A WORLD expert on vaccine confidence, Professor Heidi Larson, has expressed her shock at “how bad leadership has been” during the pandemic, describing some of the global leadership as “really damagingly bad.”
In an interview to run in tomorrow's Herald magazine, she criticised the slowness of the Boris Johnson government to act last spring. She said: “Way too many people died because of delay by the UK Government. What I didn't understand was when Italy was burning, we still didn’t do anything. I mean, if we didn't have an Italy or if we didn't have some tangible experience so close to see how bad it can be, I would have understood the initial delay. But when something is right at your doorstep... I could not for the life of me understand not acting sooner.”
Speaking ahead of an Edinburgh Science Festival event on July 4 in which she is set to receive the Edinburgh Medal for her contributions to science and give an address, she observed of the global situation, “Political leaders have undermined an effective response. While there's usually an outlier here and there, it's been far more in far more situations than I would have expected or hoped for.”
READ MORE: Experts create guide aimed at fighting Covid-19 vaccine misinformation
Larson, an anthropologist who ten years ago set up the Vaccine Confidence Project to collect and analyse data on vaccine trust and mistrust, in today’s Herald Magazine, spoke about the explosion of stories, good and bad, that has taken place around vaccines over the past year.
Three years ago, she had predicted that one of the biggest dangers of a pandemic would be “viral misinformation”. The scale of the misinformation, however, has shocked even her. “It’s just gone off the charts,” she said.
Larson also observed that it is a scientific wonder that, just a year into a pandemic, we now have not just one vaccine, but a choice of them. “In that sense,” she said, “I think that the wonders of science have created unrealistic expectations. There was this race to get there first, to have the first big vaccine, but it was short sighted to be so focused on the science. It misled the public. Getting there first, from a scientific perspective is only from a scientific perspective. I think we really misled the public in the sense of what was going to be practically feasible.”
READ THE FULL INTERVIEW IN TOMORROW'S HERALD MAGAZINE
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