Q: Your previous boss, former NIH director Francis Collins, lamented the lack of behavioural-science research to better understand misinformation about vaccines and other aspects of public health. Do we need to rethink how we incorporate social science into ‘hard’ biomedical science?
Fauci: Yes, we do. And you do it by just doing it. It’s not that difficult to incorporate a discipline of social sciences into the discipline of the hard sciences of developing vaccines. It is very disturbing that, in our country, we have 68% of the total population vaccinated with the primary vaccine for COVID. Of those, only half have received a single boost. And importantly, [despite] the availability of an effective BA.4/5 bivalent updated booster, only 13% of the eligible population has received it. That is very disturbing, and almost embarrassing for us that we have that low an enthusiasm about getting a life-saving vaccine.
