← The Focus Group Podcast
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- [00:00]
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- [02:02]
Sarah Longwell
Hello everyone and welcome to the focus group podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwark and this week is the five year anniversary of a time that changed the country and all of our lives forever. The start of the COVID 19 pandemic. Five years. Feels like I lived like 10 lifetimes in those five years. And look, we could all tell stories about the way that that time sucked is probably the technical term. And, you know, we're gonna tell a few of those and get to how the shock of the pandemic continues to reverberate through our politics today, including, in my opinion, having a lot to do with what made Trump's comeback possible. I'm bringing back a great guest we had on the show back in 2022 who was a prominent voice during the pandemic. Dr. Lena Wen, Emergency physician, non resident, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of the Washington Post newsletter, the checkup with Dr. Wen. Dr. Wen, thanks for checking up with us.
- [03:05]
Dr. Lena Wen
Glad to join you. And glad to be back now two, three years after our last conversation together.
- [03:11]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. And I'm gonna start with a big picture question about all the things that have happened since we talked last time. So the pandemic obviously changed life in America in a ton of ways, but which ones would you say are the ways in which we are still dealing with it today?
- [03:28]
Dr. Lena Wen
I think we're still dealing with COVID in many different ways. So there are definitely people who are still terrified of the virus, many of them for good reason. People who are severely immunocompromised, for example, people who are elderly, really don't want to get this virus, just like they don't want to get other respiratory viruses because of how dangerous that could be for their health. And then we are dealing with immense mistrust, distrust of the medical system. That has huge repercussions, as you were saying, on politics, but also on their ability and their willingness to listen to experts, recommendations on other health issues, on vaccines, not necessarily around Covid, but on a whole myriad of healthcare issues.
- [04:16]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. I mean, you think back, and if you told me five years ago that we'd end up with a guy like Robert Kennedy Jr. In charge of America's health system, I certainly wouldn't have believed you. But it feels like part of what he's done and what a lot of other people have done is this kind of like, I'm asking questions. We are now ended up with somebody who's enormous skeptic of the health community and of vaccines because of the way that vaccines were demonized as part of this sort of back and forth during COVID I'm sympathetic to some frustrations, too, about the extent to which people felt like it was forced on them, which caused, like, a backlash. So when you say people are more skeptical of the healthcare community, I agree with that. I see it all the time in the groups. But, like, how do you see it show up in medicine?
- [05:16]
Dr. Lena Wen
Yeah, it's interesting because I feel like when I talk to patients or talk to members of the public, you see two very, very different groups based on what their response to the pandemic is. There's the group that feel as if they are abandoned now, as in they think that Covid still is something that's very dangerous them, but they feel like they're not being listened to, that society has moved on, and that their fears about their own safety is not being listened to. So that's one group with a very specific point of view. And then there's another group that feel that things were not right in the pandemic. They feel like they were not listened to and that whatever the advice that experts was giving was wrong in some way. Now, part of it is that the evidence did change over time. There were different recommendations that came out because the evidence changed. We didn't know at the beginning, for example, that Covid was airborne. Or in the beginning there were not enough masks, and so recommendations were not made to recommend masks. Or over time, we understood more about the vaccine and what it's used for and what it's not used for, and those recommendations changed. But I think that there are people who are not satisfied with the fact that they were not listened to at the time, that maybe they were right that vaccines did not prevent transmission, as they may have believed that it didn't. And they now feel validated that they were right. The scientific community is wrong. And if you have one such experience, maybe you have one data point and you say, well, maybe it's possible that I was wrong. But I think with the pandemic, people can come up with multiple of these data points where they feel like experts were wrong. Now, maybe they're not entirely right either, that maybe the experts were right at that time, but then the evidence changed. But regardless, people have these multiple data points where they feel like the experts were wrong. And then you think, well, if they were wrong all those times, why should I believe them now? And that is something that I see in clinical practices, speaking with my patients. And I'll just add one more point about vaccines. I now see such a disparate reaction among my patients, even when I speak to them about vaccines. And some of them will say right away, well, I don't want any of those vaccines. I don't want flu vaccine, I don't want tetanus. I mean, there is this immediate reaction and a pretty visceral reaction to vaccines. Some people will say, I want them all. Whatever you recommend, I will take them. But Then you see the other extreme, which we certainly did not see before.
- [07:47]
Sarah Longwell
Well, look, one of the positive things that came out of the pandemic is that we got this podcast because you can do a lot more focus groups on Zoom than you can in person. I used to fly around the country and talk to people, and that took a lot of time. And so, you know, I'd have to think about what two groups in Arizona said and try to figure out if, like, that was the truth. And now we do, like, three focus groups a week because we can do them on Zoom. And so I feel like I get a lot more inputs. And so as a result, we've got all this sound from back then, too. And so I want to start today by listening to some old sound from groups we conducted in 2020. So these are people who voted for Trump in 2016, but thought he was doing a really bad job at the time. We saw them as part of our persuadable universe. And so we were talking to a lot of people who voted for Trump but saw him as doing a very bad job. And a lot of that bad job was related to how he was handling Covid. So let's listen to how they talked throughout the first year of the pandemic.
- [08:46]
Focus Group Participant 1
I'm single and not mingling due to the quarantine, so I'm gonna be the oldest parent at the playground someday. I honestly feel like everything's just really stressful, you know, like Florida, the governor lifted all of our restrictions, so everything's at 100% capacity, and there's no mask mandate. So only, like, private businesses can choose to let you in if you don't have a mask on. However, there are people everywhere that are high risk that don't have a mask on. It's frustrating. I feel like I'm attached to my computer doing Zoom calls all day, and I'm gonna strangle someone if they put another one on my calendar. You know, outside of that, I go to the refrigerator about 17 times a day to snack. So I'll probably be auditioning for my 600 pound life on TLC pretty soon. I am physically and mentally emotionally exhausted.
