How to build trust in a COVID vaccine
COVID-weary Americans hanging on to the hope for a vaccine by year’s end and a quick return to pre-pandemic normality should get used to the idea that it could take some time before enough Americans are immunized, for a number of reasons, including skepticism over the treatment. “The most important ingredient in all vaccines is trust,” said Barry Bloom, the Joan L. and Julius H. Jacobson Research Professor of Public Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “Without trust a vaccine doesn’t do much good in the world.” Bloom, with co-authors Glen Nowak of the University of Georgia and Walter Orenstein of Emory University’s School of Medicine, wrote a recent “Perspective” article in the New England Journal of Medicine calling for a major effort to build public trust in an eventual vaccine. The three say that the gap between the 50 percent of Americans who’ve said they’d accept a...