OPINION:
In the shark-infested waters of pandemic health care policy, we need to build a bigger boat. That starts with admitting mistakes. Alas, in the dulcet tones of Elton John, “Sorry seems to be the hardest word.”
Team Biden regularly said, “Science is back,” but it didn’t always follow that science. Consider the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s advisory committee on immunization practices. The White House promoted Moderna’s booster shot before the advisory committee commented. As one outside expert complained, “The train had left the station before we even voted.”
Before we get on our high horse about the current administration denuding, co-opting, disparaging and eliminating critical independent advisory committees, the previous administration must admit and apologize for its mistakes.
Unfortunately, rather than addressing its misjudgments and missteps, the Biden administration has given us total radio silence. The reluctance to apologize is understandable considering the vituperative attitudes pervading today’s debate over the COVID-19 pandemic in general and issues surrounding mRNA vaccines specifically, but none of this excuses it. Doing what’s right for the country must supersede what’s politically expedient and personally distasteful.
Protecting one’s reputation doesn’t mean doubling down on past actions. It means owning up to them, explaining them, putting them into perspective and offering advice on how to avoid further missteps. To put it bluntly, leaving past blunders unacknowledged makes any attempt to claim the moral and scientific high ground in today’s public health policy debate fall flat, and it’s contrary to scientific rigor. You can’t fight misinformation if you are seen as an unrepentant purveyor of it.
Trust in vaccines has been badly shaken and is at an all-time low. A major cause of that decline is a loss of confidence in our public health institutions, largely because of low public health literacy levels, avoidable governmental communications lapses and a scientific review process that is deliberately misconstrued by some and generally misunderstood by the average citizen. These trends must be reversed.
If the public doesn’t trust the players, it won’t trust the process and can’t be expected to take the appropriate next steps, such as getting a flu shot or getting children immunized against measles, mumps and rubella. Mistakes were made, and everyone knows it, yet those responsible refused to step up without even whispering a mea culpa. These are the inactions of petty individuals. Before accusing others of misdeeds, missteps and misinformation, look in the mirror.
As the saying goes, “An apology makes you self-responsible while excuses make you undependable.” In the words of Abraham Lincoln, “You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.” In the words of Pogo, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
• Peter J. Pitts, a former Food and Drug Administration associate commissioner, is president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest and a visiting professor at the University of Paris School of Medicine.
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