Fortune Staff

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 68th running of the list.

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Clorox sells its namesake bleach as well as a number of household-goods brands, including Kingsford Charcoal, Pine-sol, Glad bags, Brita water filters, and Burt’s Bees care products. The company's cleaning products have been in exceptionally high demand due to the coronavirus pandemic.

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Clorox

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Dr. Georges Benjamin, Executive Director, American Public Health Association 
Dr. Jesse Ehrenfeld, Former Chair, Board of Trustees, American Medical Association 
Moderator: Phil Wahba, FORTUNE


Brainstorm Health 2022 - Infodemics: How To Counter The Health Care Misinformation Effect

Conferences

Dr. Georges Benjamin, Executive Director, American Public Health Association 
Dr. Jesse Ehrenfeld, American Medical Association 



How To Counter The Health Care Misinformation Effect


Brainstorm Health 2022 - Infodemics: How To Counter The Health Care Misinformation Effect


thank you for sticking with us and not heading to the reception early. Um so it's really my pleasure to uh to uh be speaking with Dr Benjamin and Dr Ehrenfeld about the subject. I think we all have thoughts on when we've all experienced which is which is misinformation. So why don't I just start by asking each of you what was an example? An egregious example of misinformation during the pandemic? Maybe at the early that really major blood boil in particular, we will start with you. hydroxychloroquine was which has persisted. So he didn't take any. No, no. I I think the fact that it was promoted, its continued promoted um clinical trials have shown that it doesn't work for the reason they're proposing and yet people still want to take. It makes no sense. Yeah. And as we saw it wasn't just in the US but there was misinformation around it. But then the president of brazil touted and then the President of Hungary or you know, if I'm yeah elected leaders childhood and and the problem is that it causes significant problems with people's hearts. It just makes no sense. It's a dangerous drug when not used as intended. Yeah. When you're not a horse, right, How about you jesse? Uh that was a big one I've ever met in. And drinking bleach also I think a lot of confusion in the public and were not helpful to people's understanding of what is appropriate evidence based guidance to keep you and your family safe? The I'd forgotten about the drinking. Was that at the beginning with when people were rushing to get Clorox right early in the pandemic on the surface, not inside on the right, right. Well not even on the surface and you use it, but yeah. Um well, and since uh I mean let's talk a little bit about the role of social media now, there's a lot going on in the role of social media. Um you know, we'll we'll get to other sources of misinformation, but you know, how much blame can we ascribe to the twitters and the Facebooks of the world uh for all this, in your opinion? Well, you're obviously some um we were in a technological age which has changed, right? Um communication has changed. People are engaging and people love to share rumors. Um that's just that's just life and I just, I think that we just, I haven't figured out how to use those tools in a responsible manner. Um but no, they're there and they're not going away. Yeah, I mean, clearly the media, social media companies have had a role in all of this. Um you know, have we had the right tools to manage the misinformation? No. Uh are we there today? Probably not. Um but I also couldn't tell you that I've got all of the answers, but I think it's clearly a work in progress that um media companies, journalists the public all have roles to play. It's important that we step up to the responsibilities that we make sure that people the public have confidence information that's out there which has been a real challenge throughout all of this. Yeah. I mean I I suppose if you want to take some consolation to our current era when I've read articles about the pandemic in 1918 it seems that people were also very predisposed to believing in in in in fake things. But obviously the Social media is democratized it but but there's maybe that human instinct to want to jump on crazy ideas and well yeah but 1918 was a different time And um benefit I have is that my association has been around since 1872 so I can actually go into the archives and pull papers and the studies from back then and we didn't know a lot, we didn't know about viruses. Um We kind of thought about vaccines but there were vaccines against bacteria. Of course not against viruses. Um But a lot of debate we had today we had then we had anti mass society's development. Um We had people didn't want to give people vaccines back then. They just was an explosive because you know in order to move information from point A to point B you had to go by um you know horse and carriage. Yeah, absolutely. Well let's flagellating my industry a little bit the news media. Um I think I think by and large you know most outlets that we read are well intentioned but you know I sometimes found it very confusing in one day I would see tweets from Bloomberg and the new york times and fortune, et cetera. And it seemed that there was contradictory information about masks about the vaccine and sometimes you you sort of didn't know what to do. So um you know, beat us up a little bit. What what did the media do wrong? Well, it's hard because the science evolved and continue to evolve and continue to change. And we found ourselves trying to push out these very nuanced public health messages in sound bites as the information and the science was changing. And that was a recipe for confusion and an erosion of trust on the background where we had the challenges of both misinformation which is information being falsely spread. That's incorrect as well as disinformation which are actors in the ecosystem deliberately trying to create confusion. And so all those things together led to the situation where people are confused. I mean I have patients, my family members calling me asking what to do and unfortunately I will tell you that in many circumstances they were more likely to listen to an uninformed opinion on tv than they were the advice from their own doctor. And that is something that has been a devastating outcome from the covid pandemic. That we're gonna have to work for years to try to get back from, especially something else is going to show up at some point, right? And I mean I