Covid-19 led to a skepticism of vaccine. This can affect our willingness for the next pandemic: NPR

Sarah McCammon, host:

The Americans have been more polarized over vaccines in the five years since the beginning of Covid 19 pandemic. Jude Joffe-Block from NPR reports on the challenge that is for combating threats in the field of public health.

Jude Joffe-Block, Byline: When the Covid 19-Pandemie hit, there was a moment when some people thought it could be a uniform time for the country, like September 11th. But Matt Motta remembers when he felt convinced that the pandemic would instead share the Americans. It was at the end of March 2020, almost exactly five years ago.

Matt Motta: Many states and communities had closed. People stuck at home – right? -orders at home. And Trump promised that he would reopen the economy, have people back at work and would leave their houses again by Easter Sunday 2020.

Joffe-Block: President Donald Trump spoke on Fox News on March 24, 2020.

(Soundbite of the archived recording)

President Donald Trump: So I think on Easter Sunday and you will have packed churches all over our country. I think it would be a good time.

Joffe block: Motta says that these statements contradict public health at that time. He studies public attitudes to science at the School of Public Health at Boston University.

Motta: It is the efforts that President Trump made to show Covid-19 as not so serious that they led to polarization.

Joffe-Block: Trump made false claims about the virus and presented an appeal that did not work. Motta follows a direct line of Trump’s comments five years ago to public opinion trends that still remain.

Motta: Why would you vaccinate if the threat from infectious diseases is not so serious? Then we started a separation in public opinion, so that the Republicans had negative views of vaccination and the Democrats came to have more positive views.

Joffe block: There is a bigger trend. Americans with negative views of Covid-19 vaccines are also increasingly negative in other vaccines. According to a study by KFF, a non -profit organization for health policy, every fourth republican parents are skipped or delayed some children in childhood for their children. Of course there are many factors that have brought us at that moment. Carl Bergstrom of the University of Washington, which examines the spread of infectious diseases and misinformation, calls the pandemic …

Carl Bergstrom: A great opportunity for people who urge anti-Vax propaganda to get foot into the door with new population groups, and they did quite successfully.

Joffe-Block: One of the best-known spreads of this propaganda was Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is now a secretary for health and human service. A very real episode of falling rates is the growing number of measles cases in Texas and New Mexico.

Dan Salmon: There are very real concerns that this could lead to a widespread outbreak of measles.

Joffe-Block: Dan Salmon heads the Institute for Vaccination Safety at John’s Hopkins University.

Salmon: I mean, I really hope that doesn’t happen, but the United States is quite vulnerable at the moment.

Joffe-Block: The partisan gap on vaccines has irony. The Covid vaccines were quickly developed thanks to the Trump administration initiatives such as the Warp Speed ​​Operation. Carl Bergstrom again.

Bergstrom: The Covid vaccine saved millions of life. It was remarkably successful. It was developed in a tiny fraction of the time of a previous vaccine.

Joffe block: a success that would be more difficult to replicate in our current political environment. Experts in public health are concerned that we do not learn the right lessons from Covid-19, especially with concerns about potential bird flu pandemy. The Trump government recently reduced the financing for research on the hesitation of vaccines, and scientists fear that the same mRNA technology that was used in the leading covid vaccines could be next.

Jude Joffe-Block, NPR News.

Copyright © 2025 NPr. All rights reserved. Visit our website Conditions of use And Authorizations Pages at www.npr.org More information.

NPR transcripts are created by an NPR contractor for a rush period. This text may not be in its final form and can be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability can vary. The decisive recording of the programming of NPR is the Audio data record.