In vaccine messaging, we're repeating the mistakes we made with masks

[Kokeshi123]

www.nytimes.com/2021/01/18/briefing/donald-trump-pardon-phil-spector-coronavirus-deaths.html?fbclid=IwAR3uw9iQlX6d0wVh2zMBPf6zEiRBBzFFq423ML2OCjXjKqt1dODRrjCrUG8 I really recommend reading this excellent article, which sets out the very promising nature of the vaccines and talks about some of the problems with the current messaging.

The vaccines appear to be highly effective and safe. And it is looking extremely likely that they block or more-or-less block transmission as well. We should be shouting the good news from the rooftops and urging people to get vaccinated because guess what, IT'S A GREAT IDEA.

Yet the messaging on vaccines continues to be incredibly negative in tone. Endless caveats, emphasis on things that it might not be able to do, a list of don't and can't, and above all, an endless drumbeat of "You basically can't do anything after the vaccine that you couldn't do before."

We're repeating the same mistakes on vaccines as we did on masks--overcaution and underselling.

And more than anything else, inability to trust people. Part of the reason for the weird reluctance to push masks in the beginning lay in an assumption that people are both stupid and irresponsible-"They will take masks that should be worn by HCPs, and then use this as an excuse to stop social distancing." With vaccines, we're doing the same thingparalysed by dread that "people will stop social distancing," people in public health are casting doubt on the vaccine's efficacy by using over-timorous language. Why would anyone even bother to have this vaccine, one is tempted to ask?

Overcautious language is being used, and then misinterpreted by the media. "They have not yet carried out full trials to show the extent to which transmission is blocked" is getting interpreted as "It doesn't stop transmission" (spoiler: actually, it almost certainly does). I can guarantee that versions of this myth will be floating around the internet for years, just as the mask myths ("They don't protect the wearer" "You have to perform elaborate sterilization routines and change the mask every few minutes otherwise they INCREASE risk!!") are still circulating months after these were refuted.

And people need to start hearing about end points, even if these are conditional and hedged about with caveats-Restrictions A, B and C can probably be peeled back once Groups X, Y and Z are vaccinated-that kind of thing. The endless doomy hints that "we'll be wearing masks and avoiding each other for years on end" because the vaccine is not going to be all that effect are not helping compliance. People who think that the rules are going to require them to stop seeing elderly parents for years are, at some point, going to say "Fuck the rules. I'm going to see them now, then."

The problem is that the official message is constantly having to counter the various media platform output. You only have to listen to the questions asked after a podium.talk to realise how bad it is. Even after good news is delivered the journalists go into full on doom mongering bollocks.

And that's before you get to social media...

I still can't get my head round the headlines the day the 2 imminent vaccines were announced... buckets of cold water were poured...

@amicissimma MIL was vaccinated last week and told not to change behaviour until advised otherwise. We're in England, so on lockdown at present anyway.
She keeps up-to-date on the latest in any case, so she was already aware of the need for no mixing until a fortnight after second dose given in order for the vaccine to prevent her becoming ill should she contract the virus.

@NavyFlask, I don't think it's the well-informed and up-to-date who we need to worry about.

@Haffiana

One thing this board shows, is that people will take ANY information and twist it to fit their own agenda.

In almost all cases the agenda is an emotional one (that is, not a deliberate, reasoned agenda) with some people needing their negativity/fear reinforced and some needing their hopefulness reinforced. This need to reinforce an emotional bias happens in even otherwise intelligent people without them even noticing.

For example, if someone posts something quite factual, half the readers will screech 'doom-mongering' and half will accuse the poster of encouraging reckless covid-spreading behaviour.

So any message will get filtered by these unseen biases. Whilst I personally sneer at - for example - Boris Johnson using slogans instead of rational and reasoned argument, the sad fact is that they are effective and necessary. You really do need to aim for the lowest denominator.

Was it you who posted something similar a while back about people's reasons for voting for Brexit?

That really stuck with me, thank you.

