Science & Society: Vaccines — A Public Conversation
David Wallace-Wells hosts an urgent conversation on declining vaccination rates, the resurgence of preventable diseases, and how public health became politically fractured.
Why we picked this
David Wallace-Wells built his reputation on making hard science feel urgent — that instinct meets its match in a public health crisis that is simultaneously technical, political, and deeply moral.
Measles cases in the United States have reached levels not seen in decades. Childhood immunization rates are falling in communities across the country, and the infrastructure of public trust in medicine — already strained by the pandemic — continues to erode. Pioneer Works’ Science & Society series addresses exactly this: the gap between what science knows and what the public believes, and what it costs us when that gap widens.
David Wallace-Wells, whose book The Uninhabitable Earth made climate data feel personally urgent, joins Dr. Demetre Daskalakis — infectious disease physician and former director at the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases — and Jessica Malaty Rivera, epidemiologist and science communicator who has spent years translating complex biology for public audiences. The three will examine how immunization became a culture war flashpoint, what the data actually shows about vaccine hesitancy, and what interventions have actually worked.
Pioneer Works is one of the few venues in New York that can hold this conversation without it becoming a sideshow. The science matters here, and so does the difficulty of talking about it. Hands-on exhibits from Genspace and stargazing with the Amateur Astronomers’ Association follow the main program.