regarding COVID-19.
According to a November 2020 Pew Research Center survey, 84% of Democrats said COVID-19 was a major threat to public health, compared to 43% of Republicans.
Kelly said despite this politicization, scientists are having a hard time informing the public about the virus because it can require changing people’s pre-existing beliefs about COVID-19.
“[People] are trying to take what they’ve learned, what’s in their background and they’re trying to apply it to figure out the problem,” Kelly said through Zoom. “But sometimes that background that we have, misdirects us and we don’t know it, because we trust it.”
She said people accept information that feeds into their biases because it reinforces their beliefs.
“I can’t just tell you you’re wrong because you’re going to say, ‘No I’m not,’ ” Kelly said. “You’re not compelled to change because you don’t maybe trust a person who’s telling you to change or you’re not convinced.”
She said misinformation could confirm someone’s understanding of the vaccine and the virus, even if it's not based on facts.
Kelly also said people choose who they want to listen to, adding that many people decided to listen to Trump and the misinformation he spread about COVID-19.
For example, Trump said at a May 18, 2020 roundhouse table event at the White House he took the drug hydroxychloroquine to prevent COVID-19 infection.
Hydroxychloroquine is an immunosuppressive drug used to treat lupus and is not a proven treatment against the virus, according to an April 29, 2020 research letter by JAMA Internal Medicine regarding COVID-19 therapies.
Kelly said the idea of people viewing political figures like Trump as a trustful source is especially important when discussing the vaccine.
Trump’s attempts to accelerate authorization of COVID-19 vaccines created distrust among the public who were already hesitant about the shots, according to the Jan. 25 Chemical & Engineering News article.
He predominantly consulted sources who had opinions aligned with his instead of the scientific consensus, which led to more than 400,000 U.S. deaths by the end of his term, according to the same Jan. 25 article.
Janet Stemwedel, chair of the SJSU department of philosophy, said there was uncertainty and debate about the severity of the pandemic even before COVID-19 “really hit hard” and forced everyone to shelter in place.
Stemwedel is an expert in responsible conduct of scientific research, ethical implications of science, communication between scientists and non-scientists and effective strategies for teaching science and ethics.
Changing information creates trust issues
People’s lack of trust in COVID-19 research can be traced to the nation’s responses to the pandemic, including how information was shared between scientists and the public, Stemwedel said.
She said scientists should’ve taken more time at the start of the pandemic to slow down and really look at the data regarding safety precautions and how the virus spreads before issuing preemptive health measures.
One example was at the start of the pandemic last March, when the CDC and WHO recommended people to social distance rather than wear masks.
At the time, wearing masks wasn’t seen as an effective measure to prevent the virus. However months later, scientists said wearing masks were important as the virus mainly spreads through microscopic aerosols, according to the Chemical & Engineering News article.
Stemwedel said people can become distrustful of science because of rapidly evolving circumstances and mixed messaging between political leaders and public health authorities.
A June 2020 Pew study found one in four U.S. adults thought the pandemic was definitely or probably “planned by powerful people.”
A Yahoo News and YouGov poll in May 2020 found 28% of U.S. adults believed Bill Gates wanted to use COVID-19 vaccines to implant microchips to track people.
So where were scientists to disprove all of this misinformation?
Both Kelly and Stemwedel agree that there's always been a disconnect between the public and scientists because the average person will not do their own research and blindly believe statements on social media.
Many researchers and experts noted the absence of timely and trustworthy guidelines from authorities and tried to fill the void themselves by communicating their findings directly to the public on social media, according to a Feb. 26 article by The Atlantic.
There’s a “gap” between how academic research operates verus how the public understands that research, according to the article.
The “psychology of coping” with the effects of the pandemic have warped the public’s understanding of research.
Gustavo Valbuena, a UC Berkeley clinical associate professor, said part of the problem is not having enough people, such as science journalists, who can communicate complex scientific issues to the public.
Valbuena said other causes for the lack of communication between scientists and the public is that many experienced worsened depression, anxiety and other mental illnesses during the pandemic, causing frequent low energy and inability to investigate information and sift through misinformation.
More feedback needed
SJSU chemical education professor Resa Kelly said scientists can start by asking the public what their worries are regarding the virus and start building a sense of scientific literacy through simplified information.
Valbuena also said scientists need to improve their methods of communicating information to the public, especially with simple language because science is messy and the scientific method is not linear.
“There’s this disconnect between the ideal science and the real science,” Valbuena said. “Those of us that are in scientific areas [need to] make an effort to understand the motivations and the drivers of people that do not want to comply.”
Kelly said there needs to be a unified approach in discovering what people don’t trust about COVID-19 and its vaccines and how they can be properly informed.
Regarding the COVID-19 vaccines, SJSU department of philosophy chair Janet Stemwedel said there’s always been a general history of vaccine mistrust, but the public needs to start looking at historical benefits of vaccines.
“[Vaccines have] been hugely beneficial. We’ve essentially wiped out smallpox, which used to kill lots of people every year,” Stemwedel said. “There’s a lot of really significant improvements in the health of humanity on the planet that are because of vaccines.”
She said people need to take a “little bit of individual risk” to stop the virus from spreading for themselves, their families and their communities.
One analogy Kelly used to explain how communication should be between scientists and the public is akin to how teachers give feedback on homework.
“When you’re graded and you’re told ‘you did that wrong’ you get feedback that tells you ‘oh maybe I need to change the way that I think,’ ” Kelly said. “Nobody is giving people feedback about that with the virus.”
In regards to changing someone’s beliefs about COVID-19 information, she said there is a good chance they take it as a “political jab.”
Valbuena said he aims to have non-judgemental conversations with people who have a distrust of COVID-19 science and hear out their feelings and discuss how they got their information.
He said the conversation has to be conducted in a way that doesn’t attack or challenge the person, but rather understand how those people reached their specific conclusions. He said it’s about educating people and helping them ask more questions, especially for young minds.
“That is the moment when we can help kids form real strong structures of how to think critically, how to question, how to come to conclusions and not take the first piece of information given to you,” Valbuena said.
