Episode 160: Vax to the Future
12/9/20-- In keeping with baseless election fraud lawsuits happening around the country, Massachusetts political hopefuls have decided to join in the fun. A handful of unsuccessful GOP candidates for Congress and state office in Massachusetts are asking that a federal court overturn the 2020 election results in the state. The claim is that mail-in voting is unconstitutional, but the plaintiffs are not likely to be successful. Suits like these have already been shut down elsewhere in the country, and, Jenn points out, "The biggest hurdle they’re facing right now might just be that they they filed so late. They filed in December so the judge is very very unlikely to suddenly rule that we should throw out an election that happened in November.”
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This week brings sad and exciting news for Massachusetts. Unfortunately, the rates of COVID-19 infections are peaking, with wastewater data showing more community infections than we had in April. And while this week Gov. Charlie Baker announced rollbacks to the reopening plan, bringing the state to Phase 3, Step 1, the details of that plan have public health experts in the state pushing back on Baker. Dr. Ashish Jha, once a supporter of Baker's handling of the crisis, published a series of tweets condemning the governor's lack of more drastic action.
In brighter news, though, the governor did also roll out the plan for vaccine dissemination. The plan estimates the vaccine to be available to the general public in April to May.
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A new poll out from the Museum of Science and The MassINC Polling Group finds a vast majority of Massachusetts residents will take the vaccine, which is good news from a public health standpoint. There are, however, differences among demographic groups when it comes to skepticism around the vaccine and *when* they will be willing to take it. It is often wealthy, white groups who are the most likely to take the vaccine immediately after it becomes available to them. President of the Museum of Science Tim Ritchie stops by The Horse Race to talk about the implications of these breakdowns and what can be done to build up public trust in the scientific community.
Full transcript here:
The Horse Race
Episode 160: Vax to the Future
December 9, 2020
Segment 1: Election lawsuits
Stephanie Murray [00:00:03] Welcome back to The Horse Race, your weekly look at politics, policy and elections in Massachusetts. I'm Stephanie Murray here with Jennifer Smith and Steve Koczela. And I am proposing that we bring a lie detector test onto the pod. You know, before we get into the politics and the policy and every episode, we have to talk about what we're really here to talk about, which is The Bachelorette. And I think they may have had the best date ever making all of the contestants take a polygraph test.
Jennifer Smith [00:00:30] I was really thrown by how many secrets there were. That was that was the surprising thing is, you know, we were in the territory of, like, someone literally didn't go by their own name. I wasn't ready for that.
Steve Koczela [00:00:43] I think that I'm on on board with the people on social media that were questioning whether or not it was the most scientific of of polygraphs that had ever been administered versus just something that the producer behind the scenes was like pressing the button because they already knew what the answers were. But it did make for some good television.
Jennifer Smith [00:01:00] That's true. Mercifully, the season does appear to be close to wrapping up. But are we going to talk about the Bennett Jordan in the room?
Steve Koczela [00:01:07] Still in the room, despite Tayshia's best efforts to not have him in the room? He is still in the room. He's still the Bennett in the room, even now.
Stephanie Murray [00:01:16] He is back. He got kicked off and then he came back to demand a second chance and told Tayshia that he is falling in love with her. He does love her. There was a lot of suspicious stuff going on in this episode. You know, I want to give Zac C. another polygraph test to see if that cheating story really was about his sixth grade girlfriend. But, yeah, like you said, thankfully, the season is wrapping up. I think that we've done about as many dates and activities as we could do at a restaurant in the middle of a pandemic that are entertaining.
Jennifer Smith [00:01:45] Absolutely. I mean, by the time you're at a resort, sitting outside of a spa rather than going in, I think it's time to call it.
Steve Koczela [00:01:52] And pretending you're having a haunted house, which is just like room twenty six at the La Quinta, I mean, my hat's off to them for coming up with content that can be done and, you know, at a La Quinta. But much like this segment, I think it is time to wrap up the season of The Bachelorette.
Jennifer Smith [00:02:07] Good job, Steve.
Steve Koczela [00:02:09] So expanding on to other things going on around the country. I think that the biggest thing in terms of politics is that the baseless election lawsuits have rolled on. Nearly every single one has lost. And I guess I'm not sure if they wanted to participate in that in that activity and just lose some lawsuits here in Massachusetts. But the GOP has now gotten into gotten in on the lawsuit game. A couple specific candidates have filed a lawsuit. Jenn, give us a sense of what the lawsuit is about and just what the chances of success are.
