A government in cahoots with Big Pharma and a vaccine rushed to market.
The unprecedented race to produce COVID-19 immunizations is triggering a reaction from “anti-vaxxers,” those who oppose vaccines, that could undermine efforts to neutralize the disease unless the Trump administration steps up its communications strategy, according to scientists and public health experts.
The extent of the risk was laid bare in a Reuters/Ipsos poll published Thursday that found a quarter of respondents had little or no interest in taking a vaccine, with some respondents blaming the pace of development and safety concerns.
President Trump has set a target of producing 100 million doses by the fall and 300 million by January. But the decision by his Department of Health and Human Services to name the project Operation Warp Speed risks alarming the public, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, a White House adviser and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
“People don’t understand that. Because when they hear ‘Operation Warp Speed,’ they think, ‘Oh, my God. They’re jumping over all these steps, and they’re going to put us at risk,’” he told the Washington Post.
Press releases published by biotech companies promising a vaccine in weeks or months were another problem, said Peter Jay Hotez, dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. Such hyperbole, coupled with government enthusiasm, takes on a sinister air in the eyes of the anti-vaccine lobby.
[Read more: The race to develop a coronavirus vaccine]
“They allege that vaccines are rushed, they allege that they are not adequately tested for safety, and they allege there’s a cozy relationship between government and pharma,” he said.
“Everything getting out there is playing right into the hands of the anti-vax lobby to the point where I think even when the vaccine rolls out, there’s going to be a significant percentage of Americans that refuse to take the vaccine,” he continued.
The demand for rapid results is a hallmark of Trump’s leadership style. And Michael Caputo, a veteran Republican communications strategist who was recently appointed head of public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services, has taken responsibility for the “Warp Speed” branding.
“That means big, and it means fast,” Trump said as he unveiled the project a week ago. “A massive scientific, industrial, and logistical endeavor unlike anything our country has seen since the Manhattan Project.”
Even before its public launch, anti-vaxxer messages were appearing at protests against lockdowns in California and Michigan. A group called Texans for Vaccine Choice is lobbying the state’s governor to ensure that immunization against the coronavirus does not become mandatory for individuals to go to work or school.
The White House insists safety is paramount.
“President Trump’s highest priority has been the health and safety of the American people, which is why he has encouraged the use of vaccines,” said White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere. “Any new vaccine must be thoroughly tested to ensure it is effective, and that is why Operation Warp Speed is being led by expert scientists focused on safety and saving lives.”
But the Reuters/Ipsos poll illustrates some of the difficulties faced by the Trump administration in reassuring a divided country that any vaccine is safe.
Almost 20% of Republicans said they had no interest in a vaccine, more than twice the proportion of Democrats who said the same. And 36% of respondents said they would be less willing to take a vaccine if Trump declared it to be safe.
Overcoming those hurdles will be essential to protecting the population, said Hotez, who is working with City University of New York on calculating the proportion of the population that will need to be vaccinated to prevent virus transmission. “We don’t have the answer yet, but it’s going to be high,” he said.
That makes communication the key to success, say public health experts such as Joshua Sharfstein, a former deputy commissioner for the Food and Drug Administration and now vice dean at the school of public health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
“I am reassured that FDA experts appear to be deeply involved in the vaccine effort. Their experience will be essential in determining where it is safe to move quickly,” he said. “More broadly, it will be essential to communicate what steps have been taken to assess the safety of a vaccine recommended for widespread adoption.”
That communications strategy should focus on better explaining how development and production are being compressed, Hotez said, and that the risk is financial (research, development, and production costs of vaccine candidates that are ineffective or unsafe and are abandoned) rather than medical.
“The message should be that although we are doing certain things to accelerate it, it’s not at the level of patient safety,” he said.
That point was repeated by a spokeswoman for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who said Fauci was highlighting a misunderstanding.
“Dr. Fauci is aware that some people have misunderstood the details and have assumed that a rapid vaccine development program would require cutting out safety steps,” she said. “Dr. Fauci made clear that the ‘Warp Speed’ program is an unprecedented approach to vaccine development that will not compromise safety or study integrity.”
