Vaccines (with Dr. Peter Hotez & Heather Simpson)

the world from deadly diseases. And right now, the surest path out of the COVID nineteen pandemic is to vaccinate as many people in as many places as possible. But that, of course requires wide scale public trust and participation, two things that the anti vaccine movement has been working really hard to undermine. The anti vax movement has been growing in darkness for decades, and now they've captured this hot light as they weaponized fear and uncertainty, dis doubt, and

spread lies about the COVID nineteen vaccines. Their efforts have been amplified by public figures who use their platforms to elevate debunked conspiracy theories, and all of this has made much much worse by lack of accountability from social media and technology platforms themselves. The anti VACS movement is hurting our ability to recover from this pandemic, and it could affect which vaccines this generation of kids received well beyond

COVID nineteen. So what can we do? How do we fight the powerful tide of disinformation that began long before this pandemic and has unfortunately gained momentum during it. How do we overcome mistrust around vaccines and help more people get the facts that they need to make the right health decisions for themselves and their families. Well, to answer those questions, I'm talking with two people who are confronting

these challenges head on. Later, we're here from my friend Dr Peter Hotez, a vaccine researcher and advocate and co director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children's Hospital. But first I'm talking with Heather Simpson, a mom who fell down the anti vax rabbit hole and then pulled herself back out. Hey, there's an activist, a freelance writer,

and a mom to three year old daughter. Hers is a story of how effectively the anti vax movement and traps people, and a reminder that it's possible, if not always easy, to change minds. I started our conversation by asking Heather how she went from someone who had always gotten vaccinated then anti vax social media influencer. My mom vaccinated all of us. It wasn't until I was eighteen that I had the choice to get my meningitis shot, and I hate needles, so on that alone, chose not

to get it going into college, which was stupid. I did get the t DAP in two thousand fifteen. I got the flu shot for school. It wasn't until me and my husband really started trying to have our daughter that we were like, should we do the schedule? I mean, we haven't given it much thought. And a documentary series popped up I think on Facebook as an ad, and it was nine hours of just pure propaganda. It was doctor after doctor blaming everything under the sun on vaccines.

So by the time you're done watching all nine hours of terror, you are not going to want to injectricate. I mean I was terrified. I was thinking, if we inject Charlotte, she will die in her sleep that night. The strength of the fear that I had was so so strong. I was ashamed a little bit, a little bit embarrassed about it because my mom groups were so

pro vaccine, so I didn't really tell anybody. But when she was about eighteen months old, I decided to start talking about it casually on the internet on Facebook, and it just took off. And I didn't realize that they're worth thousands and thousands of anti vas moms on Facebook that had all found each other, and that there's this huge, huge, growing community and they just accepted me as one of them, and it just took off from there. How did that make you feel when you were accepted by the anti

vaccine mom groups. I was living in West Texas in the oil Field area, and my husband was at work all the time, and so I was caring for a child on oxygen at the time. She's okay now, and I was just desperate for a community. So it was just the perfect timing to have this community crowd around me and take me in. I can see how anybody would fall prey to that community, and they are really good people. It's hard to see them for what they're doing,

which is pushing anti vax propaganda. I saw them as my friends and to without the Facebook algorithm recommending that first long look into vaccine conspiracies and anti vaccine propaganda, do you think you ever would have found it? No, I don't think so. I think we would have probably vaccinated our child. So now fast forward a few years, your daughters a few years old. What then changed? Why

did you then decide to start vaccinating your daughter? Around this time last year, I had to have surgery for endometriosis, and I reached out to my community and they basically were saying, well, you're taking the lazy way out, and you just need to eat better and the endometrioss would go away. And I just felt so much shame and guilt, and I went to my doctor and she said, no, you need the surgery, and I just burst into tears.

