Life Kit - How to talk about the COVID vaccine with people who are hesitant

Episode Date: January 15, 2022

Infectious disease specialist Dr. Jasmine Marcelin shares how she has conversations about the COVID-19 vaccine with people who have doubts about getting vaccinated. (A version of this episode originally aired on NPR's Short Wave.)Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, LifeKit listeners. We have a special episode for you from our friends at Shortwave. It's about talking with those who are still vaccine hesitant. It's a great conversation with an infectious disease specialist who has these kinds of talks all the time. Here's the episode. You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hi, Shortwavers. We are talking to this amazing physician on the front lines, Dr. Jasmine Marcellin, who is an infectious disease specialist in Omaha, Nebraska, and is treating serious cases of COVID. This time last year, she was feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. For me as a Black woman physician, during this time, it is compounded by a feeling of inadequacy of being able to protect my community. Which for her meant shifting what it meant to be on the front lines, getting out of the hospital and helping more people get vaccinated. In the last year, she's had countless conversations with Nebraskans about the vaccine. How does it work?

And why get it now? And these conversations have really kept her going. It really has underscored for me the importance of moving out of the ivory tower of hospital and of the machine of medicine and how important community engagement and community involvement, real community involvement, is for community health. So today on the show, how to talk about the vaccine with those who are unvaccinated and have doubts. Dr. Jasmine Marcellin draws from her own experiences in parking lots and her parents' living room to help me navigate a conversation of my own. You're listening to Shortwave, the vaccine aren't a monolith.

Everyone has their own reasons for waiting and wondering. And to get through to them, Dr. Jasmine Marcellin gives them her time. She posts up at vaccine clinics around the community, administering the shot. Yeah, but also asking and answering a lot of questions. It brings me joy because a lot of them just need somebody to answer their specific questions. You know, it's not about trying to anticipate what their potential bias against vaccines might be, because they may not have one. They may just not understand how it works, or maybe they are confused because there's a lot of disinformation, misinformation, and quite frankly, very confusing science communication,

right? And so having a person that can sit down with them right there and help them work through that, and then if they are at the stage of wanting it at the end of that conversation, then they can go and get that shot immediately. It's just an amazing feeling to be a part of that and contribute to that. It sounds amazing. Tell me one conversation that when it happened, you were like, whoa. Or it just stays with you for some reason. Yeah. This one happened recently.

I was at a vaccine clinic and a person came and they had a couple kids with them. And the kids wanted to be vaccinated. So their parents said, okay, you want to get vaccinated? All right. And so the question was asked of the parent, so what about you? Or did you get yours yet? Or are you going to get that?

And they're like, no, I don't think I'm going to get it. And my ears sort of perked up and I was just like, I slid myself over and I was like, yay. So what's your concerns? And then we just had this conversation about how a family member had COVID recently. And then she had heard that people can still get COVID after they've been vaccinated. And so what does that mean? Why should she still have to get the vaccine? And I said, that's a really great question. Let's talk about this. Let's break it down. And so what does that mean? Why should she still have to get the vaccine? And I said, that's a really great question. Let's talk about this. Let's break it down. And then she said, well, what about it being the mark of the beast? And then she laughed after she said that. And I said, why did you laugh? Do you, is that what you, do you believe that this is what it is? And she

says, no, that's what people say, but I don't know what's in it. And it's just happened so quickly. Wait, when she said it, she called it that, what did you think? So I'd heard that before. And I understood why people were afraid when they hear folks saying that. And it was important for me to acknowledge like a religious standpoint, like where that myth would be coming from, and also let her know that this has nothing to do with what is in the Bible. And if we think about this pandemic and what is happening to the world, the fact that we have had these scientists working so hard to prevent people from dying, this does not seem to align with what people are trying to make a comparison with what's in the Bible.

And she herself didn't quite believe it, but she said it out loud. And so it struck me that perhaps there may have been a real questioning in her mind about could this really be? Right. And I get that. I mean, there's a lot of things that are influencing people's decision making. And I feel like as healthcare professionals, we have to leave space for people to be able to explore those things and ask questions and then lead them to the answers that are logical and make sense, but not just discount whatever it is that they say or even ignore whatever. It would have been very easy for me to just ignore that when she said it. Right. To ignore her or abandon her in that moment and say, well, why try? But you didn't. What did you say to her? So I told her that early on in the pandemic, I myself was skeptical of how could it be that we could develop something so quickly.

