I quickly scanned through this transcript (there is a video available, too) and just HAD to point out to key “take-aways” from this mess of a “Symposium”:
[01] Only “crazy”, “ultra-righ/left”, “unholy” people believe vaccines are bad or at best faulty science that needs to be questioned / studied… they MUST be countered in ways that involve “psychology and communication strategy” (read: NLP, MK Ultra, etc.).
[02] The best way to get people to ‘willingly submit’ to the vaccine would be to induce fear by making the virus seem horribly deadly AND say there is a shortage of the ‘fix’. HELLO!
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Panelists: Arnold Monto, Professor, Epidemiology, University of Michigan Peter Palese, Professor and Chair, Microbiology and Professor of Medicine, Infectious Diseases, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Lone Simonsen, Research Professor and Research Director, Department of Global Health, George Washington University
Presider: Jon Cohen, Correspondent, Science Magazine
Introductory Speaker: Laurie A. Garrett, Senior Fellow For Global Health, Council on Foreign Relations
October 16, 2009 — Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)
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[01] QUESTIONER: Tom Wilson (ph), Cornell Medical School.
Sir, I think we’re all aware that the anti-vaccine movement is having a field day on the Internet and on media outlooks like Fox News and so on, causing productions in vaccine uptake, and it appears to be a pretty unholy alliance of the ultra right and the ultra left working together to sort of hit with strong anti-tactics, and I’m not sure we’re countering these people very well, and one of the things I do in my spare time is counter the AIDS denial as to people believe HIV is harmless or doesn’t exist, and who led to the deaths of over 350,000 people in South Africa over the past decade.
And you have to take these people on in a different style than scientists are used to. We have to develop better sound bites. We have to develop better discussion. You don’t really — you can’t really debate these people, but you have to develop the counter methods. For example, you hear that we shouldn’t take flu vaccines because the mercury will kill us.
Well, Paul Offert (ph) in the New York Times last week pointed out that there is less mercury in a flu shot than there is in a tuna fish sandwich [VL: I often INJECT my tuna sandwich… what about you? *CLICK HERE* for the science on Mercury and why ingestion is different from injection], and that’s a powerful sound bite to use against the crazy people who think that vaccines will kill you. That’s just one example. We need to develop anti-tactics to get across the message that vaccines are safe and beneficial to society, and we need to learn to deal with the crazy people who would try and stop us doing that.
SIMONSEN: I’d like to completely agree with you. I think there’s a lot of room for improvement, virtually reaching better across the public health expertise to attract the people who are interested in receiving the facts and actually to prevent the mistrust. Actually, there are many people who sort of (inaudible) that mistrust and I think there’s really a very good case for doing more in the area of psychology and communications strategy to actually relate data and so that people can really understand. I mean, we’re on the same plane here. This is a disease that’s threatening humanity and here is the best vaccine and you need it.
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[02] COHEN: Well, it’s an interesting question, though. Would you be against mandating?
SIMONSEN: Well, I think this is very interesting because, I mean, especially for the health-care worker example. I mean, there are many, many good reasons why health care workers should be considering immunization for their own safety but also to protect and, first, do no harm to the patients that they are treating. Having said that, does it work to mandate?
I think what would work better would be to say that there was a shortage and people tend to buy more of something that’s in demand. (Laughter.) We saw that — there was one season where, really, people lined up all night to get a flu shot.
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