a researcher’s view on covid-19 vaccine hesitancy

when i first wrote about the arrival of sars-cov-2  in early march 2020, the question was whether or not the new virus would become a pandemic. at the time, most experts believed that we had already reached the point of no return.

today, 18 months later, the answer is clear. you don’t need to be a scientist to know it. this pandemic is the worst public health emergency of international concern that our modern society has faced. to date,  more than 215 million cases have been confirmed and 4.5 million deaths have been reported globally .

these are just the reported cases. in reality, the number of cases is higher, and for a variety of reasons: lack of diagnostic capacity, infection without symptoms, unwillingness or inability to be tested or to visit a health facility, etc. the number of deaths due to covid-19 is probably underestimated, both  in canada  and  worldwide .

one of these solutions, vaccination, is far from new. yet no matter what the context,  it has always generated news . so where are we now?

still in our laboratories! i recently completed my phd in microbiology-immunology at laval university, research that i conducted under the supervision of  professor gary kobigner , who is known for co-developing an effective vaccine and treatment for ebola. this fall, i will begin a postdoctoral fellowship at the galveston national laboratory in texas, where i will continue my work on the transmission of, and vaccine development against, severe pathogens.

relevant questions

the world health organization (who) currently lists  13 available covid-19 vaccines, based on four different platforms, including mrna vaccines and viral vector vaccines . globally, more than five billion doses of vaccines have been administered. in canada, five of these vaccines are currently approved for use:  pfizer-biontech, moderna, astrazeneca, covishield and janssen , with  pfizer-biontech, moderna and astrazeneca  in wide distribution. combined, these vaccines have been administered to approximately  70 per cent  of canadians.

however,  many people have raised questions about these vaccines . and it is fair to do so! the unknown has always been a source of anxiety for human beings, it is normal to  ask questions .

they are doing what they have always done: practising the best science they can within the limits of current knowledge. this scientific practice means continuing to evaluate the effectiveness of these vaccines  against new variants  in labs, as the virus continues to mutate.

the scientific method

when vaccines are initially developed in the laboratory and tested on animals, it is normal that  not  all side-effects are identified. a mouse is not a human, after all, and models cannot account for all the variables that can be found in a human. humans live in a complex environment and society where individuals each have their own genetics, immunity and lifestyle (exercise, smoking, nutrition).

furthermore, the more people are vaccinated, the greater the likelihood of detecting a serious side-effect. clinical trials, where  drugs and vaccines are evaluated in a small group of individuals  before being made available to the general population, are designed to be safe. volunteers are usually healthy adults, without serious  pre-existing medical conditions .

vaccination is now widespread in many countries. it is therefore statistically normal that rarer effects (for example, ones that one in a million people develop) are now being observed. these effects are too rare to have been detected in a clinical trial of 10,000 people. this is the case for rare side-effects such as  guillain-barré syndrome  and  bell’s palsy .

the  scientific method  requires that the following process is followed: observe a problem, formulate a hypothesis about its possible causes, evaluate it experimentally by controlling the variables, interpret the results and draw a conclusion.

it can turn out that our initial hypothesis is wrong, and that is equally acceptable. this is how science was designed. i think that before the pandemic, people considered science infallible. opening up research to the general public has greatly changed this perception, especially as science quickly became embroiled in politics, particularly over  the question of the origin of the pandemic .

knowing how to communicate

and that’s where the problem comes from, among other things.  the key to effective scientific communication is not the science. it’s the communication . the results of laboratory experiments and clinical trials are what they are. either the vaccine or drug works to reduce mortality, or it doesn’t work, and we go back to the drawing board.

so where does the reluctance about vaccines come from? one of the main problems is not the lack of information about the safety of the vaccine. almost everyone has access to this information on internet. the problem is the lack of trust in institutions,  which has been growing globally in recent years .

but this trust can be earned — or regained. it just takes time, respect and empathy. a study by researchers at the  centre hospitalier universitaire de sherbrooke  shows that an educational session about immunization that used motivational interviewing techniques with parents of infants resulted in a nine per cent increase in immunization rates compared with families who did not receive the sessions.

finding the right answer to a question

since this concerns everyone, it is high time that the public became more involved. after all, scientific discoveries and health measures are everybody’s business. for example, few citizens are familiar with “ gain-of-function research .” these studies can involve a level of risk ranging from very low to very high. for example, producing a drug from a bacterium carries little risk and much benefit. however, increasing the virulence or transmissibility of a virus such as ebola or influenza could carry a lot of risk if such research were carried out by individuals with bad intentions, or in poorly secured laboratories.