Jennifer Smith [00:02:40] Yeah, I'm going to keep this one pretty brief. So just a few of these candidates decided to file a suit in federal district court. So we got John Paul Moran, Helen Brady, Caroline Colarusso, Ingrid Centurion and Craig Valdez, who all lost their races in twenty, are suing, basically saying that a judge throw out millions and millions of ballots. Their claim is basically that mail in voting is unconstitutional, arguing that the law that authorized it contravenes the Massachusetts constitution and that you can tamper with the ballots. Honestly, here's the weird thing. Even if there was anything there which all of the lawsuits being thrown out across the country suggests, there isn't.
Jennifer Smith [00:03:29] The biggest hurdle they're facing right now actually might just be that they filed so late, they filed in December. So the judge, even if the judge felt sympathetic to these arguments, is very, very unlikely to suddenly rule that we should throw out an election that happened in November, in December, basically saying even if you could plausibly argue that your votes were diluted, that doesn't mean you should disenfranchise millions and millions of voters who came out in the middle of a pandemic and voted the way that they were told to.
Jennifer Smith [00:03:59] So it's kind of a mess there. And, you know, I think that this is mostly just an instance, again, of the facts not really being the point, because lawsuits like this are getting tossed out across the country. The point is actually just the messaging, not winning them. This is Massachusetts. These are Republican candidates who lost their elections by very, very large margins. Vote by mail, let's be honest, is not why they lost, but if you're trying to frame it that way, it's in line with this very Trumpian line of argument that elections lost by Republicans in 2020 were somehow stolen and illegitimate. So that's the parade we're on even here in Massachusetts. I don't think this particular lawsuit has a great chance of success either on the merits, but also because, again, they filed so dang late.
Stephanie Murray [00:04:43] And speaking of vote by mail, a few Republicans in the state legislature also kind of looking for more information, not in the form of a lawsuit trying to overturn the election or redo it. But they are asking the secretary of state, Bill Galvin, for more info so they can do kind of an analysis on vote by mail. This was the first time in. He told me that we had it in such a widespread way in Massachusetts, so representatives Nick Boldyga and Marc Lombardo and State Senator Ryan Fattman are asking for information like on signature matching and how many applications were returned by the USPS as undeliverable mail, things like that. So we could get some more information about how vote by mail worked for the first time.
Steve Koczela [00:05:26] And I think some of that is actually probably a good idea. I mean, one of the questions that they asked was how many applications were returned as undeliverable, you know, which is a thing that we really should know. You know, we've seen throughout the process, both in the primary and in the general, that there, for instance, are big differences in how many voters in different municipalities participated in the vote by mail process.
And if there are other things that we need to work out, like higher rates of undeliverable mail at different municipalities, these are the kinds of things that we should work out, you know. But getting back to what Jenn was saying, there's just no you know, when you get to the the whole idea of a lawsuit to throw out all mail ballots or to completely redo the election, you know, particularly when you lost in the case of the congressional candidates by between 25 and 50 points. You know, it's just it doesn't pass the smell test. It's just silly. It's some kind of signaling and communications and at that point really has nothing to do either with fair elections or really, you know, the merits of the lawsuit, in my view.
Jennifer Smith [00:06:26] Yeah. And, Steve, you raised a really good point as well about the fact that there are some underlying things that wouldn't hurt to look at here, like there is no harm to kind of kicking the tires of this method of voting that we haven't done at kind of this widespread level in Massachusetts.
One of the things that came up in the lawsuit was, yeah, people definitely raised concerns about whether or not, you know, ballot machines are vulnerable to tampering or mail in ballots are vulnerable to tampering. And there's a totally different question about actually analyzing the sort of safety of different voting measures, which are which are questions that have been raised from people on all sides of the aisle versus claiming that because there might be questions about how to do it best, we should then respond by throwing out an entire election's worth of mail. So there is sort of this underlying awkwardness because they're not wrong when they say we should definitely make sure this works.
Steve Koczela [00:07:26] Yeah, the one hesitation, and I don't think it will happen here in Massachusetts, but certainly it will happen across the country is that oftentimes questions like this precede basically a clamp down on who can vote and how easy it is to vote in certain ways, like there will definitely across the country be, you know, pushback back, particularly in areas that are under, you know, that have more Republicans in their state legislatures or Republican governors trying to push back on some of the ways Democrats have voted in large numbers this cycle. I don't think there's any chance that that will happen here in Massachusetts just because there's not the firepower on the Republican side. So I think that we might actually get something good out of these questions. You know, they are good questions.
