Thank you for this article. I would just add that one of many reasons people are susceptible to disinformation is that it feeds on well-placed (IMO) distrust of the pharmaceutical industry as out to profit off our health. I myself am critical of Pharma, but that doesn't mean that I think that everything they develop is dangerous. It does…
Thank you for this article. I would just add that one of many reasons people are susceptible to disinformation is that it feeds on well-placed (IMO) distrust of the pharmaceutical industry as out to profit off our health. I myself am critical of Pharma, but that doesn't mean that I think that everything they develop is dangerous. It does mean that I understand people's scepticism about their playbook. If we didn't have a profit-gouging pharmaceutical industry, it would go a long way to establishing trust that the industry isn't just hyping vaccines to make more money. It doesn't help that they are raising the price of COVID vaccines, which has been in the news lately.
This is an excellent point. My college age son got the J&J as his initial vaccine. When he was trying to figure out which vaccine to get as a booster, he came away thinking he shouldn't get a booster at all because he discovered that all the pharmaceutical companies involved had done some horrible things in the past. He eventually did get a booster because his college required it, but, yes, people are not wrong to be skeptical of pharmaceutical companies or even the medical field in general. How to overcome this?
One way would be to put some controls on how much pharmaceutical companies are allowed to profit from their products, especially those that are developed out of research that was publicly funded.
Thank you for this article. I would just add that one of many reasons people are susceptible to disinformation is that it feeds on well-placed (IMO) distrust of the pharmaceutical industry as out to profit off our health. I myself am critical of Pharma, but that doesn't mean that I think that everything they develop is dangerous. It does mean that I understand people's scepticism about their playbook. If we didn't have a profit-gouging pharmaceutical industry, it would go a long way to establishing trust that the industry isn't just hyping vaccines to make more money. It doesn't help that they are raising the price of COVID vaccines, which has been in the news lately.
This is an excellent point. My college age son got the J&J as his initial vaccine. When he was trying to figure out which vaccine to get as a booster, he came away thinking he shouldn't get a booster at all because he discovered that all the pharmaceutical companies involved had done some horrible things in the past. He eventually did get a booster because his college required it, but, yes, people are not wrong to be skeptical of pharmaceutical companies or even the medical field in general. How to overcome this?
One way would be to put some controls on how much pharmaceutical companies are allowed to profit from their products, especially those that are developed out of research that was publicly funded.