October 11, 2024
I’m Dr. Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Center for Health Research, a nonprofit
public health think tank located in Washington, DC. We focus on the safety and effectiveness of
medical and consumer products, and we do not accept funding from companies that make
those products.
The CDC needs to do a better job of letting the public know what they know and what they
don’t know about Covid vaccines. For example, when the first COVID vaccines were approved,
nursing home patients had been excluded from the studies and there were very few older
people or people of color who were in the studies and had been exposed to the virus. That
made it impossible to know if the benefits outweighed the risks for those patients. And yet,
nursing home residents and older people were the first priority to receive those vaccines.
Obviously there were ethical challenges to include those types of patients when those studies
were designed and conducted, and as far as we know, the vaccines worked well for those
groups. However, it should have been made clear to the public that we lacked information
about whether the vaccines’ benefits outweighed the risks for those patients.
I primarily want to focus on how CDC can do a better job of communicating information about
adverse events. The information should be quantified and transparent. Too often, information
about adverse events is summarized as “generally well tolerated” or that most adverse events
were “mild or moderate” and did not last long. What does that mean? Obviously, it means
different things to different people, and this isn’t just a problem for vaccines; it is a problem for
how adverse events are reported for many types of medical products. We understand the
desire to be reassuring, but those types of statements are misunderstood as meaning “this
product is safe and nothing to worry about.” And yet, many adults in the U.S. have no paid sick
leave, and they can’t afford to be sick for even a few days. The same is true for adults who are
responsible for taking care of family members, whether those family members are young, old,
or have disabilities.
Reassuring statements that do not quantify or clearly explain the risks of adverse reactions
contribute to misinformation and to lack of trust about COVID vaccines and other medical
products. The CDC needs to do better.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.