Jennifer Smith [00:08:07] And speaking of good questions, folks, why are we here?
Steve Koczela [00:08:11] I don't know. I really don't know anymore.
Stephanie Murray [00:08:15] Well, is it is December and we are still here in our virtual bunker because the coronavirus pandemic is raging on. Obviously, if you look on planet Earth, you know that. So we're going to talk about the states reopening rollback and some vaccine news.
Stephanie Murray [00:08:29] And we're going to talk about a poll conducted by The MassINC Polling Group in the Museum of Science on the vaccines and who is likely to take them. All right. Well, let's do it. Let's go.
Segment 2: Massachusetts reopening rollback
Jennifer Smith [00:08:42] Well, if it feels like time has been spinning in all different directions this year, it might feel like that for a while longer because Governor Charlie Baker has announced a rollback to quote phase three, step one for the state. He also announced the state's plan for vaccine distribution. So in the grand tradition we have here of explaining what the heck the new rules mean and what's coming down the pipe. Our own Stephanie Murray is going to break it down. Stephanie, are you ready?
Stephanie Murray [00:09:07] I am.
Jennifer Smith [00:09:08] Well, let's start with kind of the depressing facts of the matter here in Massachusetts is not doing well on cases. We are seeing kind of that post Thanksgiving winter surge we were worried about, aren't we?
Stephanie Murray [00:09:20] That's right, Jenn. So Massachusetts is reporting, you know, several thousand positive covid cases per day. Over the weekend, over 10,000 people tested positive for coronavirus in Massachusetts, which is a pretty significant jump from just a few weeks ago. And Governor Charlie Baker called the kind of emerging trends from Thanksgiving. That data is still just starting to come out, what the impact of that would be. He called it disturbing. That's his word. So it seems like we're headed for a pretty bleak few weeks ahead. And the health care community has started to kind of sour on Baker's leadership during that coronavirus pandemic. I think the highest profile incident of that was Dr. Ashish Jha of Brown University, who kind of spoke out against Baker's regulations over the weekend. And then a few days later, the state started to roll those back.
Steve Koczela [00:10:09] That's right. Of course, he had had a pretty lengthy Twitter thread and went to some pains to point out that he had supported the response that Charlie Baker had been offering to date, but that he didn't really see the reason behind what Charlie Baker is doing now. We also then heard about some new rollbacks, though, that the governor and his team announced in response to the climate caseload. Stephanie, run us through some of the things that are changing.
Stephanie Murray [00:10:34] So the things that are changing are kind of slight. And if you live in a number of cities and towns in Massachusetts, these changes have already happened for you. So indoor performance venues and some indoor recreational businesses have to close the state's reducing capacity limits to 40 percent statewide and gyms, churches, lodging, retail, that's down from 50 percent in a lot of those places. So not a huge change in the states moving its limit for outdoor gatherings from 100 people to 50 people. And then another big one is that restaurants have to reduce their table size from ten people to six people and set a strict 90 minute time limit for indoor dining. And let me just list off a few of the places that already do this. It's a pretty big list of cities and towns. Everett, Fall River, Lowell, Lynn, Malden, Lawrence, Springfield, my hometown of Tyngsboro. So I was talking with my mom about this stuff as I was watching the press conference. And I was like, nothing's going to really change for you reopening phase wise.
Jennifer Smith [00:11:35] So these new rules, they're they're going into effect Sunday, if I recall correctly. And they're on top of on the personal level, the existing kind of curfew rules for restaurants and the sort of stay at home recommendations. Right. About you shouldn't leave your home after certain hours unless you have to do something essential. So those are still in place. But now there's additional regulations for businesses.
Stephanie Murray [00:12:00] Right. And the governor has also been really pleading with people to not really go out, even though so many things are open and available. And under these guidelines, you kind of can do some stuff. He's really asking people to stick with it and basically their household not go out as much as you can. And he's been pointing to, you know, the federal government in Washington, which has been at a stalemate over this covid relief package since the late spring. And he's raising the alarm that a lot of, you know, funding and unemployment insurance and things like that are going to run out at the end of the year. We're recording this right now on December 9th. The end of 2020 is not far away.
Steve Koczela [00:12:40] Also on Twitter, Jon Santiago, the doctor, emergency room doctor and state representative, reacted to the change and said it seems very skeptical of it. He said, "50 versus 40 percent indoor capacity, a 90 minute dining time limit. Either you're serious about stopping the virus or you're not. I'll check in soon from the front lines to let you know how it's going. Don't hold your breath." So he's echoing there are a lot of the criticism that these new announcements have gotten from elsewhere in the medical community.