It is noticeable how negative everything is at the moment; I’m certain there’s strategy to it (if Saint Boris and his Merry men can be credited with having any at all). I suspect it’s so the government can suddenly change the spin machine to “loooooooooooooook! The vaccine is working!!”, at a time to suit Saint Boris, soon after a little tweaking of figures here and there, perhaps quietly changing the definition of a “case”, so they can make the figures look favourable.

Cynical? Moi?

When will it be know about the vaccine and if it stops transmissions?

The vaccines are so valuable because they are new and there's a huge demand for them to get us out of this mess. I'm delighted that the vaccines are going to the front line healthcare workers first and also homecare and elderly residents of carehomes.

If the vaccines stops transmissions, isn't the rollout being targeted at the wrong group of people in the homecare settings? It is younger people that is moving about and like to pick up the infection and transmit it onto others. If the vaccines stop transmissions, the rollout had to go towards the younger population.

I do think a lot of scientists are modulating their messages because of what they think the public will do with the information.

This is a really terrible idea. Even if someone doesn't have expertise in a subject, they know instinctively when someone isn't being completely honest.

If people feel they're being manipulated, they'll lose trust in good science, and hop on to the next conspiracy theory.

I hear what's being said but I agree OP. What is the point of a vaccine if you are still going to live in fear.
I am CEV and they are saying we still have to shield! How depressing.
I for one will be glad to be able to go out, even if it's only a masked socially distanced shop.

@Physer is that just after the first jab? Have they said why you would need to continue shielding? It dies seem very depressing. Surely the point of the vaccine is it makes CEV people essentially similar to low risk. Low risk is never guaranteed with anyone but shielding is extreme

@TwirpingBird yes, it was in the latest shielding letter.
www.pulsetoday.co.uk/news/clinical-areas/immunology-and-vaccines/extremely-vulnerable-should-continue-shielding-after-vaccination-gps-told/
I wont do it though. I will be ultra careful but not that careful.

@MerinoFroggie

When will it be know about the vaccine and if it stops transmissions?

The vaccines are so valuable because they are new and there's a huge demand for them to get us out of this mess. I'm delighted that the vaccines are going to the front line healthcare workers first and also homecare and elderly residents of carehomes.

If the vaccines stops transmissions, isn't the rollout being targeted at the wrong group of people in the homecare settings? It is younger people that is moving about and like to pick up the infection and transmit it onto others. If the vaccines stop transmissions, the rollout had to go towards the younger population.

Presumably we'll know when they have enough data. The ONS study for example now asks if you have been vaccinated against COVID-19. It'll take a while for them to have a large enough sample size from admissions data/ONS/whatever other studies they are running to say either way I expect.

I wasn’t told anything when I had the jab

She asked if I’d said no to the covid screening questions - I said I had
Did the jab and I said ‘Thankyou’
And she said ‘bye’
And I left

I agree as well. I have been very very optimistic since the vaccines were developed. I also thought we'd have a vaccine by the end of 2020 but there was loads of people on here in the summer saying that was impossible. The messaging on transmission is cautious as it should be but everyone is taking this to mean you can still transmit the disease at the same rate as if you have not had the vaccine . This seems very very unlikely to me . It also seems possible that the vaccine may actually prevent infection in a lot of cases as well not just mean that you catch it but develop milder symptoms . The vaccine will.mean things will go back to normal soonish and Covid then will actually be '. like flu' in terms of the effect it has on the population whereas it definitely isn't like flu at the moment

I think it's a really tricky balance. I agree that a lot of people have understood it as the vaccine does not prevent transmission, rather than that we don't know (but realistically it does massively reduce it), and that that's a big difference. But I think there's a big and difficult balancing act to be done between making the vaccine attractive and making it so attractive that it causes social unrest - realistically, if people are told that they no longer have to follow restrictions like not seeing relatives indoors (which is, after all, the law) then it'll cause mass flouting of the same restrictions among the unvaccinated, and the tensions that are already there about who is getting it fastest regionally etc will absolutely explode. The only way you can sustain the levels of restrictions we currently have is for them to be universal. Even if, actually, logically, the vaccinated could behave differently and cause no extra spread it would still do harm to spread that message.