- [09:30]
Sarah Longwell
Like, a lot of people spoke to the conspiracy theorists, but, like, even within my own, like, extended family and friend groups and co workers, it's like just fighting this battle of what's right and what's true. And it's exhausting to feel like you're, like, one of the only people yet, like, doing what you're asked to do. I've actually had relationships suffer Because I have challenged their false information. And that's something I never would have.
- [09:57]
Focus Group Participant 1
Expected before this year. One of them was one of my.
- [09:59]
Sarah Longwell
Best friends and I was like, hey, I don't think that's a reliable source. And, yeah, it's just a really weird year with people.
- [10:07]
Focus Group Participant 2
And I kind of feel like I've added teacher to my responsibilities through the day.
- [10:12]
Sarah Longwell
In Orange county, where Orlando is, it's mandatory now that you wear a mask, although they've said the police can't enforce it. So I go out, I have my mask on, which, you know, I don't like any more than anybody else. But I walk into the public's grocery store and half the people aren't wearing them. Or they look at you like you're crazy because you're trying to protect yourself and others around you. It's just a very scary time. And like, with my job, we are probably going to be furloughed at the end of this month or in next month because our business has dried up. I had Covid, so it wasn't fun.
- [10:51]
Focus Group Participant 2
When I had it. I had a lot of breathing problems. I didn't have to go to the hospital or anything like that. But it wasn't a fun time for a couple weeks. And I did lose my job in the restaurant industry. So it's impacted me quite a bit. My restaurant was closed and reopened and it closed again. And then even when they brought people.
- [11:07]
Dr. Lena Wen
Back, it's only like 30% of the.
- [11:09]
Focus Group Participant 2
Staff how it used to be. So it's impacted me quite a bit.
- [11:14]
Sarah Longwell
Disgusted and I'm tired of the lies. I'm worried about the misinformation that has been spread and continues to be spread about not needing to wear a mask, which we all know has become a political thing now. I find that disturbing. And it continues to go. And the lies are out of his mouth are coming daily. And the misinformation is real scary to me because it's literally costing lives. You know, I find Covid to still be very scary to me. It's gonna be hard. I don't know how we're ever gonna recover with the economy, but it's gonna be a long time. We've just kind of gotten involved with.
- [11:51]
Dr. Lena Wen
The COVID and you know, if you wear a mask, oh, you must be fear mongering and, you know, like you're afraid not to just live your life and let the government tell you what to do. And it is, it's just so much bickering instead of trying to look at.
- [12:06]
Sarah Longwell
What are the Facts. What's the science of it?
- [12:08]
Dr. Lena Wen
Like, anytime you watch the news, it's like, well, is that really the facts, or are they just spinning it to their own advantage?
- [12:15]
Sarah Longwell
Like, I wish there was more, just.
- [12:16]
Dr. Lena Wen
Hard evidence and just present the facts.
- [12:18]
Sarah Longwell
I feel that my life is on hold now.
- [12:21]
Focus Group Participant 1
There's nothing to do.
- [12:22]
Sarah Longwell
You can't travel. You don't have a life like you used to. You're kind of stuck a lot of times at home. You go out. Even if you go out to dinner or to the mall or to the beach, you know, in the back of your mind, you're thinking about the people wearing their masks, and you're wearing your masks, and it's not a life anymore. You can't really even enjoy going out. It's like your life is at a halt. You know, listening to that now, it is weird to go back to that time. I mean, I did focus groups the whole way through 2020 during the pandemic on Zoom, and I can remember how unbelievably miserable people were. And not just how miserable they were, but, like, how mad they were at each other, which is, I think, is a big part of what I see as the lasting impulse from a lot of this, is that we're trapped in our houses. We're just online. People are afraid. Some people are more afraid than others. And so people are, like, just reacting differently. People have different consequences for their lives. Some people can do lots of their work on Zoom. Other people are in the restaurant industry. They're getting laid off, and people don't know what to do. It's like, it was an extremely hard time. And what's interesting, though, is that. And my colleague Jonathan Last brings this up all the time, is that a million people died. So a million people died during this time, but basically, we don't really talk about it, right? We don't really talk about the million people that died. You really hear people talk about the lockdowns, the vaccines. We don't weigh the frustration that we feel about this against the loss of life. We just sort of look back and say, like, well, here's all the things we did wrong. What do you make of the fact that we don't talk a lot about the million people that died?
- [14:05]
Dr. Lena Wen
Yeah, it's an interesting point. And I think part of it, as you said, it is who is talking, right? It is the people who have survived. Covid, I suspect that if we talk to people who lost loved ones, and in particular, those who lost loved ones who were young and otherwise healthy, as in yes. Many people who died were people who are older, with other medical conditions, and one could say if they didn't get Covid, perhaps they could have died from something else. Although we also know that life expectancy was much lower during the pandemic. It's just now rebounding back. But we know that the average life expectancy overall in the US really did decrease in this period. You know, I think it is certainly frustrating for medical professionals, for others who did see the loss of life and the severity of illness firsthand, to now hear people who doubt that Covid really was that bad. I mean, we do hear that now, just as we did during the peak of COVID Is this disease really that bad? Well, I think those of us who saw how bad it really is, and that would be people working on the front lines, but also people who lost loved ones. I think it's hard for us to hear that.
- [15:17]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. I mean, partly. I think lots of people now just like the flu or just like you get Covid like, once a year. I didn't get Covid this year. Knock on something. But I've had it a few times now. Is it just that we live with COVID now and we think, oh, well, I don't know, I get it and it's like getting the flu and it sucks, but, like, I bounce back. Was it different, though, in that first bout? Like, is part of it. They're like, Covid now means sort of something different to us. And we can't remember those first cases where, like, it really took people down. And why did that happen? Just as from a medical standpoint, why now does Covid feel like any other kind of illness versus back then, like, the level of fear that we had about it?