Stephanie Murray [00:13:07] I think what we're talking about and kind of this whole situation is just so illustrative of the tension between closing things and rolling them back to stop the spread, but also the lack of any sort of social safety net for restaurants and other business owners who, if they have to shut down, probably won't. Their businesses won't survive for the next few months before a vaccine starts to become available. So, you know, it's just like this really, really tough situation.
Jennifer Smith [00:13:32] That's a really good point, too. And I think that connects to some sort of interesting polling that we've kept an eye on over the course of the pandemic so far where. Harvard, Northeastern University have been doing 50 state surveys, basically to see how people feel about particular measures. And one of the areas where there's the most partizan disagreement is to exactly your point, Stephanie, about closing businesses and kind of the impact that that might have on them, where in December there was a lot of public support across the board in Massachusetts for state restrictions, which was pretty consistent with going into the fall and winter. And this is mostly bipartisan, like a heavy majority of Democrats and Republicans are like, yes, ask people to stay home, avoid large gatherings, cancel major sports events, limit restaurants to carry out, restrict travel, that sort of thing.
Jennifer Smith [00:14:27] But then there is a big, big divide where only 47 percent of Republicans support closing most businesses, while 81 percent of Democrats do. So, Steve, as as the resident pollster here, what's your take on kind of these trends that we've been seeing as far as support for specific measures and where that split is happening?
Steve Koczela [00:14:47] Yeah, I mean, I think it's high. I think you hit it right on the head and that that support among the general population is high. I mean, but, you know, Stephanie made a great point, too, which is that when you survey business owners, they've been suffering for months already. And those that are still open, you know, particularly restaurants, have been struggling to remain so, particularly independent restaurants. You know, we've seen these lists of of places that have closed both in and around Massachusetts and elsewhere. And it's just gets longer and longer and longer and longer. So there certainly are some some difficulties that anybody in the position to make policy has to has to balance in terms of, you know, the interests of everyday people and protecting themselves and the interests of business owners and trying to keep themselves afloat. And with no real clear prospects of relief coming from the federal government, you know, those things are really hard to balance.
Jennifer Smith [00:15:38] And you have that kind of also complicating factor as well, which is if you're trying to actually track how the state is making these decisions around what the actual restrictions are, it's pretty difficult. They're not incredibly transparent in how they're making these decisions. Stephanie, what are they actually saying publicly about how those calculations are happening?
Stephanie Murray [00:15:59] So here's kind of the split. The state's pretty transparent in the way that they put out the covid testing data and the information about who's testing positive, what's happening. But they're not as transparent about what they are looking for in that data that would make them roll back or roll forward any of the re-opening rules for the economy. Baker told reporters the other day that his office typically uses three weeks of data to determine a trend and go from there. But they looked at the Thanksgiving or post Thanksgiving numbers and acted faster than that to put some new restrictions in place. So it's not clear what numbers or metrics would make things change for us. And it's confusing for people at home.
Stephanie Murray [00:16:41] I think it just kind of breeds like the speculation and panic that something's happening when it's not. And the pressure, you know, other states do something more like a hard trigger number, like a data threshold or a number that would trigger the next phase of opening or closing. So that's something that, you know, I'm going to be watching whether the state might kind of be more transparent in its thinking about what's going to happen next.
Steve Koczela [00:17:05] And just before we move on to talking about the vaccine rollout, which is that the very bright side of it, of the news that was announced this week, we also have to zero in on one particular restriction, which I don't know what data was used to generate this restriction, but I couldn't help noticing when I looked at phase three, step one versus two, that the thing that we're not allowed to do anymore is if we're having a music performance indoors, we can no longer use wind or brass instruments. What? I mean...
Jennifer Smith [00:17:30] Devastating.
Stephanie Murray [00:17:32] I never realized how many ways we were all spreading germs before this pandemic. I will never look at a tuba the same way again.
Jennifer Smith [00:17:43] How are you looking at tubas before?
Steve Koczela [00:17:45] The good news, though, is Jenn is a former or current cello player? And I used to play viola and probably could again under duress. So we're looking into starting, I think, a wandering string quartet or something like that during this pandemic
Jennifer Smith [00:17:59] Stephanie's going to take up the harp.
Stephanie Murray [00:18:01] I am. You know, we were talking about this before we started recording. And John, you made a great point. Or maybe it was Steve. Somebody made a great point that a harp is so big that it also enforces social distance.