And I realized that moment that the anti vacs world thinks they can play God in a way like if you eat healthy enough, and if you don't vaccinate, and if you take all the right supplements, you will never encounter an illness. That kind of started tilting me towards Western medicine. And I started to speak out and I said, hey, nobody is forcing your kids to go to public school don't public schools have the right to mandate vaccines if

you're not being forced to go. And it's really hard to say that one vaccine hasn't saved at least one life. I think that would be impossible to say that. And because I had said even that that one vaccine saved one life, I was ousted by the community. There was no room for doubt or questioning or the middle ground. It's a cult. It's a cult. I was ousted. I ended up in the ear with a panic attack because I had hundreds of people in that group just shaming

me and attacking me, and I was horrified. And then COVID hit and I realized all of them are also anti maskers, and they also deny that COVID is real. And then I started to realize, oh my gosh, these people are real conspiracy theories. And I just was like WHOA. And I just took a step back, and I started reading books with actual science, like by Dr Paul Offit and finding the scientific facts that I can't get around.

Before you left or were expelled from the anti vaccine mom groups, what were those early conversations around COVID, Like basically that somebody owned the patent to the virus years ago. I don't know who it was, somebody big, maybe Bill Gates, and that this was planned to reduce the population. So that was the global conspiracy, that this is a man made virus used to kill off everybody and to gained mind control of everybody through submission through masks. A lot

of these people were deeply into q and On. I'm sure you've heard of q and on. Oh yes, my mother is a prominent part of the que and On narrative makes it sound like there's coherent's there. I don't really think it's a narrative, but whatever the chaos of it is. Yes, yeah, it's crazy. Another I think one of the things that is concerning from a public health standpoint is when you were talking earlier about how you know, when you were eighteen and you made one decision to

not get vaccinated because you were scared of needles. There has to be space to talk to people about really understandable questions and concerns like it's going to hurt, is it really worth it? Or what do all these different

vaccines do? How do I think about them? Why do some vaccinations really need to be administered very early in someone's life, and some require boosters and some don't like since you now have have really lived in the hardcore like anti vax online world and now don't have to separate out the space the compassion for questions that I think are important for parents and people to feel like they can ask, and then also try to help limit the space for the questions that are just not rooted

in science, not rooted in reality, and are really intended to find people like you who are vulnerable a few years ago to bring them into the conspiracy. How do you think we do that well? When I was introduced to the fact that many of the studies that show aluminum in the brain that antivactors like to post that aluminium in the brain, if you read the fine print, is environmental aluminum. It's not the aluminum salts and vaccines

that blew my mind. And once I had those facts that I couldn't argue myself out of, I held onto those when I went to vaccinate my daughter. Those are what did it for me. I mean, and I had friends pouring into me and talking to me and just empathizing with me, But it was those scientific facts that I could not get around. And so I have a spectrum of anti vaxtors. You have the vaccine hesitant who maybe vaccinated their kids, but they're hesitant about the COVID vaccine.

And then you have the scared people, which is where I was. And then you have the X factors, and that's really the critical group because they feel that something happened right after the child's vaccine. Maybe the child stopped talking a few days later, but they weren't paying attention

to all of those signs leading up to it. And if the doctor would sit down and notebook it out about all the signs that they may have missed leading up to that, and get genetic testing for maybe genetic markers that show up for autism, and just walk that mom through it to show her that it was not the vaccine that would keep a pro vax er, but instead, if you shoot her out the door, she's gonna go home, she's gonna google what happened to my kid, and she's

going to find this world of antivactors and join drinks. And so it is about finding what happened quote unquote to their child. Maybe nothing happened, but talking that mom through it and getting her to the other side of it, so that you keep her on the pro vaccination side. A lot of this lies in the pediatrician's hands. And you were mentioning how important your conversations with your doctor

were around your endometriosis diagnosis. Yes, Unfortunately, when I was pregnant and I refused the te dat, my doctor looked at me and said, oh, no, you're not one of those crazy anti vactors, are you. That's not helpful, And then he never explained the necessity of the vaccine. He just brushed me off, and so did my pediatrician. I

tried to talk to her about my concerns. My trust and doctors majorly fell when my daughter had sleep at me up, but they wouldn't listen to me, and I was begging them, saying, she's not sleeping normal, something is happening. We have an outlet monitor and it was going off

every night. Her oxygen was dropping in her sixties. I was begging doctors for two months, please listen to me, something's wrong, and they were saying, you're just as sweet, new nervous mom, honey, just sleep, wake up every few hours, see if she's purple, and go back to sleep. Good Lord, that's what someone actually told you. Yeah, that's what they

actually told me. And so two months later, after begging and begging, I finally got a sleep study and I got in with the sleep doctor and she said, honey, your baby is fine. And she said, but you know what it said, your new nervous mom. I will grant you the sleep study just to calm you down. And so we got to sleep study at two months old. And moderate sleep at MIA is forty events per hour, and she clocked in at one forty four. That's record breaking.