- [15:59]
Dr. Lena Wen
Yeah, I think that there are three really important components here, and it's good for us to talk about all three of them. So one is the medical component of why Covid now is different compared to Covid in 2020. And objectively, it is very different. So first of all, we're dealing with different strains. We're dealing with a strain now since 2022, it's been the Omicron strain that's predominant. And this is a strain that causes less severe disease. It's also a lot more transmissible. And so in this sense, this coronavirus has become more like other coronaviruses, or like the flu that spread very easily, that's hard to contain, and therefore it's much more likely for us to get it. The other component of why we're having much less severe disease than before is that we have tools, we have vaccines. We also have many, many people now who've contracted Covid at least once. And so people have some degree of immunity to severe illness from COVID that in combination with the treatments that we have, that further reduce the likelihood of severe disease. So it is just objectively true from a scientific point of view that the COVID you get now, you are much less likely to become severely ill compared to back in 2020. So that's the first part. The second part is that back in 2020, this was a novel virus. And that's something else that I think it's important for us to remember, because now it feels like after years of talking about very little other than Covid, it feels like. Or having Covid influence every part of our lives, it feels like we've known about this forever. But recall that in those early days of 2020, we didn't know much about this virus. We didn't know how severe the disease was. We didn't know how easily it spreads. We didn't. We didn't even know much about the virus itself. We certainly didn't have treatments and vaccines to it. And so I think fear of the unknown and what that unknown could bring was a lot of what drove the initial mitigation measures and the types of precautions we were taking, because we're dealing with something that we really didn't know how this was gonna come out. And then the third reason for why there was so much fear and why I think many of those mitigation measures were appropriate then that would not be now, is that at that time, there was the concern about hospitals becoming overwhelmed because of the sheer number of people who would fall sick from this unknown but pretty serious disease. We don't have that fear now, and we have not had this fear for several years. And so I think that that may be another reason why when people look back and say, well, why did we do all these measures? Then we have to remember that it was a very different time, different virus in effect. I mean, the virus is the same, but different effects of the virus and the dynamics of the virus and how that would impact the system from a hospital standpoint is very different compared to today.
- [18:48]
Sarah Longwell
Wow. That was a very, like, cogent explanation for that. So let's fast forward to present day. And I really do remember this from the time I think Covid was a major reason that people threw Trump out of office in 2020, but it wasn't cited much as a reason to vote against him in this last election. Like it just didn't come up. You know, I've just done tons of focus groups through both elections, talked about it constantly in 2020, almost non existent in 2024. And since this past election, we've spent a lot of time with Biden to Trump voters trying to understand people who had gone to Biden and then swung over to Trump. And one thing you get from many of these voters is that they've had a wholesale change in their opinions the last few years. Many will say they bought into propaganda around Trump, like the media's propaganda that he was bad and around the pandemic, implying that they were misled during the pandemic. Now let's listen to folks talk about how the pandemic changed their lives and what sticks with them most from that time.
- [19:50]
Focus Group Participant 3
When Covid was around, there was a lot of fear mongering that was going around. Like I suffer from anxiety. I was living in New York City at the time and they literally had the death toll on the TV spinning how many people. So it's like I understand when people say that they didn't get the vaccine, they didn't trust it. I'm low key. Like my friend's family called me like a conspiracy theorist. Like, I say things and if you ask too many questions, you're being crazy. But it's like when you have anxiety and then they're telling you if you don't take this, you're going to die. When you hear on the news about a killer, it's a sniper, you have a description or the building's on fire. But this was something that was in the air. You can't see it. It just, you're fine and then you're not. And then you're on a ventilator and then God forbid you die and oh, you didn't take the vaccine, well, that's what's gonna happen too. So it was a lot of scare tactics.
- [20:41]
Sarah Longwell
So COVID 19 really changed me. I felt sick and I was in.
- [20:45]
Dr. Lena Wen
The hospital and everybody was on lockdown. I couldn't really connect with my family. My wife had a baby too. I wasn't able to be there. It kind of affected me.
- [20:56]
Sarah Longwell
When I got off from the hospital, I was very, very cautious of my environment.
- [21:01]
Dr. Lena Wen
I became extremely clean. Like I was doing a lot of weird stuff. They were weird.
- [21:06]
Sarah Longwell
That really affected me on a personal level.
- [21:09]
Focus Group Participant 4
The fear mongering seemed to be the narrative. It seemed to be that they didn't have the information to back it up. And I have a couple incidents that happened where people acted crazy. If you didn't have a mask on after the mass thing even, or whatever, or you cough there. It was a heightened sense of fear that I think was created essentially to push vaccines on people. And there wasn't enough time to get any of that stuff done right. And it made me start looking at conspiracy theories. I'm like, wow, we're really pushing this. And right now with all the stuff we know, you know, and what it possibly could have caused, people dying that had immunodeficiencies or had this problem, that problem, it could have killed them rather than not taking it. It's scary and it's totally. I've never been one to listen to the government to tell me to do anything. And so that was easy. I just remember talking to my friends and finding out how many of them did it without being informed, and it blew my mind. And then the thing where people were acting like we're rounding up everybody and blah, blah, blah, you know, make you take it or it was crazy. I hope I never see that again.
- [22:30]
Focus Group Participant 2
Because it was stupid.
- [22:31]
Focus Group Participant 4
It was a lot of misinformation going, right.
- [22:36]
Sarah Longwell
I don't remember them saying they were going to round us up during this. But what's interesting to me, listening to these voters, is they're basically, when they reflect on the time, they use words like fear mongering, but they remember, like, tremendous anxiety. And I do, too. I remember, like, wiping down my groceries when they would get delivered and. Cause, yeah, we didn't know how it was transferred. And you were seeing really scary things on the news. And then you would be like, do I have allergies or do I have this Covid thing and what's gonna happen? And so, you know, some people said at the time that Covid made us 20% crazier because people were so nervous about their health and their livelihoods. And we also spent a lot less time around real humans and a lot more time on the Internet, which probably isn't good for anybody's mental health or the health of society. Do you feel like we've grappled sufficiently with the psychological toll the pandemic took? I think sometimes we hear more about the toll on kids, and I know people talked about that a lot in the groups, but what about the toll on adults, too? Because I listen to people all the time, and I just think the COVID stuff really did change us in real ways. But do you think we've grappled with it psychologically?
