They are just not aware that they have this fear and can’t therefore understand and work on it effectively. Some people just seem to be stuck in emotional toddlerhood.
They are just not aware that they have this fear and can’t therefore understand and work on it effectively. Some people just seem to be stuck in emotional toddlerhood.
If this were true, then we’d expect to see similar levels of antivax around the world, remaining at a constant rate. Let’s look at some actual numbers.
A world survey of the question, “Do you agree that vaccines are important for children to have?” found 97% agreement in Somalia, where the effects of vaccination are more observable, and only 68% agreement in France, which has had them long enough to take them for granted. In Asia, we see 95% in China, 93% in Vietnam, 96% in the Philippines and Cambodia, compared to 62% in South Korea and only 48% in Japan (down from 82% in 2015). 92% in Mexico compared to 79% in the US (which was 87% in 2015)
What’s going on here? Did 34% of Japanese people suddenly develop a fear of needles in the span of 10 years? In the Philippines, 100% of people agreed with that statement in 2015, which dipped all the way down to 68% in 2021, before recovering to 96% today! Weird that that phobia of needles spontaneously appeared out of nowhere, and everyone got over it just as suddenly.
Or, maybe it’s not really about a fear of needles at all. Maybe that has more to do with the fact that the US actively spread vaccine misinformation in the Philippines to get people to distrust China’s COVID vaccine. And if we can directly observe antivax attitudes generating in response to a targeted misinformation campaign, then maybe this whole thing has more to do with the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories, rather than some innate phobia.
There’s even an Oxford study that confirms what I was thinking, albeit weakly: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8220023/ https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-06-16-treating-needle-fears-may-reduce-covid-19-vaccine-hesitancy-rates-10
Small number, though still significant.
It’s not the main driving factor, is what I’m saying. There’s of course going to be some people who avoid vaccines because of a fear of needles, but those are generally ordinary people who are aware of the fear and may know it’s irrational but still can’t overcome it. The people who aren’t just hesitant but full on antivax aren’t generally driven by a fear of needles, they’re driven by the same factors that drive other conspiracy theories.
Sure, that is trivially true.
I do think there is still merit to understanding those who are “not ordinary”, who don’t know they have a fear of needles and will just rationalise and rationalise until the world ends. While I’m sympathetic to your evocation of state sponsored misinfo, I don’t think that’s it either, at least not in a deep way since vaccine hesitancy has existed since the dawn of inoculations. In fact vaccine hesitancy might also be understood as a historical remnant from a time when vaccinations had much more common side effects. Variolation for example had a significant death rate. Seventy years ago, when the science of drug delivery wasn’t really a thing, side effects were much more pronounced. Basically: medical procedures that everyone has to go through are an easy target to activate the “lizard brain” with, be it intentional or not.
If it was nothing but a holdover from a time when vaccines were not as safe, then we would expect to see antivax attitudes declining over time. The primary factor is the spread of misinformation, whether state sponsored or otherwise. This misinformation reaches more people because of the internet, and it clearly correlates with decreasing levels of trust in institutions.
I think the better question to ask is why it lends itself to misinformation. Misinforming cabals are one thing, but why antivax specifically and not flatearth musings? I generally find it questionable to seek primary causes outside of objects that have immanent properties that could explain so much more.
But… it’s both? Both of those things exist. And there’s overlap, people who believe in one conspiracy theory often believe in others. Someone might just happen to be exposed to one theory as opposed to the other, or they might find one plausible and the other absurd, or it could be that one more effectively appeals to something in one person than another.
My father worked in traffic safety in East Kentucky and something he encountered a lot was people refusing to wear seat belts because they saw it as “authoritarian” for the government to impose it on them. Plenty of antivaxxers frame it the same way, as it being an issue of personal choice and autonomy, against government or pharmaceutical companies. This combines with a natural desire to make sure they’re making the right choice for their children, and when they’re told that the science is clear and settled and that there’s one choice that’s objectively correct and another choice that’s objectively incorrect, some people don’t want to accept that, and they want to get both sides of the story, and as the only way to support antivax arguments is through lies, misinformation, substacks from people called “Dr. Wojak, M.D.” they get exposed to that conspiracy theory rather than a different one.
If it was an immanent property of the object, again, you wouldn’t see the kinds of variation across countries and over time. We can see a clear correlation that countries that more recently gained access to vaccines have much higher opinions of them. We can find other correlations and come up with reasonable explanations based on that, that for example complacency is a factor. If it wasn’t, if it’s just an immanent property of the object, then how do you explain the difference between perspectives on vaccines between different areas, like Somalia and France?
So is it your idea to limit the spread of misinformation after the fact, and then everything is fine? To say that vaccine denial is reproduced top to bottom, instead of being reproduced by the system of consumers and consumers of such content, abetted by the circumstance of vaccines themselves lending themselves well to paranoid narratives, is a bit shortsighed.
I get that this is a charged topic, but let’s not let the subject or “victim” of misinfo off the hook, as well as all the other relevant factors that can be understood to make it easier to combat antivax.
For one, people in Somalia have much much bigger fish to fry and don’t feel the need to appeal to a nationalistically tainted right to bodily sovereignty. Secondly, there are other health measured the masses of people are subjected to. For instance lock downs, masking, fluoridation of drinking water, the GMO scare, the roundup scare, the gene editing scare, even sodium intake recommendations are twisted into pro salt conspiracy theories (I fucking wish I was joking but I had a gigantic fight with someone over this and it seems to be an issue on JP social media.) I could come up with many more. Public health is the perfect incubator for conspiracy theories, and it just so happens that vaccines are the queen here. For reasons that are quite obvious I would add. The sting, liquid going into one, (to an uneducated public) murky mechanisms of action, compulsion, etc.
Also people in Somalia aren’t as used to the internet and social media yet.
Not one of the things you listed regarding Somalia was “an imminent property of the object.” Every one was a sociological factor. That’s exactly what I’m saying. The differences across countries can only be explained through sociological factors, rather than some quality of the vaccine itself.
I didn’t say any of that. I cited one case of state sponsored misinformation to demonstrate the effects that misinformation in general can have. I never painted it in terms of “top down” misinformation outside of that one example. Of course, once someone is an antivaxxer they’re likely to spread misinformation organically.
The solution is a combination of banning the proliferation of antivax misinformation as far as possible, promoting a better understanding of science through funding education, and through any other methods that are shown to be effective. For example, some doctors have found it helpful to offer a choice between staggering the shots instead of doing them all at once, even though there’s really no difference, just to let people feel like they’re making a choice. As you mentioned, there’s some limited success with addressing people who are hesitant because of a fear of needles. But these little tactics miss the core, underlying reasons why it’s happening in the first place, which needs to be addressed on a larger scale.
Sure, I don’t exclude this. This is not at odds with what I’m saying. As I’ve stated elsewhere, I’m trying to explain a part of the appeal not the entire thing.
Also fear of needles is in part culturally conditioned and varies country to country, region to region.