Dr. Francis Collins: I ‘never imagined’ so many people would be skeptical of vaccine

Outgoing National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins told PBS on Monday he was shocked by how many Americans are skeptical of the coronavirus vaccine.

Asked by “NewsHour” anchor Judy Woodruff what he wished he could have pursued more during his tenure at NIH, Collins said he should have invested more in studying human behavior. He suggested it may have given him a better understanding as to why so many people are hesitant about getting the shots.

“You know, maybe we under-invested in research on human behavior,” Collins said. “I never imagined a year ago, when those vaccines were just proving to be fantastically safe and effective, that we would still have 60 million people who had not taken advantage of them because of misinformation and disinformation that somehow dominated all of the ways in which people were getting their answers.”

Dr. Collins, asked if there’s anything he wishes NIH had done: “maybe we under-invested in research in human behavior..I never imagined a year ago that there would be 60 million people who refused/declined to get the vaccine because of misinformation & disinformation” @NewsHour

— Judy Woodruff (@JudyWoodruff) December 20, 2021

Social media commentators immediately questioned his comments.- READ MORE