- [23:43]
Dr. Lena Wen
No, I don't think we've grappled with it psychologically or really in any real way. And what I mean by this is, as I listen to these focus groups, the comments from the focus groups that you just played, I get a sense of betrayal, right, that these people are angry and they're saying, I feel like I was forced to do something that I didn't want to do, or I lived through this period, and I think people were lying to me. And there's just the sense that they don't know who to trust, and they think that maybe some people were dishonest with them for whatever reasons before, and it's a bad feeling. These are people who are angry, who are upset about this, and that needs to be explored in a way that doesn't blame them. And what I mean is, I think that there is another whole cohort of people in America who might listen to these comments and become very angry themselves. As in, they will say, well, how could you be so selfish? You know, what about all those people who died? Or what about my relative who suffered? And what about me who still cannot go outside and go to dinner with people because I had a bone marrow transplant and I'm still scared about getting Covid? I mean, I think that there isn't that kind of ability for us as a population to wrestle with the fact that all of these emotions are appropriate and are understandable, and they reflect the variety of people's different experiences during the pandemic and now. And that we don't need to label any of these people as fear mongering or not caring about vulnerable people or whatever the case is. It just reflects a different ways in which we enter the pandemic, the different ways that we made sense of it and our different experiences through it. And I think we do not have a way to come to terms with the fact that all of these experiences and reflections are fine and that there needs to be space to accept them and to meet people where they are. Even if to some people something sounds like a conspiracy theory or government overreach, it's still what people are actually feeling right now.
- [25:49]
Sarah Longwell
All right, focus group listeners, I have a podcast wreck for you. In wild times like these, do you ever just want to break the rules? I know it can be important to rethink some of the dumb rules that we follow for no good reason. Well, that's exactly what friend of the bulwark Glenn Galich gets into on his show Break fake Rules. Here, Glenn and guests dig into the self imposed rules that hold us back, particularly in philanthropy, and to uncover which rules we should commit to breaking together for a better society. Just break fake Rules in a cool way, not like in an Elon way. You'll even hear from me and other insiders in politics, government, philanthropy, media and more who are refusing to live by fake rules. If you've ever wondered why we live by certain rules or dreamed of what becomes possible when we do things differently, tune in to Break Fake Rules. New episodes drop monthly wherever you get your podcasts and you might even hear me on that show. This is one of the reasons I kind of wanted to talk about COVID is because, like, when people were evaluating Trump and Biden, they just decided, and it must have happened during the four years of Biden where they really decided that Democrats were going to be coded with the institutions that they no longer trusted around health, even though Trump was the one who, like, really was the person in charge during, like, the core of the pandemic. And I remember when Biden took over, people gave him good marks for the vaccine roll out because it had been bumpy. They really got it going. And, like, that's kind of when we all left our houses and things started to improve. It was weird how it was both not exactly part of the election as, like, a policy issue, and yet it has seeped into the culture and our psychology and has become this thing that we could bond over. And instead it is an acrimonious thing that we continue to hate each other over. And it's funny when you say something like a person who's had a bone marrow transplant and this is where Covid did sort of wreck us, that if we'd saw somebody marrying a mask before and we thought, man, that person's probably got cancer or that person's probably got a serious thing and they need to protect themselves and we'd feel deep empathy for them. And now because masks are coded politically, people get mad when they see someone in a mask because they think it's a political statement, not something to do with their health. And I guess when I'm saying people still haven't reckoned with it, what you said I think is exactly correct. It's another thing to fight over and for us to be mad at each other about and we should be empathetic around people who suffered great economic harm during that time. You still hear people talk about how Covid did a thing that led to, like, a professional catastrophe for them. They will look back and they have great rage on the fact that their job went away while, like, they couldn't go outside. But the black lives Matter Protesters could actually, I hear that one a lot. That like, that was the moment for people when they got really mad was black lives protests were happening and we still at the time were not. Like, oh, it's cool to be outside. People bring that up all the time. Like, I had to lose my job. I had to be trapped inside and like this political thing was allowed to happen. That was like one place where I feel like I continue to hear about broken trust. And then the second was being told they had to take the vaccine for their job. Like, that's the other place that I hear, what do you look back on and say, man, this was the big miss. Like, this was the thing that nobody saw that I wish we'd seen sooner or something.
- [29:31]
Dr. Lena Wen
Yeah. I mean, you're right that hypocrisy never lands well. Right. Which is probably the reason why many of the politicians who were seen to be having parties or going to dinners at the same time that they were telling people not to do it. That really maybe understandably angered a lot of people. I think then something else that I wish that public health experts and the Biden administration did, but for a variety of reasons, they were not able to. And I'm not sure in retrospect how exactly they would have done it, but the very biggest miss is that there was no end.
- [30:06]
Sarah Longwell
Nobody declared it over.
- [30:07]
Dr. Lena Wen
Yes.
- [30:08]
Sarah Longwell
Like the Cold War, right? Yeah.