She almost had a scientific study on her. And they transferred her to I see you the next morning so that she wouldn't die. So that was where my distrust and doctors started. That's understandable, Wather, That's completely understandable. How did you, then, though, find doctors who you could trust? I realized that not all doctors are the same. So when we moved to Dallas, I found people that listened to us and took us seriously. And now she's with

a great heart doctor, a great pediatrician. She's with everyone that she needs to be with, and we trust them wholeheartedly. We'll be right back. Stay with us. What would you like to see happen more of and maybe the training of pediatricians and other people in medicine to be able to have conversations with, you know, vaccine hesitant parents or even parents who are further on that spectrum that you

talked about. You may be rejecting vaccines today, but also really do want to make the best in the right choices for their kids health. So those facts that I'm holding onto, I'm working on a list of ten of them. I think if pediatricians can be armed with those facts that anti factors cannot are you or feel their way out of. And that's even on a pamphlet or something that would do so much good. If I had known those facts when Charlotte was two months old, I probably

would have vaccinated her. That would have calmed all my concerns, all my fears. And so I'm training doctors to be armed with those facts. But also there's a story of a little boy that had never had a seizure in his life, and then he got a seizure right after his shots, and so the mom took the little boy in and the doctor said, there's no way it's from the shots. So she took the little boy to the ear and they said it's no way from the shot.

So you have this mom who feels insane, she feels gas lit, she feels crazy, and we know that febrile seizures are possible from a shot and they're not dangerous. But had the doctor said, hey, maybe it is, but you know what, it's okay. Your baby is safe and we will watch your baby on the next vaccine. I will hold your hand and I will be there and we will be on guard and we can get through

this together. But your baby is okay. That would have built that trust, that acknowledgement that hey, that sometimes does happen and it's okay. But to gaslight a mom, she just joined the ranks of the anti vaxxers. So teaching doctors that anti vaxxer moms are just trying to save their kids, they're not crazy. And if doctors can get to the bottom by offering an explanation other than vaccines about what they perceive happened, they will keep them as

a pro vax er. And I think that's the biggest thing keep them from going home and googling their way into the anti vax cult. Listen to what their concern or concerns are and get to the bottom of it, because they're going to go off the deep end if you don't. I am curious though, if other parents, moms you have reached out to you though over the last year to say I'm having similar questions. I think maybe I should vaccinate my kids. I just don't know what

advice do you have. Has that happened it has. We've actually convinced a few parents to vaccinate. They needed to see somebody that was so anti vacs turn because if somebody was so anti vacts and they were able to turn, there must be a good reason why they turned. I can do this too, And so we have seen people start to vaccinate their kids and get the COVID shot, which is really exciting because I truly believe the COVID shot is the way to end the pandemic. I agree.

Have you had any conversations with people who are not vaccine hesitant or not anti vactor but are questioning this vaccine. Yes, And the main concern that I've found is how the COVID vaccine relates to fertility. That is by far the

main concern that rumor has run rampant on Facebook. You know, I'm not even allowed to visit my friend who believes that because I'm vaccine needed, I will rub off and cause her to be infertile just by being next to her because of the completely not rooted in fact theory that the vaccine will shed that you have been vaccinated and you can like shed the virus. It's like me drinking coffee and my caffeine rubbing off on you. It's just not going to happen, and that these people believe it.

