New book shows how disinformation, mistrust worsened pandemic in the U.S.

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• Judy Woodruff:

  As we reported, the U.S. passed another tragic pandemic milestone. Three-quarters-of-a-million Americans have died from COVID-19.

  Dr. Sanjay Gupta is focusing in part on what we could have done differently.

  Here's the second part of my conversation with him about his book "World War C: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic and How to Prepare for the Next One."

  Welcome to the "NewsHour." We appreciate your joining us.

  You spent several hours last month talking to Joe Rogan, who is a talk show host, part of his podcast, essentially trying to change minds, to explain to people what the vaccine is.

  Did you come away from that with a better understanding of why people have this reluctance, of how ingrained these views are?

  Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Author, "World War C: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic and How to Prepare for the Next One",: Well, I have a better understanding that it is very real, the skepticism.

  I think, sometimes, you think that, look, logic will prevail, right? I mean, this is a vaccine that can save lives. It was the moonshot of scientific developments. That should win the day, ultimately.

  But you come to find out, that there is a significant amount of resistance, reluctance, hesitancy, whatever you want to call it.

  There's two things that really came out of — from my conversation with Joe Rogan.

  First of all, as we have democratized information more and more, it's really hard for people to tell good information from bad information, good information from misinformation. And there is true disinformation out there, which is purposeful misinformation. And it's really hard for the average opinion to sort of parse it out.

  If you were to just Google anything right now, "vaccines can kill you," if you were to just Google that, you would find a few papers and lots of Web sites to sort of validate your beliefs.

  What are we going to do going forward, especially in situations like this, when the quality and the veracity of that information really matters?

  The second thing is, who do we trust, and why has there been an erosion in trust in pharmaceutical companies, in mainstream media, in large institutions overall? And, as a result, when you suddenly say — you get these vaccine requirements that are coming out, there is a significant pushback, because there's already this distrust there that's been festering to begin with.

  Those two things, in combination, Judy, can make a very, very toxic environment for people who are trying to sort of navigate this through. It's not everybody, and maybe it's not even the majority of people, but it's enough people out there who have the distrust, fueled by bad information, to lead them to these decisions.

• Judy Woodruff:

  And in connection with that, just quickly, the reluctance we're seeing now on the part of many parents of young children, now that the vaccine has been approved, the Pfizer vaccine for young children, is that a different argument to be made to them?

• Dr. Sanjay Gupta:

  Yes, I think so.

  I think that the change in the thinking has to be, look, we know that children are less likely to get sick, they're less likely to be hospitalized, less likely to die. And that's all good. But there is still significant risk there, and how people sort of balance that risk.

  When the chicken pox vaccine came out a couple of decades ago, it was a big deal. It was really heralded as a big scientific achievement. Prior to the chicken pox vaccine in the United States, about 100 children died of chicken pox every year. That was unacceptable, and we needed to have this vaccine.

  Now we know over 700 children have died of COVID over the last year-and-a-half. And because we're putting it into the context of adults, we think, well, this doesn't seem like that big a deal. It is a big deal for those children and, overall, for all of us, because the more people that are vaccinated, the more likely we are to bring this to an end.

• Judy Woodruff:

  One other thing I want to ask you about, and this brings us back to the book.

  And I found it especially interesting is your advice to people, pretty simple advice, but it is to stay healthy in order to fight off the next pandemic or whatever it is that's like the pandemic in the future. Spell that out for us.

• Dr. Sanjay Gupta:

  Yes.

  We always note these pandemics disproportionately affect certain countries, and that happened here as well, but almost in the exact opposite way that you would expect. Wealthier countries were hit much harder, as a general rule, than poorer countries.

  And if you drill down on that, a lot of it had to do with the fact that there's lots of diseases of affluence, if you will, in wealthier countries, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, these same diseases that put people at much higher risk of developing severe COVID if they were to get infected.

  So, we have known, obviously, for some time that there's great value in staying healthy. But, oftentimes, the argument, Judy, has been eat right and exercise and you can avoid a heart attack decades from now. What I think this pandemic put into clearer focus was the real benefit of maintaining good health right now.

  People who were healthier when they got infected were much likely to do a lot better in terms of their outcomes.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Dr. Sanjay Gupta, really good to see you. Thank you so much.

• Dr. Sanjay Gupta:

  My honor, Judy. Great to see you.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Really fascinating stuff in that book.

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