A major threat to the next pandemic: Vaccine hesitancy

Another pandemic is inevitable, scientists say. Mass vaccination is not. Scientists can make safe and effective vaccines against novel pathogens. The bigger challenge is persuading everyone to use them. NBC News

In April, more than 1,000 vaccine experts gathered in Washington, D.C. for the first time since the pandemic began. Over four days, scientists, doctors and drugmakers pored over cutting-edge research and tackled some of the most pressing questions in the world of vaccines. 

Talk of Covid-19 vaccines was, of course, unavoidable. But high on the agenda at the World Vaccine Congress was a vaccine for another mysterious illness that could strike at any moment: Disease X.

Disease X is not any particular virus, bacteria or other germ, but a term used as a stand-in for whatever pathogen will sweep the globe in the next pandemic. And there will indeed be a next pandemic, experts say. ...

...as has become evident more than a year and a half into the U.S. vaccination campaign — one essential piece of information is missing: How to convince hesitant people to be vaccinated. 

"There's something about human behavior that we're still not really understanding," Dr. Nicole Lurie, U.S. director of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, told the World Vaccine Congress. ...

Scientists at the World Vaccine Congress acknowledged that, for all of their education and training, one issue has remained frustratingly hard to overcome: the growing anti-vaccine movement. ...