And so you have this whole group of people that are starting to segregate away from society from the vaccinated people. They're breaking up with their husbands and their boyfriends because their boyfriends are getting the vaccine and they will not touch them. This is going to become huge. They don't want to be around these people. It's it's about to get really bad, in my opinion, and it's because these Facebook groups are allowed to form, or people are saying, oh,

I felt tired after the vaccine. Oh my mom had a stroke twenty seven days later after the vaccine. Oh, well, of course it was from the vaccine. They are allowed to put every single thing. Oh I had a hiccup for the vaccine. I've never hiccup before. Them must be from the vaccine. Everything is being posted to these groups, and these groups are being allowed to run crazy on Facebook, and people are sharing them like crazy, So people that

were going to get the shot are suddenly not. And it just there's no control over these groups, and it is getting misinformation into every corner of Facebook and people are reading it, and then they were going to get

the vaccine and now they're not. Is there anything else that you'd like to share, any advice that you would have for anyone listening to us about how to protect themselves against misinformation to be able to make important health decisions, including around vaccines and vaccinations for themselves and their kids. Just be so careful when you're on Facebook and you read well, this happened right after my kid got a vaccine.

I was supposed to get my flu shot one morning, and I canceled because I wasn't feeling good, and later that day I started spitting up blood. It was a bad situation, but you can bet you that the antivactors would have blamed it on the flu shot. There was a man that was going to get his kid vaccinated, but the line was too long, so he left and he took his kid home to take a nap, and the kid died of sids in their sleep. And had they gotten their vaccines, they would have blamed the vaccines.

So you have to understand reading these these this than that about the COVID shot, There's a lot more to it, So you just have to take it with a grain of salt if you're going to go into the dark interwebs of Facebook groups, but I would steer clear and just follow the CDC, the f d A, real scientists online, Like just pack your Facebook and your social media and your Twitter full of scientists and doctors and arm yourself with that so that you are able to fight off

any lie that is going to come at you. And I know I'm being harsh on Facebook, but I do believe they have a huge responsibility right now and it's a life or death issue in my opinion. My last question, when you were not vaccinating your daughter, you're not vaccinate yourself. Did you have family or friends who tried to reach out to you, talk to you about why you were in that place, talk to you about vaccines and vaccinations and did any of that work or or no? It did.

My mom would always say, I really think she's going to be fine. Just get the tennis shot, like you and your brothers were fine. I think you're going to feel so much better after you get the shot. You're not gonna have to worry about tennis. And then one of my best friends was always like, Okay, why are you scared, and this is why you shouldn't be scared.

Listening but also not empathizing to the point where you're giving in is good, but also being loving and listening and understanding that they are coming from a spirit of fear. They are truly trying to protect their kid. I was truly scared that Charlotte would die if she was vaccinated. That was not me trying to ruin the world. That wasn't me trying to ruin her community. I was just trying to save my baby. So knowing that going into it, these are people too, the other just confused. They've got

the wrong information. Father. Thank you so much, Thank you so much for having me. You can find more on Heather Simpson, read her writing, and check out her podcast it Back to the Vacs dot com. I'm a huge fan of Dr Peter Hotez. He's a fellow vaccine enthusiast, and I certainly turn up the volume every time I see him on TV, which these days is quite often

sporting his signature. Bote Peters the co director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children's Hospital, and he's the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. He's written several books and one of my favorites, Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel's Autism. He draws on his experiences as a pediatrician, vaccine scientist, and autism dad to examine and answer the questions and also to refer cute the concerns of the anti vaccine movement.

I do first want to ask you how you got interested in vaccines, in vaccine development. Well, ever, since I was an adolescent, I actually wanted to study tropical diseases. You know, I was a nerdy kid with fascination with maps and microbes, so tropical diseases became the confluence of the two. And then when I entered into the m d pH d program in New York at Rockefeller and Cornell in I really wanted to develop a vaccine for para parasitic disease because nobody was even thinking about it

at that time. And the seventies, the revolution of molecular biology was taking place, but everyone was focused on diseases of the West or diseases of the United States, And I thought, we need to start applying that whole molecular biology revolution towards eukaryotic pathogens that effect low and middle income countries, and vaccinations were, without question the most powerful

means to do that. So most people now know us about our COVID nineteen vaccine, But the truth is, most of my life has been devoted to vaccines for neglected tropical diseases that no one else will take on because their disease of the poorest of the poor. And so Peter, when you talk about the vaccines that you're working on now that haven't received the same attention or investment because

of who is affected. Who is affected are not in the thousands, right, We're still talking about diseases that affect millions of people around the world. Yeah, that's right, Chelsea.

