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Front Burner Transcript for November 25, 2024

Host: Jayme Poisson

JAYME POISSON: Hey, everybody. Jayme here. So in New Brunswick right now, there's a brutal measles outbreak. The province has confirmed 44 cases of the disease and there are actually 100 confirmed cases nationwide. The biggest outbreak in Canada since 2019. About two-thirds of these cases are in people who have not been vaccinated against the disease. Routine childhood vaccination rates have been falling in recent years, the anti-vaxx movement saw a surge during the pandemic, and now longtime anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is set to lead the U.S. Department of Health. To talk about all of this, my guest today is Timothy Caulfield. He's a professor at the University of Alberta in the Faculty of Law and the School of Public Health. He's an expert on health misinformation, and this is something that he's been watching very, very closely.

[Music: Theme]

JP: Timothy, hi. Thanks so much for coming on to the show.

TIMOTHY CAULFIELD: Thanks for having me on.

JP: Before we start talking about the state of the anti-vaxx movement, I just wonder if I could get your reaction to this measles outbreak. What goes through the head of someone like you when you hear the news?

TIMOTHY CAULFIELD: I can't help but be really angry. And look, there's a whole bunch of factors at play here. Access to vaccines... There's vaccine fatigue because it's just been a topic for so long. But there is absolutely no doubt that this is largely a story of vaccination hesitancy. We know that hesitancy rates for not just the measles vaccine, right, are increasing. We're seeing it in the United States and in Canada. We're seeing it for HPV. We're seeing it for the flu vaccine. Of course, of course, we're seeing it for the COVID vaccines. There's just this horribly destructive trend of, you know, an anti-science trend for this increasing hesitancy. So when you hear stories like this, it's maddening, right. Because as you said off the top, we know the measles vaccine is incredibly effective and incredibly, incredibly safe. And by the way, by the way, around the world, 107,000 people died [JP: Wow.] from measles last year. Mostly kids. Mostly kids, right. Those are deaths that could have been prevented if we had, you know, strong distribution of the, of the measles vaccines. In the United States, in the United States, a recent study found that about 30% of people believe the 'vaccines cause autism' lie. Now, 30% believe or are open to, and that is an increase. So the belief in that lie, that hardcore lie, is increasing and that is totally, totally the fault of anti-vaxxers. And for sure, RFK Jr. has played a huge role in that increase.

JP: I wonder if you could help me put just maybe a few more numbers on this. So in terms of vaccination rates, do we have a good sense of like how much they have been falling and for which vaccines? Particularly since the pandemic, since 2020.

TIMOTHY CAULFIELD: Well, it is difficult to put an exact number on this because, you know, depending how you ask and what is the nature of the hesitancy. But the number I just gave is a really good example. If you look at the numbers for belief in misinformation about vaccines, that's another really good indication. So things like the COVID vaccine, you know, killed more people than it saved. The COVID vaccine will change my DNA. The-- Ivermectin works. These things, like, that are demonstrably false, right, from a scientific perspective. You know, not, you know, Oh, we need to be open-minded to outside, you know, sort of scientific ideas. These things are demonstrably false. And studies have shown that belief in those lies is increasing in both Canada and the United States. If you ask people why, you know, why do you have this hesitancy? Largely, it's not about some very nuanced perspective on distrust of institutions or this nuanced belief in what the science says about who should be getting the booster. The distrust, the hesitancy is justified using misinformation like the ideas that I just, I just rolled out. So we know that misinformation is playing a big part in this increase in hesitancy. There's complexities here for sure. Because, you know, what is the arrow of causation? In other words, do you have this hesitancy in your gut and because you're part of this political community, for example, and then you reach for misinformation to justify the hesitancy? Or did the misinformation cause the hesitancy? In some respects, when you're talking about, you know, the increase in hesitancy that I just described, it kind of doesn't matter because the hesitancy is still doing-- or the misinformation is still playing a big part in that increase and the justification for that increase.

