Heidi Larson – Dispelling Vaccine Myths in the COVID-19 Era

With the recent announcement of Pfizer’s completion of clinical trials for a COVID-19 vaccine, the next challenge is ensuring that the general public is willing to be vaccinated. With mounting distrust, how will this be possible?

Prof Heidi Larson is one of the world’s leading authorities on why people don’t take vaccines, and how rumors about their safety become part of public opinion. She is the founder of the Vaccine Confidence Project, based at London’s School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. According to the New York Times, Prof Larson says that, “dispelling vaccine hesitancy means building trust — and avoiding the term “anti-vaxxer.”

In this podcast we discuss how skepticism of vaccine safety often mirrors anti-government populism. Prof Larson also outlines how the first conscientious objectors were not against war, but against the smallpox vaccine in Europe in the 1850s. We also investigate the role that social media plays in consolidating opinions today.

This podcast touches on the French and Italian governments' recent use of legislation requiring vaccination and how that impacted the debate around vaccine acceptance. Prof Larson also outlines the appropriate strategy for governments to improve the public’s trust in large-scale vaccination programmes.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.