@Physer

I hear what's being said but I agree OP. What is the point of a vaccine if you are still going to live in fear. I am CEV and they are saying we still have to shield! How depressing. I for one will be glad to be able to go out, even if it's only a masked socially distanced shop.

@Physer please don't get disheartened. You do still need to shield while rates are so high in the community. When the rates come down (which they are doing) then you will not need to shield.

If the vaccine has a 90% chance of reducing infections, then there is a still a 10% chance that you would catch it. When the rates are high in the community, that 10% is a high number. When the rates come right down that 10% will be a really small number and that's when you'll be able to get some normality. It will come, it'll just take a while.

A balance is definitely needed. We need people to understand the need for a second dose. And I do think that having a bunch of unvaccinated people (say) throwing the masks away is going to make it hard to keep masks normal for everyone else, which it does need to be for a while.

I think that when it comes to post-vaccine behavior "discretion and thinking of others' feelings" needs to be the key idea. I.e. after your second dose you can start seeing family members more freely, but keep observing the masks and social distancing in public places so that we can maintain morale for everyone else, in the meantime.

People need to feel some sense of progress, however, otherwise they will wonder what the point of the vaccine is, and it will feed all the conspiracy theories lurking on the internet about how there are strange nefarious motivations driving the vaccination program or that Davos and big businesses are trying to create a weird Great Reset that keeps everyone locked up inside for ever.

Someone asked what "we" meant to me---I live in Japan but spend quite a bit of time (most years!) in the UK and my relatives all live there so of course what happens there is really important to me to. But the US appears to be underselling the vaccine as well.

Japan has slightly different issues altogether--we don't have many deaths so there is less urgency about the issue in general, and there is more anti-vax sentiment in Japan than there in the UK. The messaging here has its own issues!

People are asking about data: it seems that the data from Israel already looks very encouraging, and this is mostly people who have had only a single dose!

@TwirpingBird

I agree! When I saw the headline 'dont hug your kids, even with the vaccine' I thought, 'christ, I thought they want people to get vaccinated. Why would someone bother if they are saying it doesnt give you the basic of touching the people you love'. Its all fear and misery and scaring people into not seeing anyone. I get we are still in the cautious zone and those who are vaccinated cant just go back to normal life, but the rhetoric has been nothing but misery and death and 'you are killing granny by hugging your mother' for a solid year. They need to give people some vague semblance of hope and happiness. If they dont, people will just become angry and do what they want anyway because the idea they are putting out is the vaccine wont work anyway.

Exactly this. If all we get is relentless negativity and misery we’ll just give up.

People appear to be outraged by their own lack of understanding about vaccines leading them to have fantasies about an impossible 100% immunity.
There is an urgent need for public heath education so people can appreciate how vitally important it is to use all the tools in our arsenal for self preservation.
Every single time the virus replicates it spins a random generator that could result in a vaccine resistant mutation. People do not appear to be aware of the risk we are taking by not following a zero covid strategy until we get 80% immunity.

This thread has a false premise that people will be put off the vaccine, whereas we know most people are choosing to be vaccinated. As more "real life" efficacy and transmission data are being collected to inform policy changes in a few months, and there are far more people wanting the vaccine than supply, it isn't something that needs addressing right now.

2020 has shown me people are stupid and irresponsible, more than I ever thought before.

This thread has a false premise that people will be put off the vaccine, whereas we know most people are choosing to be vaccinated.

I don't think there are that many anti-vaxxers in the older cohorts. They've seen polio eradicated by the vaccine.

FIL had second jab on 8th Jan. he's been in hospital since last week and has just had a positive Covid test

2021welcome: While that is individually distressing, that is totally expected for some people.

• A 90% effective jab means it won't be effective for 1 in 10. Was the first one even long enough ago to have had a three week wait before catching it?
• A second jab on the 8th with hospitalisation before 21st (today) means he was infected before the second jab had had time to do anything.
• Hopefully, having had the jab will do exactly what it is supposed to, for him, and turn a potentially deadly case into a moderate, non-fatal case, thus saving his life.

Yes, it's statistically expected but still a shock. He was one of the first people to have the jab so just over 3 weeks before the second one. He's very poorly now.