It’s hard to believe that infectious diseases have become a political litmus test, but they are now very much part of the “with us or against us” mental sorting more and more people seem to be doing these days. And the topic seems to be everywhere. Do you think the U.S. should continue funding aid programs for diseases such as AIDS, TB and malaria? Are you pleased or horrified about Florida’s plans to undo school vaccine mandates? Do you seek out or steer clear of the annual flu vaccine?
As someone who recently completed 15 years of post-college training to become an infectious diseases physician-scientist, I can’t avoid these conversations. I just wish I knew the magic words to reach people willing to jettison decades of evidence and research for something they read online.
I am proud of my work and committed to my profession. Yet in a country polarized by everything from the response to the abhorrent assassination of Charlie Kirk to RFK Jr.’s abrupt reconfiguration of the nation’s vaccine advisory committee, I hesitated to share my occupation with the talkative young man I was recently seated next to on a flight.
When the inevitable career question came up, he jumped right in. Despite the early hour and lack of sleep, with no viable exit option, I decided to face the challenge, though I braced for the worst.
Lyme disease was first on the list. We were flying out of Connecticut, after all.
“You’ve never heard that Lyme disease was created as a bioterrorism weapon?” I had not (because it wasn’t). Somehow, in between the hours caring for patients, researching disease pathogenesis and staying up to date on the literature in my field, I had missed this infectious disease conspiracy du jour.
“It’s called Lyme because that’s where they released it.”
No. Old Lyme, Connecticut, is where epidemiologists realized that patients’ symptoms coincided with recent tick bites and then confirmed that local ticks carried the disease-causing bacteria.
“You can’t cure it; it was made to weaponize.” Actually, we have very effective antibiotics to kill the bacteria (though some people can develop a complex post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome). I’m not a military strategist, but I can’t imagine that indiscriminately infecting outdoor enthusiasts with a non-deadly, treatable disease that requires transmission via a slow-feeding arthropod would be an ideal bioterrorism plan.
“But why is it spreading so fast now?”
Climate change, expanding tick habitats and food sources, and a lack of winters that kill them.
He laughed. “So in your ‘profesh’ opinion, Lyme disease as a bioterrorism weapon is a bunch of horseshit?”
Yes. That I do agree with.
We moved on to the next obvious infectious disease topic: COVID-19. I gave him space. He wasn’t sparring with a lack of respect, nor was I. We opened up about experiencing the pandemic in completely different ways. He described how hard it was being forced to get vaccinated, feeling coerced to keep his job but fearing the vaccine’s purported harms.
I shared my experience working in the hospital. I told him how I had witnessed numerous people die alone, and how the vaccine was a true savior. He believed it was only old people who had died. I told him I had seen enough young, healthy people become debilitated that I would never make that bet, not in that pandemic or the next one. In fact, by September 2023, more than 25,000 18-39-year-olds had died from COVID in the U.S.
“He wasn’t sparring with a lack of respect, nor was I. We opened up about experiencing the pandemic in completely different ways.”
I tried to hear his concerns. I admitted that my passion for science and what I had experienced as a physician may have made me unfairly dismissive of people whose primary concerns were being stuck at home unable to pay rent or educate their children. I acknowledged that there’s always a small chance that some people might experience an adverse reaction to any medical intervention, be it a vaccine or over-the-counter drug, and I can understand why that makes some people hesitate.
But I also reiterated the rigor of the scientific process involved in developing treatments, reviewing safety data, and ultimately making clinical recommendations. I told him that mRNA vaccines are neither new — they’ve been in development for decades — nor a government-led conspiracy to genetically manipulate the population. The reference to “genetic material” may lead to misconceptions, but mRNA does not enter the cell nucleus, where our DNA resides. Our cells do not even possess the molecular machinery capable of turning mRNA into DNA. That’s fact, not just my “profesh” opinion.
It felt real, the effort to hear and speak to each other. And I learned things from him, too. In response to my insistence that his infection-related conspiracy theories were nothing but that, he admitted, “Yeah, you’re probably right.” Then he added, with a smile on his face, “But conspiracies are a lot more fun.”
Conspiracies are a lot more fun. Maybe vaccine or disease origin conspiracies are fun — if you’re young and healthy, if you’re bored, if you’re motivated to access a community that promises you “inside information.”
By the time our flight was over, our conversation had covered a wide geographic and political space. The experience left me with genuine hope that we could maintain trust in each other and reminded me that scientists and physicians cannot give up on having these conversations.
“With COVID, vaccines, Lyme disease, any of it — I’m not your enemy,” I told my seatmate as we were getting ready to disembark. “And I know you’re not the enemy, either.”
“True,” he agreed. “But they always want to make someone your enemy.”
Exactly. That is what conspiracy theories require. That is why we have to talk to each other. See me as a person. And I will do the same.
I am not your enemy. Neither is science.
Morgan Goheen, M.D., Ph.D., works at Yale School of Medicine as a research scientist and board-certified infectious diseases physician, and she is a Public Voices Fellow of The OpEd Project in Partnership with Yale University.
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