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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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(Laughing)
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We --
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at that point I realized
I never really had enough time.
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I was too busy putting out the fires,
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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,
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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,
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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 hyper-connected 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,
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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.
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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,
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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 politcal and social turbulance
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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
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and distrust.
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What --
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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
that requires, regulates
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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,
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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 hyper-connected
environment with social media these days,
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and people can share their unfettered
views, 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 are 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 pro-vaccine groups.
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500 percent faster.
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They were more nimble,
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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 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,
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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 went on Reddit
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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,
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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)