The Director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis Collins, made a direct appeal to Americans Sunday to “hit the reset button” on skepticism of approved Covid-19 vaccines. Collins stresses that the independent nature of the approval process and the strong safety measures should give the public confidence.
Recently, on Meet the Press, Collins said the mistrust of vaccines continues to be a source of great concern to public health officials, insisting that anyone who wants to “look at the facts” surrounding the vaccine’s development, testing, and safety record should “be very reassured.”
“I would like to plead to people who are listening to this, this morning to really hit the reset button on whatever they think they knew about this vaccine that might cause them to be so skeptical. The data is out there now,” he said.
“This is a very powerful outcome of this incredibly intense, yearlong experience, to develop this. I think all reasonable people — if they had the chance to put the noise aside and disregard all those terrible conspiracy theories — would look at this and say: I want this for my family, I want it for myself. People are dying right now; how could you possibly say let’s wait and see if that might mean some terrible tragedy is going to befall.”
Now, while scientific facts continue to come out, skepticism will not disappear. Especially amongst groups of Americans who have tales of American history of vaccinations that did not play well to the health of certain ethnic groups. There is widespread fear that the vaccine is available “too soon”.
But as a country experiencing a pandemic, how do we not take a vaccine serious? Especially with the numbers of new cases and deaths rising daily.