[music]

JP: The people who have these beliefs, do we sort of have any sense of who they are? You know, maybe in terms of demographics?

TIMOTHY CAULFIELD: We do. We do. And it's a fascinating question because it's shifted. It's definitely shifted over time. We know that hesitancy is playing a huge, increasingly big role right now. And we know that that hesitancy resides on a very particular side of the ideological spectrum. And let me just give you some numbers here. In the United States, your political identity is more predictive of whether you are vaccinated for COVID -- and really, I think this goes for almost every vaccine now -- than race, income, education, insurance coverage, age. It is the number one predictive variable. And that is true in Canada, too. We have less research on it in Canada -- again, it's another topic that we're researching at our institute. But let me just give you this one survey that was done by a colleague of mine, Frank Graves, a survey expert in Alberta. And he found that, I believe the number-- I want to be careful to get this right. I think it was 93% of the unvaccinated -- those individuals who didn't get a vaccine, didn't get the COVID vaccine -- voted for the Conservative Party in [JP: Right.] Alberta. And I think it's 3 to 5% of the unvaccinated voted for the NDP. [JP: Right.] That is a HUGE split.

JP: This is very interesting to me because this actually wasn't always the case, right?

TIMOTHY CAULFIELD: Yeah, I think this is very, very important because, you know, as soon as you start rolling out these numbers and you can feel the anger in my voice [laughs]... You think, Oh, Caulfield's just being super partisan. You know, he's a, he's a, you know, ideological hack. It wasn't always like this. And you can say that more broadly about alternative medicine and the wellness industry. You know, for most of my career, this kind of resided on the left. You know, it was about, you know, new age-y approaches to health, it was about different ways of knowing, it was about natural. It was about being counterculture. There's been studies that have shown that in the '70s, in the '70s, it was the Democrats in the United States that were anti-science and the Republicans that were strongly pro-science, right. So [JP: Yeah.] Vietnam War, Agent Orange, you know, Watergate. And now we've seen a complete flip. I can give other examples, on and on. But, so it's really important to recognize it's this cultural moment, and it's largely emanating from the right.

JP: And just take me through what you think caused the flip. Right? Like what you think caused the flip.

TIMOTHY CAULFIELD: So again, you're gonna hate my answer. [chuckles] It's complex. It's complex. You know, I think--

JP: Yeah. We get a lot of those on this show, yeah.

TIMOTHY CAULFIELD: [laughs] I think, I do think there are interesting threads, right. So, you know, I make it sound like there was this complete shift, but there are these threads that were always there. Like suspicion of institutions, right? You saw that on the left and on the right. You know, certainly, you know, during the Vietnam War and Watergate. And so you're seeing that thread continues, right. Also, this idea of empowerment. You know, taking control of your life. I think you see those threads there. But in the past, when you're talking about health misinformation, which is, you know, the area that I study, it was never this political, right? You know, there were... you know, politics was always there, was kind of lurking in the background. But now it's central. So the other thing that I think has happened is there's this cycle where being anti-vaxx is being part of this community, and therefore it becomes more valuable for politicians to either explicitly or often implicitly kind of endorse the conspiracy theory or the idea, thereby making it more of an ideological flag for that community. And the cycle kind of accelerates, right? And we've seen that happen in the United States. So in other words, it becomes more politically advantageous for politicians and people within that political community to use these topics as an ideological flag, right. And we've seen that with, [JP: Yeah.] we see that with topics on the left and on the right. You know, and we could talk about nuclear power and GMOs on the left, right. And then on the right, you see it's becoming vaccines and gender politics. These are wedge issues that allow belief in the conspiracy theory to accelerate and, and the scientific data to kind of rescind in relevance. It really all becomes about the ideological flag.

JP: And fair for me to say that the pandemic might have, like, supercharged this?