So you've got seven hundred and fifty million people now who live below the World Bank poverty figure of a dollar nine d a day, and when you look, every single one of them is affected by a parasitic infection or a neglected tropical disease that led by diseases like hookworm, AND's just a semiasis and scaby and methatic file ariasis and river blindness, and and this is one of the challenges is not only are there scientifically complicated questions, but

we don't really have ways to finance these vaccines. We need as much innovation in the finance and business sector as we do in the science. I still think a lot of people don't understand that why the development of the COVID nineteen vaccines felt very fast, and parts of it were really accelerated by enormous amounts of investment. It was really enabled by decades of pre existing research. Yeah,

it's absolutely right. So when stars hit in two thousand to two thousand three coming out of southern China affecting Toronto, Ontario, and then you had Mayors Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome in two thousand twelve, we saw the writing on the wall and we said, we've had two major coronavirus epidemics slash pandemics in the new century. I'm sure we'll have another one soon, and we start a partner with an excellent virology group at the New York Blood Center led by

Shibu Jiang and Lan ying Do. And those vaccines were orphaned, just like our vaccines were, and so we began partnering, wrote to the n i H it got supported, and we started developing Stars and Mirrors vaccines. That was ten years of work that made it possible for all the other COVID vaccines. And I tell that story because it wasn't for that, we would not be moving so quickly. And part of the problem was when the c e O s sent out their press releases. You know how

it is. They're sending out their press releases not for you or for me, but for their shareholders, and they tended to want to spectacularize their accomplishments. And I understand that, but I think inadvertently it gave the public the impression that somehow there must be something unsavory about these vaccines

because they have popped up out of nowhere. And then of course calling an operation warp Speed, which was an awful name, didn't help any Peter, you and I have now talked for years about the difference between I think really important questions that people can ask about vaccines and vaccination and then the whole universe of real disinformation attacks

against the integrity of science. And so I'm just curious, reversing back to night when you were embarking on your m d pH d work, were you aware of the anti vaccine movement at the time. Did you have any inkling that the anti vaccine movement might affect your work

in your life in any way? Not back then. You know, I want to be part of that because the impact was so powerful, you know, when I got my m d and PhD, I never thought that there would be an anti science monster that was brewing at that time. And I never thought I'd have to devote a whole segment of my career to going up against anti vaccine,

anti science movements. And I do it because again, I'm well positioned for it, not only being a vaccine scientist for so many years, but also being a parent of four adult kids now and Rachel who has autism and intellectual disabilities. Because so much around the anti vaccine movement that sprang up in the early two thousands was around

false assertions that vaccines cause autism. And I wrote the book called Vaccines did not cause Rachel's autism, which kind of made me one of the public enemy number ones against from the anti vaccine movement. And I did it, you know, deliberately, because I thought, look, I have a voice. I've been able to use it to get people to care about neglected tropical diseases and helped to build that ecosystem. But I thought, you know, here, I am a vaccine scientist,

a pediatrician, paraffin adult daughter for with autism. If I don't do it, who will? And I've paid a pretty steep price for it. But I'm glad I'm doing it because I do think it's had some effects. I'm positive benefits as well. Peter, this deep price you've paid has been getting measured in just the really awful hate that you've received. Seems at the moment kind of ceaseless, like every day you still seem to be under attack. There's now been this dramatic expansion and I call it the

triple headed monster that I'm up against. And the three components of well one are They're they're no longer homegrown groups. There well organized, well funded groups that monetize the Internet, and the Center for Contering Digital Hate it's amazing. We have to have an organization called the Center for Countering Digital Hate now estimates that those groups now a fifty eight million followers on various social media platforms, So that's accelerated.

