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I study rumors.

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Not tabloid gossip

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or the kind of rumors
that are making stock markets crash --

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or soar --

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but the kind of rumors
that affect your health ...

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and the world's health.

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Like eating a lot of garlic

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or drinking a lot of water

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is going to help
protect us from coronavirus --

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if only.

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Rumors have a bad reputation.

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They're seen as not fact,

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wrong,

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or "just a rumor."

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But I've studied rumors for years,

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and one thing I've learned
is that they all have a story,

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and often, an important story.

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One of the most moving or alarming
rumor episodes that I investigated

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was in northern Nigeria.

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I was working with UNICEF's
Global Immunization programme.

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And it wasn't the rumors themselves
that I found so alarming;

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It was the global impact of those rumors.

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The rumors were suspecting

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that the polio vaccine
was actually a contraceptive.

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It was controlling populations --

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or maybe it caused AIDS.

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No, no, maybe it's the CIA
spying on them or counting them.

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I mean, why else would they have people
knocking on their door again and again

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with the same polio vaccine?

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When children were dying of measles,

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no one was coming with measles vaccines.

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This wasn't about getting the facts right.

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This was about trust.

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It was about broken trust.

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Why so much distrust?

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It wasn't the mothers who were
particularly distrusting, actually.

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It was the local leaders,

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the religious leaders,

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the local political leaders.

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It was the governor of the state of Kano

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who decided to boycott

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the entire polio eradication
effort in that state ...

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for 11 months.

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Why such distrust?

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Well, it was 2003.

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It was two years after 9/11.

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And they were convinced that the West,

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and particularly the United States,

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was at war with Muslims.

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And they knew that the West,

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and particularly the United States,

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was a huge supporter --

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and funder --

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of the global polio
eradication initiative.

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They had their reasoning.

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That lack of trust,

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that "just a rumor or two"

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cost the polio eradication program
500 million dollars

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to reset the clock,

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to regain the progress lost
during those 11 months

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and beyond.

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The Nigerian strain of the polio virus
traveled to over 20 countries,

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as far as Indonesia.

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The cost of a rumor.

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The Nigeria episode was one
of many episodes that I investigated

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when I was with UNICEF

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and earned the title of the "director
of UNICEF's fire department."

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(Laughs)

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We -- at that point I realized
I never really had enough time.

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I was too busy putting out the fires,
and not enough time to understand

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what was driving
not just the individual episodes,

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but why was there an epidemic
of these happening around the world.

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I left UNICEF and went back to research --

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applied research --

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and I set up in 2010 what I called
the Vaccine Confidence Project

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at the London School of Hygiene
and Tropical Medicine.

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I convened anthropologists,
epidemiologists,

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psychologists,

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digital media specialists

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and mathematical modelers.

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We set ourselves the task

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to investigate historic episodes of rumors

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and their impacts,

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from trying to figure out
what were the early signals,

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what were the amplifying factors

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and the impacts,

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how did they get traction,

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so we could start to understand
what we should be looking for,

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how we could help governments

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and immunization programs
be more alert and responsive

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to early signals of problems.

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It was an early warning system.

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In 2015, we developed
a vaccine confidence index.

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It's a survey trying to investigate
to what extent do people agree

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or disagree that vaccines are important,

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they're safe, they're effective --

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they work --

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and somehow they're compatible
with my religious beliefs.

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We've run this with over hundreds
of thousands of people around the world,

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trying to get our finger on the pulse
of confidence and trust,

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but also, more importantly, looking
at when that trust goes up or down,

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because we want to see
when it starts to decline,

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that's the time to jump in,

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to get there before there's a crisis
like the Nigerian one.

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We also set up 24-7 media and social media
monitoring around the world --

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multilanguage --

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listening for what's going on
in vaccine conversations,

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trying to pick up early concerns
or changes in sentiment

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that we should be paying attention to.

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We've created an ecosystem
of different types of information

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to try to understand:

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what are the public thinking
and how can we engage?

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We look for early signals.

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When we find one,

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we have a global network of collaborators
in a number of countries

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who have more local
intelligence in that setting

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to try to understand --

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is this signal misinformation,

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or is something brewing
that we should know about?

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In London, we have a bigger picture.

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We watch the swarms of rumors
not just traveling locally

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but jumping countries.

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We've seen them jump
from Japan over to Columbia,

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through Europe and around.

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They move.

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We live in a hyperconnected environment.

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One of the things
that we found fascinating,

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and we've learned
a lot in the last 10 years --

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this is our 10th anniversary,

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this didn't start yesterday,
this rumor problem --

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and one of the things we've learned

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is in our global monitoring,

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that Europe is the most
skeptical region in the world.

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France won the prize, actually.

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(Laughter)

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By far.

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And actually some of those rumors
have traveled to other parts of the world.

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But we were trying to understand Europe.

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Hmm. Why Europe?

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I thought the US was really --

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had some of the most skepticism,

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but boy, I was wrong.

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And a political scientist,
a colleague we work with,

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Jon Kennedy,

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he took our data
from 28 European countries

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and he looked at it

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and correlated it
with political opinion polling.

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And what did he find?