TIMOTHY CAULFIELD: Oh, for sure. For sure that it did. And this has to do with distrust. And I think you start to see populist parties taking advantage of that distrust. Like, Don't trust, you know, the elites, which is a common theme, as everyone knows, in populist politics. And that, you know, became the norm. And it's become the norm to such a degree -- you know, one of the things I'm both fascinated with and infuriated with -- that, you know, as I said at the outset, demonstrable lies for particular communities are held out as truisms. Right? So if you don't believe this lie, you're the enemy, right. They've become ideological tests.

[music]

JP: You just did this documentary for The Passionate Eye -- which is great, by the way -- all about the manosphere and the idea of wellness. The manosphere is something that we've talked a lot about on this podcast lately, of course. It dovetails with all those right populist politics. And just tell me more about the role that people like Joe Rogan and Theo Von and other big manosphere influencer types have played in this, in this movement.

TIMOTHY CAULFIELD: It's huge. It's absolutely huge.

SOUNDCLIP

JOE ROGAN: If you're like 21 years old, and you say to me, should I get vaccinated? I go, No. [SPEAKER: No.] Are you healthy? Are you a healthy person? Like, look, if you're, if you're a healthy person and you're exercising all the time and you're young and you're eating well and like... I don't think you need to worry about this.

SOUNDCLIP

THEO VON: I grew up next to the primate center in Covington, Louisiana. It's where they even created the polio vaccine. And the vaccine gave cervical cancer to millions of women. But they'd already made the vaccine. So they...

TIMOTHY CAULFIELD: Let's just reflect on a relatively recent study about where individuals are getting their information, right. So there was-- this study came out, I'm gonna say last week, and it found that for those under the age of 30, 40% of those individuals get their news, their facts about the world, from an influencer. Which is incredible. [JP: Wow.] Right? And two-thirds of those influencers are men, and most of them lean right. So think Joe Rogan, right. That's the first individual that pops into your mind. So this is where individuals are getting their facts about the... they're getting the facts about the world from these individuals, right. These aren't journalists, these aren't scientists, these aren't researchers, these aren't people who are aggregating the evidence in a responsible manner. These are influencers. And so they are playing a massive role. And the whole manosphere has been embraced. And we know this had an impact -- and the numbers back this up in the United States in American politics. And you're starting to see it happen here.

JP: Yeah. And vaccines are a big part of that, fair for me to say?

TIMOTHY CAULFIELD: It is. I think it is fair to say that. And there's really interesting research about how the manosphere has influenced perspectives on other public health measures, right? Like wearing sunscreen. An interesting study that came out recently showed that, you know, real men don't [chuckles] wear sunscreen. You know, the Liver King does not wear sunscreen. And, you know, if you eat a carnivore diet, in fact, you don't need sunscreen apparently. Uh, not true, obviously. Real men don't eat, you know, don't eat lots of fruits and vegetables. And this kind of perspective. And other studies have shown that those who adhere to traditional masculine norms just don't follow public health measures as much as others. And again, you have to be careful not to over, over-interpret this data because it is correlational, it's observational, right. And there might be other variables, you know, baked into that data -- socioeconomics, education. But definitely the trend is there. And it's also associated with, you know, traditional masculine norms are also associated with risky behaviour that's bad for you, right? You know, so more drinking, smoking, you know, unprotected sex, you know, on and on and on. And it's also associated with domestic violence. And, you know, it's not a healthy trend, [laughs] I'll put it that way. And I hope that comes across in the doc.

JP: Having said all of this, you know, on the topic of vaccines, like, I'm just curious where women fit into this, right. Because it is often the case that in a lot of households, it's the women that are the ones taking the lead on making health-care decisions for their children. And so what role are they playing in this dynamic?

TIMOTHY CAULFIELD: They play a huge role. And I think traditionally that women are-- have played a huge role in the anti-vaxx narrative. And I, again, want to be careful not to overgeneralize. It's complex, right? But if you look back, you know, big picture to people like Jenny McCarthy and the idea that vaccines cause autism.

