During an interview aired on Tuesday’s broadcast of WBUR’s “Here and Now,” Dr. Katherine O’Brien, Director of the Immunization, Vaccine and Biologicals Department at the World Health Organization responded to a question on if there’s anything the organization wishes it had done differently during the coronavirus pandemic by stating that no one was perfect and “I think there was a lot of technical information that made it hard for people to understand. I also think it’s very hard for people to accept that recommendations, advice would change over time.” But “we need to all get better at communicating the knowns and the unknowns.”
Co-host Asma Khalid asked, [relevant exchange begins around 4:30] “It does seem like the COVID-19 pandemic really altered how, at least the American public, relates to vaccines and health mandates. And we saw that the handling of the virus became rather partisan, and, to some degree, remains so to this day. With the benefit of hindsight, are there things you wish you all would have done differently?”
O’Brien responded, “I would have to say that there’s probably nobody who was part of the management of the pandemic that didn’t learn something from the experience. Nobody got it perfectly right. I think there was a lot of technical information that made it hard for people to understand. I also think it’s very hard for people to accept that recommendations, advice would change over time.”
O’Brien continued, “There’s one anecdote that really stays with me, which is, many people have said that it was their expectation that the vaccines were going to prevent people from getting infected. At W.H.O., we didn’t say that. So, there’s something about what people want to hear and what the evidence actually says. And I just think, from a communication perspective, we need to all get better at communicating the knowns and the unknowns.”
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