Steve Koczela [00:18:11] Perfect.
Jennifer Smith [00:18:12] It's true.
Jennifer Smith [00:18:12] It everyone is going to just go careening out of the way of the harp. But theoretically here, hold on. Let's let's see how I can do on the segue-- what they will be careening toward hopefully is getting vaccinated, because the cure to this chaos in theory is at least that Baker in the state, public health officials laid out the vaccine distribution plan. So what is it right now?
Stephanie Murray [00:18:36] It's still pretty fluid. We know that the state is expecting a shipment of the first. Doses of the vaccine this month and they'll start vaccinating, you know, people on the front lines, like health care workers, folks who are in nursing homes or other long term care facilities that have been hit pretty hard by the pandemic. But once we move on from there, the timeline is still pretty, pretty fluid. The governor said that if you're kind of a member of the general public without, you know, these like a preexisting condition or something that would kind of move you to the front of the line, you can expect that the vaccine will probably be available at some point in the spring, which is, you know, not the most concrete information in the world. But I think we should note, it's really an amazing feat of science that the vaccine is available so quickly at all.
Jennifer Smith [00:19:25] But, you know, of course, that even if there is a vaccine, it doesn't mean everyone is automatically going to be jumping on board to queue up as much as one might hope that they would. Steve, there is a poll that you guys just released this week talking about how people feel about vaccines and the timing of their vaccination plans in some demographic groups are more and less likely to want to be vaccinated. So let's talk about that a bit, shall we?
Steve Koczela [00:19:49] That's right. We did a poll with Museum of Science, Boston and with a big helping hand from the Mass League of Community Health Centers, also of Massachusetts residents looking at just these questions. And basically what it showed, kind of to my surprise, is that almost everybody does eventually plan to get it, but not everybody wants to get it right away. So often these vaccine polls only ask, how likely are you to get it? And we see these depressing numbers which this poll also produced where, you know, 40 or 50 or 60 percent say they're going to get it. And we immediately think, well, that's definitely not enough.
Steve Koczela [00:20:23] But then we asked a follow up question, which is basically when. And what we found was that the people who say that they're less likely, what they mean in most cases is they want to do it later. They want to wait and see, wait till other till some people have taken it, either a few or many other people and see it basically how it goes. The big concern that that people had was that it hadn't been thoroughly tested. So I think those two things are kind of linked. They're not ready to be the first in line. But they also there's just very few people that say, you know what, I am never doing that no matter what.
Stephanie Murray [00:20:57] Yeah, I think the poll says only seven percent of people would never take it. Is that right, Steve?
Steve Koczela [00:21:01] That's right. Just seven percent. I mean, there are some differences in terms of ordering that will be very important. And we're actually going to talk to the president of the Museum of Science in the next segment and much more detail about this. But one of the real things that the polls show that policymakers are going to have to grapple with is that there's a lot of inequities in terms of who wants the vaccine first. You know, it tends to be wealthier people. It tends to be more likely to be white people that want the vaccine first. So if the vaccine becomes key to getting back to some normal, you know, activities and key to being able to participate in various parts of society, you could have a situation where wealthier and whiter segments of society are more able to get back to those things first.
Stephanie Murray [00:21:43] If it wasn't 2020, if this were a different time and trust was higher in the government, do you think that trust would be higher in the vaccine? Or is this, you know, just me being too focused on the year that we're in and, you know, trust would always generally be kind of lower skeptical about a new vaccine?
Steve Koczela [00:22:04] I think there probably would be some version of this, you know, regardless of the year we've been seeing trust declining for a while now, you know, it has declined probably to new lows. But there are basically two things that kind of go into this. One is distrust in government and distrust in the government on health care specifically. But the other is, you know, there's a lot of historical inequities that are coming into play here. You know, the ways that people of color have been treated by our health care system contribute to the skepticism in ways that are way beyond just what's going on right now and what's going on in terms of trust in government that, you know, in this current year, even in this current current period. So I think there's there's both of those things that are at play and they'd be at play in different ways, almost any time that the situation had arisen.
Jennifer Smith [00:22:54] And Steve, one thing that was interesting to me here is not just the discrepancy in terms of where people are most interested in taking the vaccine, but was there any information on why certain demographics felt safer or more willing to go get vaccinated than others, like the gender gap? For me, it was really interesting in this polling.