SOUNDCLIP

JENNY MCCARTHY: Without a doubt in my mind, I believe vaccinations triggered Evan's autism.

JENNY MCCARTHY: Parent after parent after parent says, 'I vaccinated my baby, they got a fever, and then they stopped speaking and then became autistic.'

TIMOTHY CAULFIELD: Oprah kind of emboldening that idea...

SOUNDCLIP

OPRAH WINFREY: I'm here with Jenny McCarthy, who has become one of the most vocal advocates for parents of children with autism.

JP: Yeah, I remember that so well.

TIMOTHY CAULFIELD: Yeah. Yeah, that's... absolutely. That's moms, and they're-- they were held up as heroes, right? That, you know, ‘autism warrior’ I think is what CNN called Jenny McCarthy, which is, you know, just horrible. Just horrible, right. You know, we're talking about, you know, a vaccine that can save lives. And, you know, how, how many deaths were caused by that completely false idea, question mark.

[music]

JP: I want to talk to you about RFK Jr. specifically here. So this is a guy with a long public record of vaccine skepticism and other dubious claims about health science. And maybe just talk to me a little bit about what he's said about vaccines, but also what you think the implications of having someone like him in that sort of leadership position as the head of the U.S. Department of Health.

TIMOTHY CAULFIELD: Well, first of all, I think off the top, it's really important to emphasize: he is not a vaccine skeptic, right. He doesn't have controversial views on vaccines. He is a hardcore anti-vaxxer.

SOUNDCLIP

JOHN F. KENNEDY JR: I seen somebody on a hiking trail with a-- carrying a little baby, and I say to them, Better not get him vaccinated. And he heard that from me. If he hears it from ten other people, maybe he will save that child.

TIMOTHY CAULFIELD: And I really worry about how we're seeing-- you know, I'm sure you've heard this phrase, the 'sane washing' that is happening with RFK Jr.

JP: That's a really good point. Yeah.

TIMOTHY CAULFIELD: Yeah, he... You know, he always says, I'm not anti-vaxx, I just want, you know, safe and effective vaccines.

SOUNDCLIP

JOHN F. KENNEDY JR: I have never been a anti-vaxx. I have never told any-- I have never told the public, avoid vaccination. The only thing I've asked for... and my views are constantly misrepresented. So that the truth of what I believe is not-- we're not allowed to have a conversation about that with the American people. Which, I believe vaccines should be tested with the same rigor as other medicines and medications.

TIMOTHY CAULFIELD: He has pushed, pushed, pushed vaccine lies, right, that have definitely contributed to the increase in vaccination hesitancy. And people have presented him with, Here's this mountain of data that count, you know, that counters the lie that you just pushed. And he ignores it. He ignores it and he rolls out an anecdote or just makes this assertion.

SOUNDCLIP

JOHN F. KENNEDY JR: There is very, very strong science, really overwhelming science, linking those autism rates to the thimerosal that was in the vaccine.

JOHN F. KENNEDY JR: I bet that you've never met anybody with full-blown autism at your age. You know, head banging, football or a helmet on, non-toilet trained, non-verbal. I mean, I've never met anybody like that my age. But in my kid's age, now 1 in every 34 kids has autism. And half of those are full-blown, meaning that description.

TIMOTHY CAULFIELD: He's claimed that HIV doesn't cause AIDS...

SOUNDCLIP

JOHN F. KENNEDY JR: There's a lot of people that said it's not a virus. The virus is a passenger virus. And these people are dying mainly because of poppers. 100% of the people who died in the first... of the first thousand who had AIDS, were people who were addicted to poppers, which are known to cause Kaposi sarcoma in rats.

TIMOTHY CAULFIELD: He makes ridiculous comments about things like fluoride...

