Americans’ trust in vaccines is at a historic low. Only about 40% of people now consider childhood vaccines “extremely important,” down from 64% in 2001.
Support for routine childhood shots has especially eroded among conservatives — largely due to the Biden administration‘s disastrous, heavy-handed COVID-19 vaccine mandates that infringed on the public’s freedoms and violated privacy.
The pandemic proved that scolding and threatening people doesn’t lead to more vaccinations. Just the opposite. It undermines trust in vaccines as a whole and leads to far fewer shots in arms.
So now, President Donald Trump is pioneering a different approach: touting the benefits of vaccines while emphasizing the importance of the doctor-patient relationship. This approach promises to be far more effective at restoring public confidence in vaccines, especially among conservatives, than the Biden administration’s coercive tactics.
During a recent White House press conference, Trump described himself as a “big supporter of vaccines,” stating, “I’ve seen how great vaccines can be, how incredible they can be, so I’m a believer.” A few weeks prior, he encouraged parents to vaccinate their children, noting that childhood vaccines work, “pure and simple.”
The president is correct about the safety and efficacy of those childhood vaccines. The polio vaccine, for instance, prevents paralysis in 99% of cases. Studies have shown remarkably few adverse events from the hundreds of millions of doses that have been administered over the past decades. Vaccines are the reason why illnesses such as polio and smallpox, which once killed and infected thousands every year, are now a distant memory.
The president has even defended the much-maligned COVID-19 vaccines. He has repeatedly praised Operation Warp Speed, his first-term effort to develop the vaccine. And he recently bragged, “I got a certain vaccine approved in nine months that would have taken from five to 12 years. I’m very proud of it.”
He’s right to be proud. Operation Warp Speed was nothing short of a medical and administrative miracle, a historic public-private partnership that brought vaccines to Americans at record speed and saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Many of his political opponents have grudgingly admitted that it was a remarkable achievement. One recent study even found that the COVID-19 vaccines sparked a helpful immune response that increased cancer patients’ survival.
Unfortunately, the Biden administration squandered Trump’s accomplishment by eroding trust in vaccines through heavy-handed mandates, inconsistent messaging, and false public statements. By shaming anyone who hesitated to get vaccinated or who simply asked questions, the Biden administration generated an entirely foreseeable backlash from tens of millions of Americans.
Coercive tactics are counterproductive to the goal of boosting vaccination rates.
At the heart of healthcare stands man in his social, cultural, and spiritual context. Science has driven the economic development of our societies. The problematic double-edged sword of knowledge, science, and technology was already recognized at the dawn of our civilization. Science is power. There was triumph and jubilation when the human genome was decoded, but this achievement has not given us a way to understand human nature and the human condition.
No one, least of all Trump, is saying that people shouldn’t get vaccinated. But he recognizes what his predecessor didn’t: that the best way to improve vaccination rates isn’t through mass mandates or shaming and coercing people. It’s by treating people with respect and encouraging them to consult their doctors before making medical decisions.
Dr. Wolfgang Klietmann is a former clinical pathologist and medical microbiologist at Harvard Medical School.