Steve Koczela [00:23:18] Yeah, there were there definitely were gender gaps in terms of who was more likely to get vaccinated sooner. Men were more interested or more open to being vaccinated sooner. And we saw that both for among white respondents and among black respondents have less of a gap among Latino respondents. What we did see, though, is that the top concerns, the top concerns about. Heisting and about trust in government, we're kind of in common below that, the most skeptical groups had some concerns of their own or that they felt more keenly than than maybe other groups did.
Stephanie Murray [00:23:51] But the top ones were those, too. And the most skeptical groups also shared one other key characteristic, which I think could be key in all of this, which is the people that they trust the most are their own doctors, basically personal doctors across the board. For people who do want the vaccine, people who do want to wait longer, it's doctors. So you know that that's going to be the key group. I think that really is going to in many ways be able to kind of assuage some of the concerns and perhaps persuade their own patients to be to participate sooner.
Jennifer Smith [00:24:24] All right. Well, you, two, I'm going to get out of here and you're going to go have a chat with Tim Ritchie, president of the Museum of Science Boston, to talk about the implications of this in more detail. So I bet that's a great segment. I look forward to hearing it later.
Steve Koczela [00:24:38] This week, we released a poll sponsored by the Museum of Science Boston on Massachusetts residents' views of the coronavirus vaccines. The poll took a deep look at residents plans to take the vaccines, reasons why some are hesitant and who they trust the most when it comes to information on the vaccines. Here to talk about the results of the poll, we have the president of the Museum of Science, Tim Ritchie. Tim, welcome to The Horse Race.
Tim Ritchie [00:25:02] Thanks, good to be here, Steve.
Steve Koczela [00:25:05] So, as I mentioned in the intro, the Museum of Science sponsored the poll. But we also need to give a big shout out to the Mass League of Community Health Centers here at the top for their help designing and interpreting the poll. But what was behind this effort? Why did the Museum of Science choose to commission a poll like this?
Tim Ritchie [00:25:19] So what we stand for is public science learning. And then more specifically, we're interested in elevating public trust in science. We've been doing that for a hundred ninety years. And so when you want to do something like that around something that's current important and science like public health in general and the vaccine in particular, it's good to know what your baseline is. We have to know our baseline is so that we can go from that to know what we need to do to inspire public trust in science.
Stephanie Murray [00:25:50] And so what is that baseline? I mean, what takeaways from this poll really stuck out to you? One of the things that are at the top of your mind after looking through it.
Tim Ritchie [00:25:57] One of the most exciting things was how many people, 82 percent really did understand the underlying questions about the vaccine, about its efficacy, about its importance, about the role it plays in our economy and in their personal lives. That shows a science literate community. The second thing I think, is that it showed that a lot of people will take this vaccine when they see it is safe to do so. So it gives us some guidelines on the kinds of things we need to talk about vaccine safety.
Tim Ritchie [00:26:31] And I think it also helps us to put in perspective what some of the naysayers may be, the anti experts of the people who say they would never take it. It's actually a small percentage of our community, even though it's a loud number. So the people talk a lot about public distrust in science. I don't think that's true at all. I think there's a lot of public trust in science. There are some loud voices that say they're distrustful. But the general public, the common person in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts celebrates science. They just in this particular case, want to make sure that it's safe, which is a reasonable thing to do.
Steve Koczela [00:27:09] And that was one of the main hesitations that the poll uncovered, just questions about whether or not the vaccine had been thoroughly tested and that also questions about the trustworthiness of the government, specifically in health care, just because they've played such a major role in accelerating the development of these vaccines. So where do you see the Museum of Science's role in counteracting some of these hesitations, or is there a role for the Museum of Science? Or do we just have to let it kind of play out and let some people get the vaccine and others kind of witness what what those effects are?
Tim Ritchie [00:27:40] I think, Steve, it's a little of both of that. With respect to the last thing you said, the more people take this, the poll indicates, the more other people will as well. So I think it will have a natural effect of people wanting to take this. However, I would say that on the front end, we do have to be aware of what the poll also shows is there are some disparities, some big disparities in our community along the lines of, frankly, race and class.
Tim Ritchie [00:28:08] And I think the institution, the museum has a special role to play to make sure that trusted communication gets to those people who are or distrustful right now. And the things that we need to talk about through our community partners like the Mass League of Community Health Centers and others with whom we have a relationship is that people will follow their doctors and they will also follow others who take it for our getting to people through our natural and authentic relationships to say, hey, 'Take this vaccine once you're convinced it's safe.' Talk about it, get your community to follow you. That's important because we don't want to just preach to the choir. We want to preach to the people who need it the most. And those inequity questions are where we need to be most focused.