- [30:10]
Dr. Lena Wen
I mean, okay, so in public health there is always going to be a tension between individual liberties and what's best for the group that just inherent in public health. Anytime you're talking about. As an example, when I was health commissioner in Baltimore, we had a person who was homeless, who had multi drug resistant tuberculosis and who was wandering the streets of Baltimore. And we needed to get this person into an institution essentially and force them to receive antibiotic and other treatments until they were no longer contagious. Because otherwise this is a disease that potentially could kill up to 50% of people that this individual wandering around the streets of Baltimore could be exposed to. So we decided that this person's individual rights were important, but at some point has to be outweighed by the danger to the public. Right. I mean, even that one very specific example, there is that tension that you have to wrestle with. And early on in the pandemic, there were many reasons, I think, why there was a collective, okay, we need to have masks. Maybe in some places we need to have mask mandates or we need to make sure that we do everything possible to get people the vaccine. I mean, it was maybe understandable at that time, why those precautions were necessary. But we need to see those precautions as extraordinary, that they are really maybe if not once in a lifetime, once in a blue moon, and only for exceptional circumstances, which means that they need to be removed as soon as possible. Not in the ideal circumstance, or when there is no danger that will never happen, but when the danger is sufficiently low and the end point needs to be defined. Maybe the end point is we are no longer concerned about overwhelming hospitals. Or maybe it is that most people have access to a vaccine that they can take in order to protect themselves. Whatever that is, that endpoint has to be there, or else people begin to think exactly this, that this is government overreach, that personal liberties don't matter, that it is somebody else who's deciding. I think the problem, though, is that there was a substantial part of the Democratic base of Biden supporters of people who believed that we have to do everything possible to contain the virus in perpetuity, essentially. And they would not have been happy with removing those guardrails quickly. And I saw this for myself. I mean, I was a strong proponent of mitigation measures early on, but then I also thought that at a certain point, we have to let people move on with their lives. We have to let schools go on, we have to let people socialize and so forth. And the same people who had before been right there with me and encouraging and been part of this movement for something pretty common sense in the middle of a once in a lifetime pandemic, the same people were very quick to turn on me and to turn on other experts whom ourselves were saying, we have now reached past this point where we need to move on. I think as a result, the Biden administration and health officials in his administration did not want to anger this contingent and so really did not have an end to the pandemic. And I think that was a huge missed opportunity. And therefore a lot of people are very angry, and maybe rightfully so. They attribute it to everything that happened in the pandemic. But I actually think it's not everything. I think it's the last couple of years, if you will, that were unnecessary.
- [33:36]
Sarah Longwell
This is why I love doing this show. It's like you just kind of blew my mind with this point. That seems incredibly simple, but it does, in retrospect, seem nuts that there wasn't like, a victory lap. I remember HW declaring that the Cold War was over and that being like a big moment for people, because it psychologically had been a thing for everybody. You're just saying that there wasn't a practical reason why they couldn't. What was it? Is it just. You just think it was politically untenable for them?
- [34:06]
Dr. Lena Wen
I think the reason is that people were not willing to make a dividing line at some point. Right. And we do this all the time. Right. You have to have some line that not everybody's going to be happy with and that's not going to be perfect. And I think that the administration could have come out and said, okay, there are people for whom Covid remains really dangerous and those individuals need to take extra precautions. And we as a society have to do things to protect those people. And I think there are really reasonable things that even in 2021, 2022 could have been done to help to protect those people. For example, remember early on we had those in grocery stores. We had certain hours for vulnerable people. We could have kept that. We could have said, during certain hours in a grocery store, everybody needs to mask, but the majority of the day you do not need a mask. Or I was a proponent of get your vaccine, take your mask off. Something that I also thought was kind of a victory lap of sorts that helped to encourage vaccination, of saying, you now do this, the pandemic is over for you. Something like that, that would have been fairly straightforward. That would have been a positive incentive and I think would have helped people to see, okay, yes, this virus is still real. Yes, this was a big concern before, but times have changed. I think that eventually we did get to that point, but there remains a contingent of people who are unhappy that the world has moved on. That contingent was larger and it was very vocal in 2022, 2023, even 2024 during the election. And I think that my hypothesis is that Biden and his team did not want to anger this contingent that they saw as being part of their base. And as a result, I think they ended up angering everyone.
- [35:52]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, I agree with that. It's a great point. It would have been cool to have, like a designated victory. I think that would have been good for Biden and good for the country. This show is sponsored by Oneskin. Did you know the skin around your eyes can be 20 to 30 years biologically older than the rest of your face? I didn't know that. It's up to five times thinner too, which makes it more vulnerable to things like wrinkles, sagging and cellular damage. That's why Oneskin's founding team of scientists creating OS1i eye designed specifically for this ultra delicate area. OS1i has the highest concentration of One Skin's proprietary OS1 peptide, the first ingredient scientifically proven to reverse skin's biological age. It works by switching off your senescent or zombie cells that accumulate here and make your skin look older than it needs to. You know, everything One Skin does is backed by science and their clinical study on OS1. I was just published in the International Journal of Cosmetic Science with data showing significant improvements in firmness, elasticity, hydration, and better overall appearance. I am 62 and look how young I look. I'm just kidding. I just turned 45. It feels like the last couple of months of Donald Trump's term have aged me by a few years. I'm using one skin as one of my personal forms of resistance. Get 15% off with code the focus group at oneskin co. That's 15% off. Oneskin co with Code the focus group. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Invest in the health and longevity of your skin With One Skin, your future self will. Thank you. Okay. One thing that came pouring out of our Biden to Trump focus groups were stories of how the pandemic had affected them and their families and their personal behavior. Like Covid feels both very close and very far in weird different ways. But when you start talking about it or thinking about it, you ask people about it, man, does it come fast and furious in terms of what they see as the aftershocks or sort of the lingering impact of COVID Let's listen.
- [38:14]
Focus Group Participant 1
The biggest thing for me was the impact that it had on my kids and having to isolate them when they were 10 and 12 for almost two years. Now we're here in Georgia, so they kind of let us out a little early, but they still to this day are dealing with anxiety in public, and it's hard to help guide them through that. The world's not a scary place. You don't need to be afraid of everything. But during that time, they were in such a formative state of having to constantly keep them home when they really didn't need to be, or the masks, the paranoia that they had. They were going to get sick, someone was going to die. As an adult, it was hard for us to deal with. But to see my kids go through it and still having to deal with the fallout of that. Everybody seems to have moved on, but it's like we still have to nurture our kids and help them with some weird PTSD sort of way that unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we couldn't keep them insulated from that and that fear that they had. And I hope that that doesn't impact them even longer into adulthood. But we still have to see what. What happens. But for us, that was, like, the biggest thing. My husband mourns every day about how we weren't able to do things with them when they were little. The family events, the trips we couldn't go, the family members we couldn't see because everything was locked down.
