A health policy journalist presented a keynote address about the origins of public health mistrust and its impact on health care public opinion in the United States at the Elliott School of International Affairs on Wednesday.
Sheryl Gay Stolberg, a health policy and politics correspondent for the New York Times, discussed her experience reporting during the COVID-19 pandemic and how national skepticism of public health has grown over time. The “Rituals in the Making” research team — a GW-led project on misinformation and the consequences of the pandemic — hosted the event, which was co-sponsored by the anthropology department and the Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics.
Stolberg said her forthcoming book, titled “Contagion of Mistrust,” explores how Americans reacted and adapted to various public health crises throughout history, like polio and the COVID-19 pandemic. She said public health officials used to be viewed as “heroes,” like Jonas Salk, a virologist who developed the first polio vaccine, but now are demonized, like Anothony Fauci, one of the top U.S. health officials during the pandemic.
She said a 1959 Gallup survey ranked Salk above President Harry Truman on a list of “the most outstanding personalities” in the last 10 years. She said in December 2021, a Gallup poll of Fauci found that only 19 percent of Republicans approved of him, similar numbers to politicians, like former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
“How did we get from Salk the hero to Fauci the hero turned pariah and now to Kennedy, who’s waging war on the very institutions, like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, that he oversees,” Stolberg said.
Lynn Goldman, dean of the Milken Institute School of Public Health, introduced Stolberg and said March marks the fifth anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic. She said the pandemic was a “test” of science, compassion and “our collective trust” in public institutions.
“It’s essential to have trusted, well-equipped public health institutions that can translate science into action,” Goldman said. “As time went by, COVID also laid bare the challenges of doing so in an environment where public health itself had become deeply politicized.”
Holden Thorp, a professor of chemistry and the editor in chief of Science, a series of academic journals published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said during the pandemic scientists should have let politicians take more blame for strict lockdowns and mandates than health officials.
“Scientists have an enormous responsibility to carry ourselves, carry out our work as carefully as possible and to be as careful communicating it as we possibly can be,” Thorp said.
Stolberg said a study conducted by the Global Health Security Index in 2019 ranked the United States as the country “most prepared” to respond to a pandemic, which was proven wrong by the high number of deaths America had during the pandemic.
She said skepticism of public health officials among far-right Republicans during the pandemic flowed in part from a “social media ecosystem” that “breeds mistrust” and rewards the people who spread misinformation.
Stolberg said the rise of mistrust in public health is partly due to the Biden administration’s strict vaccine mandates for large employers in 2021 and the social media crackdown on COVID-19 misinformation. She said leading figures opposed to the requirements, like current Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who felt “canceled” and “angry,” giving him a platform to fight back.
“He incorporated these themes into his presidential campaign: themes of freedom of speech, of government telling people what to do,” Stolberg said. “And I would argue that Kennedy’s rise was fueled by really a singular sentiment, and that is the sentiment of mistrust.”
Stolberg said now Kennedy is “leading the very agencies he’s attacked.” She said some lawmakers and Kennedy himself have argued that it takes a “skeptic” to restore trust in public health.
She said public health experts have “always depended” on partnering with the government, which is now in “mortal peril” due to the spread of misinformation and mistrust in public health.
“Kennedy, who rose to prominence by sowing mistrust, says that he is the man to restore trust in the system,” Stolberg said. “Like the rest of you, I’m on a journey to find out if he can.”