Stephanie Murray [00:28:58] Could you drill down a little bit further into what that might look like, like reaching out to groups that might not be able to get the vaccine as easily? I mean, this is like something that poll after poll, this entire pandemic, just every single implication and event has just been so unequal. It is just really striking to see poll after poll.
Tim Ritchie [00:29:17] Yeah. So, Stephanie, I think the answer to that is that when people see, say, health workers who get the vaccine and it's someone who looks like them, that they will want to go forward or when they see their own doctor, not only say that it is safe, but get it themselves or leaders in their church community. I actually think the poll indicates two things. I think the communication in terms of people following other social proof is one aspect.
Tim Ritchie [00:29:45] But it also shows that right away, like right now, the government has to have a creative imagination about dissemination of the vaccine, because soon enough people will want because they will see their neighbors take it, they will see that it's safe.
Tim Ritchie [00:30:03] And then the question is going to be, is it available? Is it available equitably in the same way that it was developed back when this was breathtaking site? It came through global cooperation, global investment, and all of a sudden it has been made available scientifically to the whole world. The question is whether we will have the same creative imagination and investment on dissemination as we were on creation. And right away, I think we need to realize the communication piece is going to be hard. It will always be important, but we simultaneously have to become quickly involved with the dissemination piece to make sure it gets to everyone, regardless of their ability to pay, but to everyone just as it was created so equitably.
Steve Koczela [00:30:50] Yeah the data does seem to suggest that if we just kind of metaphorically let people queue up on their own, that there will be a lot of socioeconomic and a lot of racial inequities as far as who gets vaccinated first and is able to realize the economic and societal benefits of of an early vaccination. So certainly I just echo what you are offering, that there is a lot of pressing need for government and others that are involved to think creatively and to do something about that that reality that would otherwise unfold.
Tim Ritchie [00:31:21] You know, Steve, I want to pick up on that because I think this could be a real fine hour for our community to have gotten through 2020, which was a very difficult year in terms of race and equity; it was a difficult year in terms of public health and say, wow, let's turn this around, let's apply that same creative imagination. So it's not just people queuing up on their own, as you say, but we have a concerted effort to come together as a community, have a collective impact effort to build a better community and let science and public health be common ground during a time when we need it. I really think it serves up this opportunity for public leaders, for community organizations, for institutions like the museum to bend its creative energy to.
Steve Koczela [00:32:08] Let's talk just for a second about that creative energy, just because I mean, my family loves the Museum of Science, we go all the time. My kids love it. I should say we went all the time. We haven't been as much, obviously, in recent months. But what are the things, given the limitations on gatherings and you know, that we can all get together and you know that amazing physical spaces you have at the museum itself. What are the kinds of activities that the museum can do to to help move the ball on this stuff?
Tim Ritchie [00:32:34] Well, most of them will be digital. So we will begin on Monday with the town hall, where we will start speaking to the world. But also we can speak digitally, certainly to leaders, to influence them, to influence their communities. So I think this collective impact effort is more difficult in a digital world, but at least because we're connected to video conferencing technologies, we can speak friend to friend, community to community, and get those who speak to their friends. It will have to be a patient ripple effect. But I think we have some reason to be confident in that because people want to be safe. They want to go back to work. They want to believe it's safe. So we're operating in an environment of people wanting this to be true if it's true. So I'm pretty optimistic that it's really a question about the strategic and and and forceful about committing to to do this in our community.
Stephanie Murray [00:33:31] Is there anything that, you know, legislators on Beacon Hill or, you know, members of our congressional delegation should be taking away from this poll that can help doctors, can help the vaccine, can help, you know, the Museum of Science itself, like, is there anything that they should really be looking at this and taking away as a policy implication?
Tim Ritchie [00:33:50] Well, I think one policy implication quite seriously, is that the poll shows the people who are most trusted are personal doctors. OK, well, that raises the obvious question. Do people in the Commonwealth have access to personal doctors? Do they have access to health care in the way that is important for something specific like this or the more general things that we need in public health to stay employed and have our kids in school? I think that raises a huge public policy question about access to health care. I don't know if you read it that way, Steve, but I mean, it sort of speaks to that to me.
Steve Koczela [00:34:33] Definitely. And I think it also just presents a communications challenge and opportunity in the sense that there are communicators, that even people who are more hesitant about taking the vaccine initially say that they trust it will be a challenge to put them front and center, particularly. You know, political leaders aren't always known for sharing the spotlight, wanting to share the spotlight. So certainly some communications challenges remain there, I'd say.