I said, okay, I need to look into this and make sure that I feel comfortable. And I told her, I learned that this technology has been around for a while, right? And that the things that are needed for vaccine development are money, scientific minds, and the technology. Different parts of the vaccine development machine are running concurrently instead of chronologically. And that makes it so that it can happen in a record speed but not because any corners were cut and when I explained that to her she's like really I said yeah and I said and when I looked into

who were the scientists that were developing this and I learned about the tremendous work that Dr. Kizmekia-Corbett had been doing with the vaccine. And Kizmekia-Corbett, of course, has become very well known for being a real leader in creating the coronavirus vaccines, which were the first mRNA vaccines that were kind of widely available for people. Yes. And she knew who that was. You were doing some name dropping. Oh, absolutely. And she was like, oh, yeah, I saw her on the TV. And I was like, yeah, that's her. That's what she did.

Right. And she says, really? And when we talked about it, it was just kind of, I think she wanted to get it. But she was just, there were nerves and there were questions and she just needed to talk to somebody. And then her words to me was, you know, you don't have no idea how important it is for me to be able to talk to you because you look like me. Wow. And she said, you understand why I have concerns. And I was like, yeah, I sure do.

I sure do. So she got vaccinated that day. I don't take credit for her getting vaccinated. I think she was pretty close. Can I ask your advice on something? Sure. I have a relative who is the only unvaccinated person in our whole family, and I think everyone's kind of given up, but I also don't know if anyone's really tried. Mm-hmm. a conversation with somebody who was not vaccinated at all and maybe hasn't had the chance to even think about it in a safe way? What do you say to people? I've had many of these conversations and I think the first place that I start is just asking them what they think about COVID in general.

And that helps me to get a sense of how bad does that person really think this pandemic is and whether or not it will affect them or others that they care about. And if they say, you know, it's not so bad or whatnot, and I kind of try to probe a little bit more into who they may have known that may have gotten COVID, if anybody that they've known could have died from COVID. And I just sort of asked gently, so what's keeping you from being vaccinated? Or what's the thing that's stopping you the most? And then I just keep asking what else after they say the one thing, like what else and what else? And then see if we can peel back some of those layers. The other thing that is important is, you know, a lot of times these conversations can't be resolved in just one, in one discussion, right? And you can't make one intervening phone call. Yeah. Yeah. No, I have, I have not been successful with that.

What I have been successful with is having a conversation where there's no expectations at the end of it that I am trying to get that person vaccinated and they have no expectations that I am trying to get them vaccinated. And we're just kind of having a conversation. And if I hear the words, huh, I didn't think about it like that, then I feel good. This is a win for me because then I know that they have perhaps moved from, I don't want to talk about it, to maybe there's some merit and we can continue having those conversations. Yeah. They don't always feel the most fulfilling at the end, unless you come out with a, huh, I didn't think about that. But they work. Yeah. And have you had these sorts of

conversations with people in your own family? My parents live in Dominica. And when the pandemic was progressing and we were talking about vaccines and they weren't quite ready to get vaccines yet in the Caribbean, but my parents had questions about them because there's definitely a lot of misinformation. And we had this great series of conversations that involved whiteboards and drawings and stuff like that. They were actually a lot of fun. And my son, my nine-year-old was with us. So it was like a nice

little teaching session. But I learned after that, that my dad was concerned and he wasn't sure about the vaccine. And when I took that time to explain it to him, it made sense to him. And I thought that was great. But what I loved from hearing that was down the line, now he's talking to people about the vaccines and he's sharing. And whenever there's some kind of myth that comes around, he sends it to me and he says, what do you think about this? How do I answer this question? And then he talks to his friends and his family members. And then when he tells me that somebody says, huh, I didn't think about it that way, that lights my fire because it's like, all right, so this is now multiple degrees of separation where people are starting to think about why getting vaccinated

is important, not only for them, but for the people that they love. The way that Dr. Jasmine Marcellin is able to take all concerns seriously while correcting misinformation, that dance, it's just astonishing to me. And we need more of that tact right now. So when I talk to my relative, I'm going to start by asking, okay, what do you think about COVID in general? How has it affected you? And if the vaccine comes up, I'm going to ask, what worries you the most? From there, I'm going to ask follow-up questions. Get him to name his concerns, even those that aren't rational. And I'll listen for some common ground and share the knowledge I do have.

I know it won't happen in one conversation, and maybe not at all, but it's worth trying. As Delta and Omicron circulate, I'm worried about people who aren't protected at all. And I think we can find a role to play in our own communities by reaching for them. This episode was produced by Britt Hansen and Thomas Liu, edited by Sarah Saracen, and fact-checked by Indy Cara. The audio engineer for this episode was Josh Newell. I'm Emily Kwong, and you've been listening to Shortwave, the daily science podcast from NPR.