don't know, I'm sorry for the small digression, but it made me worried a little bit about how we're going to react to climate change, if, you know, we can't agree to basic facts, and and they can get distorted. And, uh, I mean, there's a connection between public health and climate change as we saw in the palace yesterday, and that's a really important issue. Um, you know, as soon as this concept has entered our social consciousness of alternative facts, I think we have just, sort of, lost the game, and there are facts, and then there are things that are not facts. We can interpret facts differently. And suddenly we're in a situation where, um, you know, what you define as truth, in fact, um, is not accurate. That becomes obviously very, very difficult from a scientific standpoint to counteract. Okay, And I think people have to understand science is evolving. Um, the facts are the facts of truth is the truth. But science evolves, Our knowledge base evolves. And I think one of the challenges we have is that all of us need to become better storytellers, and not just purveyors of of statements, You know, it's tough to do in 100 and, you know, 1690 characters for sure, but we've got to figure out how to do that, and we've got to figure out when we make a mistake, correct that mistake. And then, you know, because once we lose trust, it takes forever to get it back. Uh sorry to harp on the media, I guess this is a bit of a self interested question. But I mean, if I were to criticize the media a little bit, it's just too much information at one point, you know, it's like every time a study came out, uh you know, you write an article, but it contradicted uh study that the same publication wrote up the day before. And then, you know, there's just so much, I mean, it's it's part of the problem again, among the well intentioned actions in society, too much information so that you end up tuning out uh what, you know what you don't want to hear or selecting what you do want to hear. Yeah, people live in their, you know, their own ecosystems and, and biases prevail here. But I think the challenge we have is um quite often we get press release is quoted as studies and quoted as fast. Um, those press releases put out for shareholders, they're not put out for public consumption unless you're gonna buy stock. Uh, I think the challenge we have is telling that story. Um, and I would much rather, again, I'm not in the business, but I would prefer to be right and not as timely and confirm what you say because at the end of the day, the more trusted messengers we have out there. Um I think the better off we'll be, And of course the media has the risk of themselves not becoming a trusted messenger and then when you really want to pervade a fact of someone they won't listen. And that's why I think that the media has to be very vigilant about being credible sources and also looking at organizations that trade on misinformation and calling that out. Um And that's something that has happened to some degree. But I don't think the degree that it could have that would help from this problem to begin with. Yeah I mean you know we're all under pressure to turnout stories and turn out stories and turn out stories and then it's just so you sort of get you can't see the forest for the trees anymore. And I think that that confuses readers. Um now let's pick a little bit on the government. Uh you know what what could uh you know what could the CDC have done differently perhaps? I mean I I personally felt that we got some conflicting messages from the C. D. C. At one point. Um you know last year I think everybody was eager to to make us feel like in the summer of 2021 who were done with all this. Uh and then of course the fall brought us omicron and now we're baby omicron. So um you know you don't want to pick on the CDC but just generally you know what have the public officials done to contribute to this issue. Yeah I I have no problem picking all my good friends at the C. D. C. I think the issue here is that if you're going to announce a change in policy you need to first realizing you're making a change in policy. And that's a press conference. That's a thought. That's a very thoughtful press conference with a complicated piece of communication. You get all your verifiers all lined up so that people aren't around the country aren't getting different messages. You know us armchair epidemiologists love the comments every time one of your reporters calls us and but we need to be lined up we need to know the facts. You need to be in line. Um you bring those folks in. The director makes a broad statement and then you let the experts speak same thing with political figures. Political figures need to give the high level to empower their scientists and then let the scientists give the facts and then we ought to be there prepared to take every question the media has so that the story doesn't come out wrong so that people actually hear all the nuances. Um you know taking off your mask because we think it's safer and you're vaccinated. Well that's that turns out to be a very we've learned a very complicated issue. That requires a lot more of a comment than you're vaccinated. We can take your mask. I will say we do also on the flip side need elected officials to affirm science and evidence to their words and actions. And unfortunately that has not always happened throughout the pandemic which has just exacerbated the challenges that I think CDC and other federal agencies have had in trying to communicate public health messages along with the rest of the public health and physician community and yeah and then there's the role of politics. I mean I think our elected officials really want this behind us and I I was a bit chuckles. Well not chuckling, It was crying chuckling last week when new york said oh we're going to go back up to a medium level of risk because of the new variants. And you're like how did you not anticipate this is going to happen? We got rid of most of our precautions uh two months ago and all of a sudden you know we knew this was gonna happen. But you know I guess there is a lot of pressure on elected officials to maybe tell people what they want to hear rather than what they need to hear at this point. Yeah, I I think we still have a story to tell. We have to tell people how we transition from this terrible, terrible pandemic that we had and how as a society we transition to something different. I don't think we know exactly what it's gonna look like. But there are some pretty good scenarios of what it might look like and then prepare the public for those various scenarios. So