SOUNDCLIP

JOHN F. KENNEDY JR: I think fluoride is a poison.

TIMOTHY CAULFIELD: But in the context of vaccines, he's probably done the most harm, right? When you just think of things like the 'autism is caused by vaccines' lie that, that has been disproven over and over and over again, right? So he is a hardcore anti-vaxxer. The concern is that he is going to totally normalize this kind of rhetoric. And we're already starting to see this in the legacy media. Or they'll say, Well, he has got interesting ideas about healthy lifestyles. Which absolutely infuriates me and I know infuriates all of my public health researchers, you know, who have been studying [laughs] this for decades and advocating for healthy lifestyles.

JP: Can he -- one question I have for you is, can he do damage beyond the way that we talk and think about vaccines? I'm thinking about like the FDA here, right, which gives approvals for vaccines, for drugs. It's an administration that Canada basically follows.

TIMOTHY CAULFIELD: Yes. I think... And also just in the context of research, right? You know, one of the projects I'm working on, I'm working with the scientific community, biomedical researchers on mRNA vaccinations. And the concern is that the research priorities in the United States are going to change, right. And that's going to have an impact on Canada. Because let's be honest, NIH is the biggest funder of research on planet Earth. I think that statement is true. And so what they fund, you know, what their research priorities are, has an impact on Canada and really on the world. The other thing, of course, is a lot of the biomedical companies reside in the United States, or at least, at a minimum, the United States has a huge impact on the priority of industry in this space. That's going to have an impact.

[music]

JP: You know, we've been talking about how these beliefs are so entwined with people's personal and political identities. And I would imagine that that would make it so hard to change someone's mind about it, right. And so what do you see as the way forward here for scientists, for public health experts like yourself? Maybe for somebody listening who's trying to figure out how to talk to a friend or an aunt or something like that, right. How do you try and counter this or fight back against it?

TIMOTHY CAULFIELD: You're right. Unfortunately, unfortunately, the data tells us that the more this becomes about personal identity, you know, about being part of a community -- and I think we need to be sort of empathetic about that, right? You know, that it's easy to rage against people like RFK Jr. But for, you know, our friends and neighbours and colleagues and family members, you know, they're looking for answers and they're looking for communities and they want to feel safe. We have to remember that, right. But once you become part of a community, once this becomes part of your identity, it can be much more difficult to change people's minds. So I do think we want to listen to what the concerns are that drew people to these conclusions. We want to recognize the role of the community in their belief system. We need to also recognize that it's going to take time. You know, studies have shown that once you, you know, take on these hardcore beliefs, it can be very difficult. And you have to have patience, and you have to give people a path towards credible information. The good news is we're getting more and more research on this. People like Gordon Pennycook and David Rand have done research on using things like AI chatbots to answer people's questions and sort of pull them out of the rabbit hole. And they actually found that that could be quite effective. The other thing we want to do is we want to just invite people to remember that this information is often playing to politics, it's playing to rage, it's playing to grievance. So if you do that kind of pre-bunking, and you invite people to kind of pause and think about accuracy before they sort of internalize the belief, they're less likely to believe misinformation, less likely to spread misinformation. This is often called an accuracy nudge. So if you combine pre-bunking like we're doing today, ha, with an accuracy nudge, again, research shows that we can -- on a population level, right, on a population level -- move the needle. But we can't give up. We can't give up. You know, we can't let that candle go, you know, in the darkness go out. We have to, you know, keep fighting for good science and reason as a path forward.

JP: Okay. Tim, thank you so much for this. I really appreciate it. Please come by and do this pre-bunking anytime that you, anytime you want. It's great to have you.

TIMOTHY CAULFIELD: Thank you so much for the opportunity.

[Music: Theme]

JP: All right. That is all for today. I'm Jayme Poisson. Thanks so much for listening and we'll talk to you tomorrow.

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Anti-vax update as Canadian measles surges - Transcript

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