Biography
Seth Berkley is a US physician and infectious disease epidemiologist trained at Brown and Harvard Universities. After completing residency in internal medicine in Boston he joined the Special Pathogens Branch of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and worked on vaccine and HIV/AIDS programmes in Uganda. He later led the Rockefeller Foundation’s vaccine work, founded the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, and served as chief executive of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance (2011-23). He co-created Covax (Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access) during the covid pandemic to ensure that vaccines reached all countries that needed them. He is now adjunct professor and senior adviser at Brown University’s Pandemic Center and an adviser to numerous technology companies.
Vaccine misinformation and scepticism
The BMJ: Misinformation and disinformation have destabilised societies and put a major dent in people’s trust in vaccines. How did this happen?
SB: We’ve always seen vaccine hesitancy. But this time it’s different because it’s become highly politicised, and disinformation was coming not just from a subgroup of people—whether that be church leaders or a group that socially didn’t like something—but it’s becoming policy in countries. That’s a real problem because, for the institutions that are trying to deal with the misinformation that’s there, they’re now being challenged by their own leaders.
The second thing, of course, is that misinformation and particularly disinformation now can spread literally at the speed of light because of social media. That’s a real problem when you’re trying to get good information out: you’re overwhelmed by the systems that are putting out this bad information. And the challenge of disinformation now is the massive number of bots from different countries putting it out. There are mixed messages being put out, and that makes it very hard going forward.
The challenge is, how do …
