You stand in your garden, talking to your next-door neighbour about her young son. Everything seems ordinary until you both stumble upon a seemingly uncontroversial topic.
“I don’t know how I feel about them”, she whispers, almost conspiratorially. “The way the government is pushing for these vaccines, I can’t help but think that there might be an agenda. You should look it up.”
You’re dumbfounded. At night, you open your laptop and, despite yourself, start searching. You come upon pages after pages, and multiple groups and forums, which question the ‘suspicious push for vaccination’ by governments and pharmaceutical industries, discuss the ‘toxic chemicals’ present in vaccines and view the onset of policies that make vaccination mandatory as a threat to civil liberty and the right to choose. It leaves you feeling confused; after all, it’s contrary to everything that you’ve learned and read about vaccination. What is this ‘movement’ and how legitimate are the arguments presented by it?
The existence of vaccine hesitancy, that is, reluctance and mistrust towards vaccination is not a new phenomenon. It has existed since the emergence of modern vaccination, based on religious, political, ethical, and other objections. Today, people who are hesitant or even anti-vaccine have been connected by social media forums, coming together from across different regions and backgrounds to raise their voice against what they consider to be a ‘dangerous’ and ‘unnatural’ practice: vaccination. The criticisms which such groups and individuals have levelled against vaccines range from question emerging out of general scepticism to global conspiracies. Some of these arguments are quite common, and scientists and researchers have countered and disproved them several times. While anti-vaxxers point out that vaccines contain dangerous and toxic material like Mercury and Aluminium, scientists argue that it is the dose of these chemicals which determines how harmful they are, if at all, to the body. The doses of such chemicals in vaccines are almost negligible, and in the case of Aluminium, for example, it has been recorded that the average person takes in a larger quantity of the material through daily food and drink intake, than from a vaccine. Chemicals that have caused public unease have also been taken out of vaccines, despite there not being enough substantial evidence to prove that they had directly caused harm to begin with. Theories that vaccines lead to autism have been repeatedly debunked by several studies, including several funded or conducted by the Centre for Disease Control. Thiomersal, a mercury-containing preservative used in vaccines, which was linked to the increase in autism diagnoses by critics, was removed or reduced from all but flue vaccines, and afterwards, multiple studies stated that there was no relationship between the dosage of Thiomersal in vaccines and autism. Even then, Thiomersal-free alternatives for flu vaccines have been made available to assuage public concern.
The more complex arguments deal with what are viewed as the side effects of vaccines. These range from mild fever and rashes to more serious consequences. The reasoning behind the origin of these arguments has been suggested to be as follows: when more and more people are immunized successfully and the occurrence of disease decreases significantly, the collective memory of the effects of the disease fades, and the public concern moves from the effects of the disease to the side-effects of its vaccine. Multiple studies argue that the consequences of contracting diseases such as rubella or polio are graver and far more damaging than the side effects of corresponding vaccines. This argument has been discussed in terms of quantity (number of people affected in both the situations) and impact (severity of the effects). That is not to say that there are not people who are at risk when it comes to vaccination; people with compromised immune systems, or severe life-threatening allergic reactions to certain vaccines, for example. There are two important things to note here: the first is, that the CDC has prepared a list of guidelines which specifies who needs to avoid which vaccine, and who should wait for a certain vaccine based on medical history and other factors. These guidelines are carefully followed in hospitals and by doctors, and any area of concern in your medical history should, of course, be assessed by any responsible doctor before you are immunised. Moreover, for those people who are suffering from compromised immunity and therefore cannot be immunised, vaccination in the society becomes even more essential. This is because of the existence of a phenomenon known as herd immunity: herd immunity works when a large section of the population in a society becomes immune to a disease; either through the building up of natural immunity after contracting and recovering from the disease, or through vaccination. Since most viral and bacterial diseases spread through individuals, herd immunity ensures that the chain of transmission is broken enough times to minimise their spread. Thus, due to herd immunity, the risk of contracting such transmissible diseases is drastically reduced for those who are unable to receive the vaccination.
Supporters of the anti-vaccination movement also cite religious and political freedom as the reasons behind their opposition to mandatory immunisation. On the Internet, you can find several conspiracy theories about vaccines, ranging from dubious to outlandish. The anti-vaccine movement has been gaining more ground in high- income European countries such as France where, a survey has reported, one in three residents believe vaccines to be unsafe. There are distinct socio-cultural and economic reasons for mistrust in vaccination in different countries. While governments have launched vaccination campaigns and communication programmes aimed at dispelling common myths, political scientists suggest that social consensus can play the most effective role in this issue. Several communication strategies have been recommended for bridging the communication gap when it comes to the vaccine-hesitant, which includes differentiating between the intentions and motivations of different people, trust-building, and keeping cognitive biases in mind during healthy debates. As the world waits with bated breath for the development of a vaccine against COVID-19 during this pandemic, there are several groups and individuals who have already formed an opposition to it. It is important now more than ever to initiate healthy dialogue.