Why We Need To Change How We Talk About Covid-19 Vaccines – Forbes

Its critical to resist over-optimism as the Delta variant spreads

Dr. Joshua Liao discusses how framing can be used to combat over-optimism about vaccination, which contributed to premature decisions to drop masking and social distancing requirements and public confusion.

Covid-19 vaccines play a key role in curbing the pandemic. But concerted efforts to promote vaccination over the last nine months also offer a cautionary lesson for the future: enthusiasm about vaccines can easily lead to over-optimism which can backfire.

From a behavioral perspective, humans are prone to overestimate their chances of experiencing positive events and underestimating the risk of negative ones. Studies show that people can suffer from this optimism bias in different aspects of their careers (e.g., earning potential, likelihood of business success) and personal lives (e.g., avoiding divorce). My colleagues in the Value and Systems Science Lab and I have observed optimism bias in many health decisions.

As I noted last year, over-optimism about Covid-19 vaccines could distort peoples risk perceptions and encourage unsafe behaviors that prolong Covid-related suffering. At the time, I worried that even if vaccines proved efficacious, optimism bias could still create a mismatch between expectation and reality; and that an inflated sense of security would embolden leaders and citizens to prematurely stop masking and distancing as burdensome, unnecessary measures under assumed immunity.

Unfortunately, weve seen this occur. For example, as more Americans were vaccinated this spring, the CDC relaxed its guidance by suggesting vaccinated people could participate in most activities without masking or physical distancing. There was rationale for the change: vaccines conferred strong protection in early scientific studies, and leaders wanted to incentivize vaccination by highlighting the associated freedoms.

But there were also open questions. What did immunity mean not being infected, not passing the virus to others, or both? How long would protection last, and how could we tell? How should we account for people with weak immune systems, or children who couldnt get a shot? Would the answers to any of these questions change with emerging variants?

Facing those uncertainties, dropping masking and distancing precautions reflected incredible optimism over-optimism, even about Covid-19 vaccines. Were now paying for that rosy outlook as we grapple with added public confusion, distrust, and resistance about the shift back to indoor masking.

Leaders, companies, and citizens could talk about masks and distancing as ongoing parts of our pandemic response, not just temporary stop-gap measures.

Its critical to avoid similar mistakes and resist over-optimism as the Delta variant spreads. One solution is intentionally re-frame how we talk about Covid-19 vaccines in everything from public health messaging to company communications and personal conversations. Doing so leverages the power of framing effects, and the fact that peoples decisions can be affected by how information is presented.

For instance, many promote Covid-19 vaccines based on their very high efficacy and reference infections among the vaccinated as breakthrough cases. These framings are implicitly anchored in optimism, connoting that protection is somehow defective at times when it should be nearly absolute. In reality, none of the Covid-19 vaccines are 100% efficacious; vaccines that permit mild infection while preventing severe disease are still valuable; and infections are infections, whether in the vaccinated or unvaccinated.

A better way to convey these messages would be to reframe how we talk about the extent of vaccine protection (substantially greater compared to no vaccine, rather than nearly perfect in an absolute sense); the nature of protection (good for preventing severe illness, rather than bad for permitting mild illness); and infections among vaccinated people (unfortunate but expected occurrences, rather than unanticipated defects).

As another example, leaders, companies, and citizens could talk about masks and distancing as ongoing parts of our pandemic response, not just temporary stop-gap measures. This framing would not only set better expectations, reduce confusion, and avoid the health and psychological costs of repeatedly changing public health guidance. It would also reflect the fact that masking and distancing guidelines were in place during Covid-19 vaccine trials, and could have played roles in those study results.

Of course, changing how we talk about Covid-19 vaccines isnt enough by itself. Public and private messaging needs to keep pace with the rapid advancements in Covid-related science produced in and outside of America. Persuading people to get vaccinated also begins with the hard but important work of understanding why they arent.

Nonetheless, we should recognize the risks of over-optimism and acknowledge how it can undercut our efforts to curb the pandemic. We have an opportunity to learn from prior experience and do better headed into the fall. We can start by reframing how we talk about Covid-19 vaccines.

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Why We Need To Change How We Talk About Covid-19 Vaccines - Forbes