And then you also have the Russian government has been using this as a major wedge issue to destabilized democracies, not only the US but elsewhere. And if that weren't complicated enough, you have in here in Texas, the t vaccine movement was starting to lose steam in terms of

the autism links, although that thread continues. So what they did was they took on a political dimension around here in Texas when they somehow managed to align themselves with the Republican Tea Party down here and under this sort of fake banner of health freedom, medical freedom. And now we're seeing that full on. It's become a mainstream of political extremism on the far right, and white nationalist groups

have adopted the anti vaccine, anti science movement. So the scariest part from me now is I get these regular emails and threats saying that an army of patriots is going to come hunting me down, and I'm thinking, well, sometimes you just have to take a step back and just try to calm yourself. I said, well, why did they need a whole army of patriots? I would think with just me and and Rachel and the cat one patriots,

probably enough, maybe two patriots. But it's like this humor and it's like most painful, Peter, I don't understand the need for a whole army of patriots. But this is when I'm up against and from my standpoint, it's the worst it's ever been. And this is unfortunately a new role for scientists that have to deal with the anti

science movements. And I think part of the problem in science and postdoctoral education is we don't provide young scientists with the skill set to understand it, to understand what the anti science movement is about, how it's globalized, and how to communicate. We need a whole contret of scientists who can engage the public, because I think there are people who still want to hear from us. I think there are a lot of people want here from you.

I'm curious, how do we at least try to blunt the ability of the anti vaccine adherence to do harm our public health, to do harm even even to themselves. What do you think we need to be focused on to try to limit the reach and limit the effect act. In my papers, I've made the statement that we spent a lot of effort, invest a lot of resources to build infrastructure against things like global terrorism and nuclear proliferation and cyber attacks. We have to start considering that for

anti science and anti vaccine activities. It's reached that level. Arguably, even more people are losing their lives and from anti science than some of the other things that we do build infrastructure for. I think one of the problems has been within the US government and even internationally at the

United Nations agencies. The message that I've gotten for many years is Peter, I hear what you're saying, but you know what, We're not going to go there because we're worried if all the things that you're saying is just going to give the movement oxygen and I'll give it extra life and attention it doesn't deserve. And and I think that made sense maybe in the early two thousands when the thing was just taking off, But now it dominates the Internet, it dominates daily lives of Americans and

people in Brazil and elsewhere. So this is a monster now, and that silence and that refusal to want to do anything about it has enabled the monster in many ways. So the recommendation is to bring people from outside the health sector to get some advice on what believers we can pull and push. Bring into people who have been going up against combating global terrorism and nuclear proliferation and cyber attacks for years and get some advice to understand

what the options are. For instance, in the Biden administration, I've said, let's create an inner agency task force to to look at this, and not just people from the CDC and Health and Human Services agencies. We need people from the State Department, we need people from Home mass Security,

from the Justice Department, from the Commerce Department. So I think that's one thing for the Biden administration, and then at the same level for the UN agencies to bring in people outside the health sector to at least get educated on on what we can do. Because this idea of just saying we're not going to say anything because it'll just give it oxygen it it. You can't do that anymore. Too many people are losing their lives not

because of this. What do you think the role of the social media companies is well, it's clearly a lot. I mean that is a major v and not the only vehicle, but it is a major vehicle. And I think we're starting to see some progress there from the big text, I think we need a lot more. I mean, let's, for instance, look at Amazon. If you go to Amazon

dot Com, you go to the books on vaccinations. I think my book is one of the leading pro vaccine selling books of the Preventing the Next Pandemic, but it's ranked about thirty because it's all fake anti vaccine COVID conspiracy books in front of it. And so Amazon is making a lot of money on sales from these books, and they're extremely damaging. So it's not only the facebooks of the world that's pervasive among the e commerce sites

as well. Well. I think that's such an important point, Peter, and that it's not only the misinformation itself, the disinformation that's so dangerous. And I have called repeatedly on Facebook and and Google and others to d platform the largest purveyors of anti vaccine content and creators amplifiers of vanti

vaccine content. The second part of what you said is really important too, that it's also the opportunity cost of all that misinformation being out there, because if people are consuming that, then they're not reading your book, they're not going to the CDC website, they're not picking up the phone and calling their pediatrician because they think their questions