Tim Ritchie [00:34:59] I'd say. And then, Stephanie, another thing I would say it doesn't come from the poll per se. But I think what happened with respect to the development of the vaccine was this enormous amount of let's just call has it was it was government investment in public health to create the vaccine. And so the question is, can there be the same degree or at least some version of that, some part of that that also relates to our distribution of the vaccine or actually public commitment to public health, government commitment to public health, because it was very kind of sexy to fund the warp speed vaccine.
Tim Ritchie [00:35:39] But the public support for public health is what's going to carry this forward. And I think that does strain our public imagination because it's going to strain our pocketbooks.
Steve Koczela [00:35:51] All right. Well, certainly a lot to think about there and definitely join us for an event that the Museum of Science we'll be putting on on Monday called Race to the Vaccine: Exploring Public Confidence in a COVID Vaccination. That's Monday, December 14th, from four to five p.m. and both Tim and I and a few others will we'll be participating in panel discussions there. Tim, where can people go to learn more about that and sign up?
Tim Ritchie [00:36:13] Go to our website at MOS dot org, MOS dot org to sign up for the event on Monday.
Steve Koczela [00:36:19] All right. Well, Tim, a huge honor to speak to you. Thank you so much for joining us here on The Horse rAce.
Tim Ritchie [00:36:24] Pleasure. Thank you. And Stephanie, you too.
Stephanie Murray [00:36:26] Thank you so much.
Segment 3: Trivia
Stephanie Murray [00:36:34] And that brings us to our favorite segment, trivia, so last week we asked you and this isn't really a trivia question, but we did ask you, what would you do if the pandemic ended all of a sudden? And some friends of the pod weighed in.
Steve Koczela [00:36:47] That's right. There were some common themes. So we got this question from Twitter user Lisa Lucas, who asked the question and got thousands of responses. She herself said, I would be boarding a flight for sure, which is something that that a lot of the responses basically included something about travel. Our research director at the polling group and many time guest of the pod, Maeve Duggan's said she'd be booking a ticket to Ireland, then also having a bar, having a martini at the bar with my friends, which was the other common theme, which is we all want to drink together.
Jennifer Smith [00:37:18] That's true. We've been drinking alone. The liquor industry has been doing great during the pandemic.
Steve Koczela [00:37:23] The liquor delivery industry has been doing particularly well.
Jennifer Smith [00:37:25] I think that's that's definitely true. But, Stephanie, you weren't here last week, so we didn't get your answer, which I hypothesized cannot be better than I would have people over to my house to drink and watch The Bachelor, but give it a ring.
Stephanie Murray [00:37:37] All I want to do is go and get a coffee and then bring it to the grocery store and drink it while I walk through the grocery store and enjoy the experience. That is all I want to do. I cannot wait.
Steve Koczela [00:37:52] That's a good one.
Jennifer Smith [00:37:53] I think this is telling on how deeply boring we all are just in our souls that, you know, the thing that we want is the ability to be a homebody, but like slightly more in public.
Steve Koczela [00:38:04] See I was thinking also this week that I wanted to have a new round of the Beacon Hill chess tournament. So speaking of nerdy. And then I want to see how my family, too. That's the other thing that I want to do.
Jennifer Smith [00:38:16] Steve's nicer than the rest of us. So that brings us, of course, to actual trivia, which we have, and it is vaccine related. So Jacobson v. Massachusetts was a Supreme Court case in 1905 that upheld states' authority to enforce mandatory vaccination laws. Vaccinations against smallpox at this time in Massachusetts were free and compulsory for adults over the age of 21. So question for you folks, what was the punishment for an adult resident who refused the inoculation?
Stephanie Murray [00:38:47] This is such a good question.
Jennifer Smith [00:38:48] It is. I wish I thought of it.
Steve Koczela [00:38:51] It's good. It's timely. And it's not just Twitter shaming, which is probably going to be that the thing that most people face these days. That's true.
[00:38:58] But anyway, that's all the time we have for this week. I am Steve Koczela. I'm here, as always, with Jennifer Smith and Stephanie Murray. Our producer is Libby Gormley. Please do leave us a rating and review wherever you get your podcasts to help boost our dangerously low self esteem. Please sign up for the POLITICO Massachusetts Playbook if you're not already subscribed and call us The MassINC Polling Group if you need polling done. But for now, thank you all so much for listening and we'll see you next week.