- [39:33]
Focus Group Participant 2
My kids and their ability to socialize with other children, it was dramatically affected. You know, learning from home. We actually, to be honest with you, that was actually kind of a nice time for us because, you know, we made the best of it. But thankfully, my wife was able to invest a lot of time in being very diligent with them. But at the same time, I've seen plenty of other kids fall way behind in their education. I mean, massively. And it's a. It's a crime that these kids have basically not gotten an education. So there's the education part and the social aspect of developing children who can't read a face because they're forced to wear masks that don't work. It's done so much damage to kids, and I think the social isolation of it made it even massively worse. It's done damage to this generation of children.
- [40:23]
Focus Group Participant 5
I mean, the thing is, the American population is much more educated than it used to be. There's been a growing amount of people that are educated, and it's not just about people you've gone to school. Just generally speaking, people are more educated. And we want. I think we want truth. I think we want people to be authentic. I think we want people to be true. And the thing is, it's like, we want to be able to put our trust in our government institutions. And we know there are problems, and when we. They're like, oh, no, there's no problems. And now we see all the news coming out with doge and all the stuff that they're finding, and some of it is, like, really concerning. And some of it's like, you guys need to be a little bit more cautious. It's fine that you say, we found this, but take a minute to also then come back around with. And this is what it really means. Like, don't act immediately, but, like, let the American public know the whole thing on, like, aliens in the news and wherever you stand on that. The fact is, like, if there's aliens or there's flying orbs around, just tell the American people it's fine. Like, all the secrets about the JFK stuff, just tell us like, we don't care anymore. We actually want the truth if there's a disease that might kill us. You know, be like, this is what we know. This is what we've had working in the background. Because the thing was, is the technology has been worked on for years. They're just like, well, now let's put it into effect. It's like a shell game when it's like, oh, guess what, guys, here's the solution. But you didn't follow up with like. And by the way, we've done this for all the years.
- [41:48]
Focus Group Participant 2
Now that it's come out, we find that we sponsored a lot of the research in Wuhan. We were part of it. The fact that you can ask questions about it with RFK in that position, I would be more inclined to at least know that he's going to ask questions. I think that's a bit refreshing. But overall, no. If something else comes out, I can almost guarantee you I will be 100% skeptical. And not trusting the drug companies. That was probably one of the largest wealth transfers, at least in this country to them. And they were financially incentivized to sell their product with complete ignorance of just what other options you have. I've never heard CNN once talk about, oh, get outside and get healthy, make your body strong to actually be able to handle. If you do have Covid, what was any alternatives just to take care of yourself about your own personal health? It was none of it. It was, take this and that's it. I don't trust it. And I'm not gonna listen to CNN or any of the news agencies about it because they're getting paid by the drug companies and that's where they get their revenue from. So why can't we ask questions?
- [42:57]
Sarah Longwell
Okay, so the Pew Research center came out with some polling data on the pandemic in October 2024. So not that long ago, a solid 55% of Americans said that the risks of the pandemic had been slightly or greatly exaggerated. Like they'd greatly exaggerated the risks of COVID with 42% saying the risks were covered about accurately or not taken seriously enough. 55% is a lot of people who think that things were exaggerated. And, you know, you hear this phrase fear mongering. And that last guy, and I hear this all the time, which is the why can't we even ask questions? And, you know, the just asking questions kind of a familiar refrain in the Trump groups. And we've got a guy in charge of HHS now, who just asks questions about vaccines, like the measles vaccines, for example. So how do you handle where we are now? As a physician, when you hear these voters talking about how they've lost trust and how I don't think the pharmaceutical companies pay cnn, I'm like, I don't know all the facts, but I'm pretty sure that's not a true thing. But how does your profession deal with this lack of trust? What do you do?
- [44:15]
Dr. Lena Wen
Yeah, it's interesting when I, because my job is not to do focus groups, right? And so I don't hear a lot of these focus groups, but when I heard what people were saying, my initial response was, I want to talk to them. Because I hear this from my patients. I hear this from people who have very legitimate concerns. All of these concerns that someone comes into their physician's office with is a legitimate concern because if it's preventing them from doing something that we believe is good health seeking behavior, good behavior for, for them, for their individual health, then it's a legitimate concern that we need to address. And I think that what happened, and I don't think this happened with their doctor necessarily, but maybe with their friends or with their family member or something like that, when they brought up a question, maybe their family who was very pro vaccine just said, oh, well, you're wrong, or this really isn't a thing, rather than going into the details of what it is. I mean, if the concern, for example, is that the vaccine got developed too quickly, it came out of nowhere, I mean, we have an answer for that, right? Somebody in the focus group alluded to how MRNA technology has been in the works for decades and how this virus came along, and they were able to put that into action thanks to President Trump's operation, Operation Warp Speed. There are answers to these questions, but I could see how people may feel as if they cannot ask them. Maybe they did ask them and what they got back, not from their physicians, but from somebody else, was, oh, well, this is a conspiracy theory. Rather than addressing the question head on. And I know that from my patients, I got asked questions specifically about the vaccine that they had heard from somewhere that were important to address and that there was some truth behind. For example, women were concerned about the impact of the vaccines on their menstrual periods. Well, as it turns out, there have been studies that have shown that there may be some changes to the menstrual period in the short term. But addressing that is not a conspiracy theory. It's addressing this question and then saying, here's the research that we know around this, or I know that for some time, for the first couple of years, the questions around natural immunity, the immunity that you get from infection, those questions were all dismissed because yes, it is true that we didn't want people to just go out and have chickenpox parties and get infected all at once. But it's also true that you do have immunity, not lifelong immunity, but you do get some degree of pretty good immunity after having infection. So I think that addressing those nuances and being clear with people about what we know and what we don't know and what we believe is the case based on ongoing research, but this could change. I think that leaning into the nuances rather than backing away and just saying, well, you're wrong and I'm right. And I think that that may be a lesson that we learn, especially because we also know that if people keep on hearing that their questions are being dismissed, they're much more likely to go to, as you were saying, like an RFK junior who will say, well, let's ask this question. And you know what, if we can ask this question, why not also this question? If you think they're lying to you about this, then maybe they're also lying to you about X, Y and Z.