have already been answered. This is pervasive now, and if you try to download health information about vaccines, you're much more likely to download the garbage than the real stuff. But the constant thing you hear is that parents are coming into the office loaded forbear. I mean, they come in with all of this anti vaccine misinformation and the pediatrician is made to feel like he or she is not keeping up with the literature. Well they are, they're

not keeping up with the fake literature. I spent a lot of time even going through the major fake assertions of the anti vaccine movement of later on COVID nineteen vaccines, and they're pretty easy to debunk. But if you don't know all the science behind it, you can get taken

aback by it. I'm worried that the anti vaccine movement has so successfully polluted the conversation around the COVID nineteen vaccines that some of that pollution will infiltrate how parents are thinking about the routine immunizations for their kids, and that we may have newly vaccine hesitant parents as a direct consequence of the last year and a half who previously we're vaccinating their kids on schedule. Are you worried

about that? Yeah? No, this is huge and not only young kids immunizations, but for the HPV vaccine also or the Mink's vaccine, right like for older teenagers. Yeah, absolutely, for college entry. So one was a disastrous year for childhood vaccinations because of all the social disruption, big declines and measles mom's rebella vaccine and I'm offuless influenza now

HPV vaccine, no question about it. And so we're all kind of holding our breath because is it going to come back up to pre pandemic levels again, or as you point out rightly point out, has the anti vaccine movement become so dominant that we're not going to get back to pre pandemic levels or at least anytime soon. And as bad as things are in the US, this is going to be a global issue as well, because there's been severe disruptions to global vaccination campaigns across the

world and me too. If you look at the last twenty years, we've made enormous progress because of GAV Global Lines for Vaccines and Immunization, and there's something called the Clinton Global Initiative. I don't know if you've ever heard about them, but they did an enormous amount of work. You know, we're trying to promote childhood vaccinations and it worked.

I mean, we saw enormous progress in reductions and measles deaths and more than reduction of measles deaths since the start of GAVI in two thousand and and we're already

starting to see a slowing of those gains. And the anti vaccine movement, anti science movement is a huge component of that now well, And I think that's such an important point, Peter, that while we've mainly been talking about the really tragic power and influence at the anti vaccine movement has here in the United States, and unfortunately, it has gained power and influence really all around the world

over the last twenty years. What troubles me is, you know, for years, the other pushback I got was, well, this anti vaccine movements walled off to the US and North America. It's just this weird American phinice of the guys. We export our music, we export our movies. What makes you think we're not going to export this stuff? Are you worried that these are a harbinger of states relaxing vaccine requirements for public schools. Well, that's already started to happen,

and unfortunately began here in Texas where I am. It started with Texans for Vaccine Choice, which became one of the first political action committees against vaccines in in fifteen. And now we've got anti vaccine packs and multiple states and we're already seeing you know, the governor of Texas, Governor Abbott, has issued an executive order against that if your public organization you cannot insist on vaccine or mask mandates.

So this is going to be this new wave and how you take the anti science out of the GOP because it never used to be that way. I mean, and by the way, this is not fun for scientists to talk about, right, I mean, you know, I've been talking to doing public engagement for a number of years and the message always was, hey, just stick to the science. Stick to the science. You're not supposed to talk about Republicans and Democrats and conservatives and liberals, that's not your lane.

And up until the last year or so, I pretty much adhered to that. But it got to the point where I don't know how else to talk about it unless you talk about it, especially when you had what was going on in the White House around this time last year, when there was a deliberate disinformation campaign to say COVID nineteen deaths or due to other causes, or the hospital admissions were due to catch up an elective

surgery or spectacularizing hydroxy chloroquine. And it was a very dark place for as a scientist to go talking about Republicans and Democrats and the White House, and and I'm still not comfortable doing it. It's still a scary place for me, but I think it's necessary. Otherwise you can hunter how else do you solve the problem unless you can call it out and bring it into the light. We're taking a quick break to stay with us, Peter.

