Ed Yong says a vaccine would only be the beginning of the pandemic’s end
In mid-March, when the U.S. started seeing an early spike in COVID-19 cases, it was Ed Yong’s time to say: “I told you so.”
But he didn’t.
The British journalist’s prescient 2018 article in The Atlantic on America’s poor pandemic preparedness may seem prophetic now, but he said on Thursday that it was difficult seeing his prediction about a looming crisis prove to be so squarely on the mark.
Speaking virtually at Carleton University’s “Journalism in the Time of Crisis” conference, Yong said, “It is very rough watching the thing that you have written about before, and desperately hoped would never come to pass, actually coming to pass.”
In his 2018 Atlantic piece — its online version headlined “The Next Plague is Coming. Is America prepared?” — Yong had argued that a new virus would severely test U.S. President Donald Trump’s mettle as a leader. Two years later, in his remarks as the first keynote speaker at the Carleton conference, Yong stated emphatically that Trump did not meet the challenge.
“Despite the fact that a pandemic is clearly a crisis that requires national, federal-level coordination, that has just not been provided. The plans that have been provided have been so vague as to be completely useless,” Yong said.
He added: “We need, in a crisis like this, someone who can provide clear, calm, authoritative, evidence-based communication. We have had exactly the opposite of all of those things from the president. He has downplayed the severity of the virus, even when he knew it was going to be serious. He has silenced and muzzled the mighty CDC (U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). He has trumpeted wonder drugs like hydroxychloroquine. He has wondered out loud the curative potential of injecting bleach into bodies.”
Yong expressed concern about the danger that Trump’s approach to the COVID-19 crisis could outlast his term in office. Whether he wins next month’s presidential election or not, Trump will remain an influential public figure, “talking to his supporters, spreading misinformation.” Change could come under a Joe Biden presidency, said Yong, “but it’s not going to be a light switch. There’s nothing that just flips us back to normal.”
COVID vaccine: Not the endgame
Sarah Everts, the CTV Chair in Digital Science Journalism at Carleton University, was moderating Yong’s keynote address and asked him a question that’s been on a lot of minds.
“If a vaccine is approved in the next few months, are we going to get back to normal right away?” asked Everts.
“Absolutely not,” said Yong. “I think it’s going to take a long time even for an effective vaccine that is approved through a stringent regulatory process to actually help to turn the tide, if at all. There are questions about how effective it is going to be.”
Until an effective vaccine is mass produced and distributed fairly and widely, most people would have to rely on some of the other protections more readily available.
“I think a vaccine is part of the endgame,” Yong said, “but I think people haven’t fully grappled with how long we will continue to need all the other stuff that we’ve been relying on — masks, testing, basic public health, social distancing, all the rest — at a time when a vaccine is approved. The vaccine is only really the beginning of the end, it’s not the end.”
Referring to the coronavirus as a “starter pandemic,” Yong said COVID-19 is not the worst-case scenario that the world could have been hit with. “There are other pathogens that are more transmissible, more contagious. There are others that have a much higher fatality rate.”
Did the news media step up in the pandemic?
Journalists on the science and health beat across the world have found themselves stretched thin and exhausted since the worst pandemic in a century broke out less than a year ago. But Yong said reporters outside the beat, too, have stepped up.
“I see reporters among my colleagues who are not science and health reporters in traditional ways, but who have leapt on to the story with tremendous skill.”
He added: “We often, as a field, overweight the importance of specialist subject matter expertise and underweight the importance of craft. A lot of people with really excellent journalistic skills have been able to pivot very effectively because they know how to do things like synthesize a large amount of knowledge very quickly.”
But the award-winning journalist also had some advice for others covering the crisis. In the rush to push out a large volume of stories, reporters shouldn’t ignore their basic job conducting due diligence.
“If you want to write about a new study, go ahead. But for God’s sake, get outside comment. There is no need for coverage that is just a 400-word writeup of a paper with only the lead scientist quoted. Or a reprint or press release. It just doesn’t help. We should be trying to double down on the best practices of our field,” said Yong.
His advice is not limited to writers. To editors, Yong said: “If we double down on quality and we give writers the space to do their best work, readers notice.”
Watch the whole keynote here.