- [47:25]
Sarah Longwell
The number of people in the focus groups who are kind of like, well now I regret doing the jab and like weren't going to get the flu shot or suddenly were questioning other vaccines that they'd never done. You know, I remember Trump had, he was always having these press conferences and he would have Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx address people. And now these people are all enemies and whatever. But at the time there was this attempt to communicate with people clearly and the Biden administration never really did those things, but people still did have a lot of questions, especially around the vaccines and myocarditis and just different things. And I had questions and frustrations listening to people talk about what it did to their kids. I had young kids during the pandemic. I mean I still got youngish kids, but they were pretty young then. And like my kid still has speech stuff. The like number of like cloth masks we had to keep for this kid. Cuz they would get wet, you know, and his face would get chapped and it was a lot. And so this is my overall beef, I think with the Biden administration is just when you don't communicate with people pretty constantly now they will fill the void with a bunch of other stuff. And maybe you'll tell me. No, they really did do that and you just missed it cuz you weren't paying attention. But it did feel like Covid just sort of faded kind of in the minds of people. And then it got left with a whole group of people who said, you guys lied to us this whole time. We were right. Here's all the effects that we still have to grapple with and I'm mad about it and I'm never listening to you again. So like, should there be more communication? Like should somebody even now try to be like, hey, let's answer some of the questions people have about vaccines broadly, because it persists if you talk to people about it.
- [49:14]
Dr. Lena Wen
That is such a good point. And I wanted to respond to a couple of things that you said, including about kids. I have little kids also my daughter is about to be five. So you can think back to that timing. She was born April 3rd of 2020. So I had my own pandemic baby. My son was 2 at the time. So I lived through exactly what you were saying about trying to put masks on little kids and pulling him out of preschool. And years of wondering every time I saw something like my son needed speech therapy, is that because of COVID or because he would have needed speech therapy? Regardless, who knows?
- [49:47]
Sarah Longwell
And so who knows?
- [49:48]
Dr. Lena Wen
And I know in this case we're listening to the focus groups of people who are skeptical of COVID and skeptical of the effects of COVID But if you listen to those who are kind of the hardcore, we should have kept on precautions for longer. Those individuals would be shouting at us right now. Because I know that even when I've brought up the possibility that my son could have been impacted negatively by masks, those folks were extremely angry because to them, even talking about the ill effects of COVID is a betrayal in some way to them. As in they would say, well, what about the 1.1 million people who died? How could you possibly compare any damage to your son's speech or short lived effects on speech to a death? You know, so I think the nuance has been eliminated in many of these conversations. And then the other thing I wanted to mention regarding what you were saying about communication with the public, I do think that the Biden administration tried. They had some very good communicators, including Ashish Shah, Vivek Murthy, the Surgeon General, come out and speak to folks. I think though, that part of the issue is what we were saying before is that they had to be so careful as to not offend those individuals who they live in a world where Covid is a major concern for them. And because the Biden folks also wanted to speak to them, they were prevented from giving what I believe are the common sense recommendations to people, including about how masking a three year old probably not the greatest idea, not going to work that well and the studies are pretty inconclusive, so you might as well not do it. I mean, I think there are common sense recommendations that could have been given that would have been reassuring to a lot of people and also would have made them think that these people get it because otherwise if you're continuing to say things that are so divorced from people's realities, they're not going to think that you understand them and that they won't listen to the other things that.
- [51:39]
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- [53:39]
Sarah Longwell
All right, well, I want to close out with this specific thing around vaccines, because something that became abundantly clear from the Biden to Trump voters was the vaccines were a major, no pun intended, sticking point for these folks, with a lot of them either not getting the vaccine at all or regretting getting it. Let's listen to what that sounds like. I really feel like vaccines are important to a healthy community. So I do feel like if it's something that is safe, we should be taking it. The COVID vaccine, for myself, I did not take it because I don't feel like there was enough research behind it. And that was my personal opinion on it. And I do feel like we do have the right to our opinions and our thoughts, and I don't think that things should necessarily be forced on us or our children. But in the same sense, you know, my son is 12 and he's never had chickenpox because of the chickenpox vaccine. And so I think it's like a checks and balances kind of thing where people should be able to have their choice, but then again, like, they should be educated on it to know why it's something that's available to us.
- [54:42]
Focus Group Participant 3
I was pregnant and I was like, oh, my gosh, I didn't even want to tell people that I was pregnant. And I could say this now only because my son is 4, just in case I had a miscarriage, because I'm just like. You know what I'm saying? Like, that's the type of thought process. I was like, I'm not gonna, oh, gather around, family. I'm expecting because you might get the COVID and you'll be done. So when I tell you I ran down to get that vaccine, meanwhile, my brain is still like, you probably don't need this vaccine. I'm not gonna go all off on the tinges, but I'm just saying that it was just very scary. I just felt like you were damned if you do and damned if you didn't, because if you got it, you go to the hospital, oh, you didn't get your vaccine. That's why you're here.