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He found that people who are most likely
to vote for a populist party

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also were the ones most likely
to strongly disagree

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that vaccines were important,
safe or effective.

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What did we learn?

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Vaccines cannot escape
the political and social turbulence

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that surrounds it.

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Scientists were unprepared
for this tsunami of doubt

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and questions and distrust.

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What -- why are vaccines
so ripe for resistance?

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Well, we identified a number of things,

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but one:

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they're highly mediated by government

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that requires, regulates
and sometimes recommends vaccines --

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or often recommends
and sometimes requires.

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Big business makes vaccines,

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and neither institution,
government or big business,

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are high in the trust ranks these days.

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And then there's scientists
who discover and develop vaccines,

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and they're pretty elite

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and not accessible to the general public,

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at least the language they speak.

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Third, we're in a hyperconnected
environment with social media these days,

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and people can share
their unfettered views,

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concerns, anxieties and worries

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and find a lot of people
that think the way they do,

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and think maybe their worries
are worth paying attention to.

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And finally,

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vaccines touch every single
life on the planet.

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What other health intervention,

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besides water,

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touches every single life?

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So if you're looking
for something to disrupt,

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it's a perfect stage.

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Perhaps that's one of the reasons
that we need to pay more attention

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and rebuild our trust in issues.

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People are asking all kinds of questions.

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They're asking,

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why are vaccines --

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and these are the kinds of things
we're hearing in our social media --

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why can't my child have
a personalized vaccination schedule?

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What's the wisdom of so many vaccines?

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What about all those ingredients
and preservatives?

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These are not crazy people,

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they're not uneducated;

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they're actually worried mothers.

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But some of them have come to me
and said, "We feel ignored,

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we feel judged if we ask a question,

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and we even feel demonized

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that maybe we're part of some
antivaccine group."

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So we have some listening to do.

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And maybe that's why last year,

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there was research that found

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that in six months in 2019,

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online --

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this was with hundreds --

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100 million different users
on social media --

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although the numbers of individuals
who expressed in their online groups,

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they were positive,

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as groups,

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the ones who were the most negative

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were recruiting
the conversations in the middle

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that were undecided about whether
they wanted to get vaccines.

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The highly negative --

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what we might call
the antivaccine groups --

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were recruiting the undecided

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at a rate 500 percent faster

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than the provaccine groups.

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500 percent faster.

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They were more nimble,
they were responsive

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and they were listening.

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Most people believe that vaccines are good

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and they believe in their importance.

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But that belief is under attack.

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We need to build in
more opportunities for conversation.

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And there are ways to do it.

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It's not easy for some
health professionals

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to have conversations
where their authority is questioned.

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It's uncomfortable.

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And they're just too busy
to listen to all these questions.

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But we need to do something about that

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because we're losing
a lot of concerned parents

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that just want a conversation.

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We should get volunteers
trained to sit in waiting rooms,

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to be on hotlines,

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to have online chat forums,

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to have chat boxes.

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In younger kids,
with younger kids in school,

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teach them about immune systems

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and teach them that actually,

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you know that vaccine
your little brother got?

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Well, it just inspired
your natural immune system.

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It's a great thing and this is why.

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We need to build that confidence;

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we need to listen.

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Despite all this questioning --

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and there's a lot of it --

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I hear probably more
than a lot of people --

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I am an optimist.

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And my optimism
is with a younger generation.

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The younger generation
who actually now are becoming very aware

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of the risks of social media,

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the false news,

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the false identities,

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and they're starting to embrace science.

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And some of them are a group of children
whose mothers refused to vaccinate them.

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Last spring of 2019,

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18-year-old Ethan Lindenberger

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went on Reddit and put out a post.

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"My mother doesn't believe in vaccines.

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She's really worried they cause autism.

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In fact, she strongly believes that.

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But I'm 18.

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I'm a senior in high school.

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I can drive a car, I can vote

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and I could go get my own vaccine.

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Can someone tell me where to get it?"

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That post went viral.

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It started to get
a whole younger movement going.

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I saw Ethan speak at a conference,

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the Global Vaccine Summit
at the EU last fall.

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He spoke eloquently,

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and I was impressed,

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in front of a whole forum.

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He told his personal story,

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and then he said to the group,

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he said, "You know, everybody
talks about misinformation,

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but I want to tell you about
a different kind of misinformation,

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and that's misinformation
that says that people like my mother,

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who is a loving mother,

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is a bad person because
she doesn't give me vaccines.

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Well, I want to tell all of you
that she didn't give me a vaccine

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because she loves me

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and because she believed
that that was the best thing for me.

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I think differently

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and I will never change her mind,

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but she's not a bad person."

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That was the message from a teenager.

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Empathy, kindness and understanding.

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We have an abundance
of scientific information

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to debunk false rumors.

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That's not our problem.

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We have a relationship problem,

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not a misinformation problem.

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Misinformation is the symptom,

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not the cause.

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If people trust,

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they'll put up with a little risk
to avert a much bigger one.

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The one thing that I want and I hope for

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is that we as a medical
and health community

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have the moral courage and humility

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to productively engage,

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like Ethan,

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with those who disagree with us.

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I hope so.

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Thank you.

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(Applause and cheers)