we can say ah this is scenario a, here's what you do with testing, here's what you do with masking, here's what you do with social distancing. This is scenario B you know, here's what you do and then spend time educating the public. So they're not surprised and they don't think you didn't know what you're talking about. And that only works if we've got people's trust. Otherwise when we have to take a different posture because of different circumstances, different case rates, different variants. People throw their hands up and say, well you were wrong this time or I didn't believe you. And then suddenly people ignore all of the advice, which is the worst case scenario, How about large corporations because it was, you know, early in the pandemic. It was, it was fascinating to see retailers and restaurant operators and the airlines kind of get stuck in all this and at one point, you know, you you have to land on the policy for that makes the most sense for your business? So did the, did large corporations play a role in countering misinformation? Could they play a bigger role in the future or is is it's not really that role at all? Oh, they absolutely can. I mean they've got thousands of employees. Um and they get the opportunity to educate their employees. I can tell you that I've got 75 employees. We spent every staff meeting, here's where the epidemic is today. Here's what we think it means to you. Um, and by the way, most of my folks that work for the american public Health Association aren't public health people. We have a journal that run the building, something that I am a right. Most of the folks are not in that business. Um, but they needed to know for their family members. Um, and now that we're talking return to work, we have to engage them more effectively as well. So yeah, big, big business has a, has a role to play and public health has a role to engage big business earlier in the process. In fact, now that we're trying to figure out where we go next, we've already spent a lot of time engaging them thinking about what to happen because while this one is still hovering, we ain't done yet. And by the way, the next one is just around the corner, it ain't gonna be 100 years old. It's just around the corner. What I will say is nobody wants to buy a product that's not safe. Um, So why would you want to go to a business engage the corporation where you know, your interests as a consumer is not the highest priority. And I think we heard that the conversation with the Ceo from Delta this morning about how they saw their approach blocking middle seats as a market differentiator. Now that may or not have been the right thing to do. But I think that as a corporate response, trying to take, what is the evidence, What is the science? How do we bring that forward to consumers is an appropriate strategy? Yeah, I personally enjoyed the middle seat being blocked. Um, you know, of course it sends the airfares up, but, but you know, I mean two years ago, retailers really had to make a decision that was unpopular with a lot of their customers. But in a way it's, that's based on pragmatism, right? Like you cannot start to have your staff getting. So they basically conveyed the messages that math, uh, do mitigate the risk. And uh, you know, it's uh, yeah, but we've learned a lot. And so now we also understand closing borders really doesn't have any good scientific basis, right? We need, we know that there's a tradeoff if we close our schools and we need to figure out how not to do that in the future. We know there's a tradeoff on, on dealing with business. Let's build those plans now. Um, and then communicate effectively and then we get the people that want to share the misinformation. We need to just um, counter that with lots of good information. And I think turning up the volume is really, really important. And I gotta tell you, I would love nothing more than for the voices of physicians, healthcare and public health to be the loudest in the room. We are not unfortunately. And that has been a continuing challenge. We should all get on twitter. You know, it's going to be under new management soon. Well, and let me tell you something. I think the only two people on stage dr Benjamin and myself are the only ones that are on verified on twitter. How does that happen? I don't get it. Does anybody know Ellen make you can tweet him and get that fixed? Well, I'm going to go viral if you want to do it. Let's do it. So in the last couple of minutes, just a quick thought on on groups that are most susceptible. I know you wrote last year in the new york times you wrote about. There are some groups that are more susceptible arguably to misinformation or I mean I don't know, maybe they're not but well, here's the deal. Right after the pandemic started, there were folks who are in communities of color putting fliers handing them out, putting them on cars, put it up on the wall saying, um, don't get tested because it will give you the disease um, when the vaccine becomes available, don't get it because they're putting microchips in it. Like you're not being tracked by your cellphone, right? I mean there was a purposeful effort to give people the misinformation. Um, and that was the problem and and then then there's an underlying skepticism that communities have and distrust of of of government and health systems, etcetera. So, in our last minute together, I just want to go back to what you talked about. The next one is around the corner and will not be uh, a lot of fun and well, you know, but so they're gonna have the answer. But are we ready for the next public health crisis? Maybe we'll start with you jesse. Um I think we're better prepared than we were two years ago, but we're not where we could be. And I'll tell you, I've been on the front lines of this. I'm, you know, I see patients every week. I have watched patients die from Covid and I've watched more patients die that didn't have to die because of the torrent of misinformation. And I think that we have a lot to learn to move forward to make sure that this doesn't happen again. Yeah. We're still tracking information by fax machine. Um We're still we are we are um we've not invested were we don't have a single patient identifier. We can't share information. Um, you know, maybe we ought to just turn over the healthcare data system to amazon or some other company that can move data effectively, but the health system hasn't figured out how to do it yet. On that note. Thank you both so much for joining me today and I really enjoyed the conversation. Me too

Clorox

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