Pandemic Resilience: Vaccination Resistance and Hesitance, Lessons from COVID-19 (Risk, Systems and Decisions)

This edited volume draws from health communication scholars and offers a depthful examination of the roles vaccination have played and continue to play in contributing to human, community, and transnational protection against infectious diseases. The problems associated with vaccination against infection diseases was made abundantly clear during the current pandemic of COVID-19. Vaccines were traced back to Dr. Edward Jenner in the 18th century as a tool to control smallpox in England. Today we have six different categories of vaccines (three seem most controversial today): inactivated, live-attenuated, and messenger RNA (mRNA). We examine the reasons for public reluctance and outright resistance to vaccines examining cognitive biases, communication campaign failures, politicization, misinformation, partisanship, and greed. The healthcare industry has not treated all infected people equally, especially the poor and people of color. This is true in the USA as well as abroad. In the future, we can expect more exotic infections to increase due to globalization, development, and transportation. As climate changes, humans will contact more species carrying many different bacteria and viruses. Advances in medical research have led to increases in the number of vaccinations available to control infection and outbreaks. However, the rates of vaccination have fluctuated over time. A vaccine that is not used is meaningless. To increase vaccination rates, we must learn why the public shies away from vaccinations and under what circumstances. This information will enable us to design more effective messaging and communication campaigns to maximize general resilience. An interactive partnership between providers of healthcare and their patients is a prerequisite to productive and effective vaccination campaigns

David M. Berube is a Professor of Communication at North Carolina State University with an emphasis in science and technology communication. He is an affiliated professor in environmental studies, science and technology studies, genetic engineering and soceity, and climate change and society studies as well. He has a background in biology, psychology, and communication, esp. science communication and rhetorical studies of science. He received his doctorate in 1990 from NYU. He teaches graduate seminars in risk communication, hazard communication, pandemic communication, climate change communication, and social media. He serves and has served on multiple national and international task forces, councils, centers, etc., dealing with science and emerging technologies and the public sphere. He reviews federal grants for the NSF and others and has received over $20 million in funding over the last decade and one-half. He completed a 4-year $1.5 million NSF grant on how the public understands complex toxicological information on nanoparticles. He is a CoPI on the NNCI RTNN 10-year grant and directs the assessment of the labs under the grant on the campuses of UNC-CH, Duke, and NCSU.