I do want to ask, because you have, I think, been such an effective science communicator, and yet you implied you really had to figure out how to do this, like you weren't trained to do this in your undergrad studies or in your medical studies. Or through your PhD,

or in your residency where you were working. But I do think we have to have a dynamic, really robust curriculum of how to communicate effectively, especially in the face of disinformation, because I do think, certainly, like anecdotally from so many of my friends, they haven't felt well prepared to have the conversations that you were referencing earlier because it wasn't part of their training, and it really needs

to be. It is, and it's a lost opportunity. And I think, if there's ever there's not many silver linings from this pandemic, but I do think one of them is what I've been seeing is the American people anywhere are willing to tolerate a level of complexity that we

often don't give them credit for. They like hearing from scientists, and they are willing to tolerate complicated discussions provided doesn't lapse too much into jargon, because their lives depend on it, or their families lives depend on it, And And so I think we need to build on that. Well, there are You've been so generously with your time. I really have one more question, you know, similar to what we saw with the accelerated development of the COVID nineteen vaccines last year.

Are there other vaccines that are in development that you think are really promising with just maybe even a little bit more attention and investment, could also be ready to become shots and arms to help save lives. Well, I

think so. I mean, remember this came on the heels of the extraordinary story that not many people talk about any more, the e bowl of vaccine made by American company, and that that was more than protective and not only helped stave off Ebola in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Conco, but stabilized the whole African continent. That was another public

health triumph with a totally different technology. So I think one of the other lessons learned clearly keeping multiple technologies in play because you don't know which is going to be the one that really works the best, is going to be really important. And how we create that type of global infrastructure. I think we became too dependent on

the multinational companies. As as good a job as they did, we now have got this horrible equity situation where no one's getting vaccinated in Africa and Latin America, Southeast Asia. So I think the next few years I'm putting a lot of effort into building vaccine capacity, so building that infrastructure in place. And it's not just building the factories, that's the least of it. It's the human capital. It's it takes years. One of the things that I think

we're really missing is a foreign policy around vaccines. What I'm seeing right now is insufficient coming out of the bind administration. They've done an amazing job vaccinating the American people, but in terms of foreign policy, I think it's too modest in scope. What I'd like to hear from the Secretary of State of Lincoln do is is get up there and give an hour long foreign policy address that says the obvious, which is, look, we've got one point

one billion people in Sub Saharan Africa. We've got six hundred and fifty million people in Latin America, maybe another half a billion people in the smaller lower income countries of Asia. That's two and a half billion people. We need to provide five to six billion doses of vaccines. So what's the plan? And and I want to see the US government take the lead on this, because if, as we know, if the US government doesn't take the lead,

it doesn't happen. That that is real. That was true for HIV AIDS and pep far, that was true of winning war against fascism in Europe and winning the cold where sometimes you need us leadership, and this is what needs to happen. Well, Peter, thank you so much for all of your time and everything you shared, and I'm just hugely grateful and it's just always good to see you and always get to learn from you. So thank you. I feel the same way, Chelsea. It's real honor, and

thanks for having me on today. Peter's newest book is called Preventing the Next Pandemic Vaccine Diplomacy in a time of anti science when it comes to vaccines, Spreading truth, facts and evidence are urgent public health priorities to help us get out of this pandemic and to continue to

protect ourselves and our kids from vaccine preventable diseases. As I talked about with our yes today, the anti vaccine movement has become so emboldened throughout COVID and I'm desperately worried that we won't catch up on all the well child visits that have been missed, which could chip away at herd immunity. For a number of really scary diseases. This past year, millions of American children have missed their routine vaccinations, often because their parents were keeping them home

to keep them safe from COVID. But while all that happened, and estimated one in five kids fell behind on their shots to prevent diseases including measles, diphtheria, tetanus, and polio. As Dr Megan Ranny, an emergency physician at Brown University, told The New York Times recently, it would be a horrible irony for us to get through this pandemic and lose children to these preventable diseases. So please, if you haven't yet, get vaccine against COVID nineteen and urge others

in your life to do the same. And for all the fellow parents out there, while we eagerly await the latest research around younger kids and the COVID nineteen vaccines, please make sure your kids are up to date on all their other vaccines and joined Heather Peter and countless others who are speaking out on social media and elsewhere about the need to make sure that people are around the world you can get the vaccines they need to stay safe and Healthy. In Fact is brought to you

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