Part of it is how we do discourse in the country puts people on the defensive which leads to them being polarized. I sit in the middle of this in a couple of s

Part of it is how we do discourse in the country puts people on the defensive which leads to them being polarized. I sit in the middle of this in a couple of spots and its maddening. For brevity, I'll stick to just vaccines and anti-vaxxers. My wife had a negative response to a vaccine as well as her brother. My mother-in-law passed before we had children and never thought to ask for more details until we had a kid. When we were touring hospitals for our first, we asked about vaccination policies. We tried to explain that we didn't want our kid vaccinated at the hospital but at the pediatrician's appointment a couple days later so we could first develop a base line so could identify any negative response if one shows up. The nurse talked over us about how important vaccines are, acting like we didn't want them at all. Turns out my daughter did have an unexplainable neurological response after the second dose. Our first pediatrician's office was fully supportive of us not continuing just that series (I suspect their "expert" we saw after the incident was anti-vax). We moved and had to find a pediatrician's office that carried the combo shot without the problematic one. We found an office that had it but the pediatrician they assigned us kept giving us problems until we saw a neurologist and the neurologist told them to back off (they were the one to classify it as unexplainable). We understand the value of vaccines and encourage them. While our kid isn't completing a series, we understand the importance of everyone around them completing it to keep our kid safe. Pro-vaccine people treat us like we are anti-vaxxers. I could easily see this leading other people into the anti-vax camp because most people don't listen but anti-vax people would. Another social pressure that could push someone in our circumstance to be anti-vax is the laws. Anti-vax people have been abusing the system so pro-vax people have been tightening things down. We've been keeping an eye on this, worried what it'll take to get our kid through these legal requirements if we live in some of those states. The only political group that would protect our kid is the anti-vaxxers.