- [55:20]
Focus Group Participant 2
All my kids are vaccinated. I really don't have A problem with most of the scheduling, but my kids, my wife were not vaccinated for the COVID at all. They all had Covid and they had a bad flu for a couple of days. I was forced to. If I wanted to work, that was it. You either have it or you don't. And if you want to get on a plane, fly internationally, good luck without having proof. Okay? And I had no choice forced upon me. What I object to is they have no legal responsibility if there's problems, which is insanity to me, and the fact that if I had questions or said, maybe I would like to try something else, you get labeled an anti vaxxer, anti everything, and then you get called crazy.
- [56:02]
Focus Group Participant 1
My kids are now 17 and 15 and my husband, we all got it, but we only got the first two and then got a booster and then that's it. We haven't had it since then and we haven't gotten our flu shots. And we're okay, we've had the flu, we've had Covid, but at this point, we're not getting any more shots just because, you know, they're saying, get the shot, get the jab. It's like, nah, we're good. I think. I think we've just, we've had enough of being told what to inject into our systems.
- [56:33]
Focus Group Participant 3
I'm not an anti vaxxer. I mean, my children are vaccinated, but typically they're vaccinated. The vaccinations that I've gotten and they've gotten have been to prevent them getting a disease. And then when the COVID vaccine came out, there was no guarantee, you know, that I wasn't going to get Covid. So I didn't. I just didn't see a reason to get it. Because if I get Covid, you know, at the end of the day, for me, it didn't even make sense, you.
- [57:05]
Focus Group Participant 6
Know, So I like the scrutiny on western vaccines because vaccines are something that in the United States, we're generally just expected. It's vaccine, it's good for you. Take it. And the thing is, no one's responsible for my body. I'm not responsible for anyone else's. Everyone's responsible for their own body. So it seems nonsensical to me to where everyone is instructed to get vaccines. And even when we get food, it says on the side of food is required by law. These are the ingredients, your food. And we need to know those things. We're consuming that. Why is it not just as apparent in vaccines when we're also ingesting that also. And then another thing I think about when it comes to food, because I have my bachelor's degree in chemistry, there are so many foods that are banned in Europe that are parkour for us taking our food here. Even when my friends go overseas to travel, they always tell me, oh, my goodness, the food in Jamaica is so fresh. It's so good. I regret it because it took them way too little time to make the vaccine. I feel like the time between when Covid was announced to when they said we made a vaccine, I feel like it was a span of seven days. Yeah, like seven days. Like every other vaccine you've seen, they take, like, 10 years. FDA approving. Testing it here, testing it there. Like, when I heard about it, I was, like, thinking to myself, how y'all made a vaccine in a week? Like, what's going on? Did y'all know what's coming and y'all just told us, or, like, what's up? Cause from what I understand, Covid came out Monday, and the vaccine was out Friday.
- [58:54]
Sarah Longwell
So, just as a last word, Dr. Wen, what do you think about vaccines? What's the official position on vaccines now?
- [59:02]
Dr. Lena Wen
I think that we need to become a lot more nuanced in how we speak about different vaccines, because that is what people are expecting. People know, and now we know that the COVID vaccines are not like the measles vaccine or the polio vaccine. And I don't just mean that this is a relatively newer virus and therefore relatively newer vaccine, but rather that with measles, with polio, the vaccine is really effective in reducing your chance of illness, reducing your chance of severe illness. Measles, for example, 97% effective at preventing infection. That is not the case with the COVID vaccine. And I think that public health officials erred in discussing these vaccines in the same breath as we do other vaccines. And in order to restore trust in childhood immunizations, I think we need to talk about COVID vaccines differently. Now, this is not to say that we shouldn't be promoting Covid vaccines. We should absolutely be promoting them for the right populations. And that nuance in speaking about who the vaccines are for at this point in time, as well as how effective or rather what the limitations are of the COVID vaccines. I think those are conversations that we have not had. And look, the information that we had about the COVID vaccine at the beginning was very different because the earlier studies showed that they were 90% effective at reducing infection or severe illness. That is no longer the case. And I think admitting this is not to say that we made a mistake all along. It's to say, here's what the recent evidence shows, and then let's not let misinformation and mistrust about the COVID vaccine bleed into mistrust about all the other vaccines that we know are really life savings.
- [60:46]
Sarah Longwell
So, sorry, but I'm just gonna press just a little bit. So does that mean that do we not need to take the COVID vaccine, and should it really just be for older people who are at a higher risk, or should everybody take the COVID vaccine just like they take the flu shot?
- [60:59]
Dr. Lena Wen
I think we need to look at the data around the COVID vaccines again now, at this point in time, right, different from compared to before with different strains. The other thing about the vaccines now is that the baseline population and the impact of COVID is very different. It's a different time compared to before, as we were talking about earlier. And so when you look at the reduction in severe disease and the reduction in symptomatic infection, depending on the study that's done, depending on the strain that we're talking about, we're probably Talking about a 40 to 50% reduction in infection or severity. And we note that that level also wanes very quickly within a matter of a couple months, a few months. And so I think people need to gauge, based on those statistics, how important that vaccine is going to be for them. If you're an older person going on a cruise and you want any reduction in the likelihood of severe illness, you should get the vaccine. But if you're a young and otherwise healthy person and your likelihood of getting severely ill is already very low, a further 40% reduction from for a few months probably may not matter so much to you. And so I think that level of nuanced recommendation needs to be communicated. And I think that public health officials have been afraid to communicate that, saying that, well, now nobody's going to get the vaccine. But I think that's not true. I think we're not giving people enough credit. I think people want the information to make choices for themselves and that that information is empowering and also shows them that the official that's giving them that information with a clinician giving them that information is worthy of trust.
- [62:32]
Sarah Longwell
Dr. Lena Wen, thank you so much for joining us. And thanks to all of you for listening to the focus group podcast. We'll be back next week and in the meantime, rate and review us on Apple podcasts, subscribe to The Bulwark on YouTube and become a Bulwark plus member at the Bulwark.com we will see you guys next week.