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Im tired of saying this but it’s absolutely mind boggling how fucked up it is that one of the main exports from America today is vaccine hesitancy. Science ske

by pm90 4y ago

Im tired of saying this but it’s absolutely mind boggling how fucked up it is that one of the main exports from America today is vaccine hesitancy. Science skepticism has always been a thing; its only in recent years though that internet has allowed the rapid spread of disinformation. Glossy content created for misinforming Americans inspires copycats in other countries. It’s really depressing.

ryandrake 4y ago
You're very kind calling it "hesitancy", too! I know that's the soft euphemism that the media has coalesced around, but "hesitancy" implies that one is on the fence, unsure, open to debate and open to being convinced. That's not what America is exporting. America's Anti-Vax movement is religiously sure of itself. They aren't on the fence. They're not weighing the pros and cons. They're convinced that they know the secret capital-T Truth, and that spreading their gospel saves lives. COVID brought it mainstream, but if you look back at the "Anti-vax Moms groups" long before COVID, there was still no hesitancy. Their minds were also made up.
- VLM 4y ago
  - mongol 4y ago
    I understand it as they have faith in their beliefs despite lack of scientific evidence
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  This seems to be a international effort, sadly. Article is also pre-covid. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6137759/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6137759/
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > America's Anti-Vax movement is religiously sure of itself. They aren't on the fence. They're not weighing the pros and cons. This is the activist wing of the movement. Many more Americans are genuinely, in many cases reasonably, hesitant.
  - mentalpiracy 4y ago
    I don't actually believe this anymore. Hesitancy is a cover for those who lack the confidence to publicly affirm their anti-vaccination attitudes.
    - epgui 4y ago
      You don't have to guess, we have data on this. The vaccine-hesitant group is much larger than the anti-vaxx group, and the anti-vaxx group wields a very disproportionate influence on the undecided, vaccine-hesitant group, than actual real expert groups do. We know this.
      - hilbert42 4y ago
        The big question is why the 'undecided' are undecided and why anti-vaxx groups have such a large influence. I think we actually know the answers to these questions but we're too frightened to tackle the problem head-on.
        epgui 4y ago
        IMO the answer is clear: at the root, it’s a lack of basic science education intertwined with a deep anti-intellectualism culture in western society. (biochemist, no conflict of interest)
  - hilbert42 4y ago
    "...are genuinely, in many cases reasonably, hesitant." Why? Are you saying they're too stupid to weigh up the facts? The amount of factual evidence is enormous, and it's a trivial exercise to evaluate it accurately.
- california2077 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - Nursie 4y ago
    There were no quarantine camps for antivaxxers in Australia. There was mandatory hotel quarantine for two weeks for incoming international travellers. Some states built 'camps' to take over from the hotels and provide future capacity, though these largely remained unused. You couldn't travel here at all for a while without a good reason, and even then you had to be vaccinated. The restrictions on incoming travellers have largely been lifted now. There were some restrictions on going to pubs and restaurants, and even to the liquor store if you were unvaccinated. Again, lifted now. But antivaxxers in Australia were never put in 'camps'.
    - california2077 4y ago
  - logic_beats_pro 4y ago
- elvis10ten 4y ago
  There are hesitant people and there are anti-vax people. Unfortunately discourse here seems to lump both groups together. Why can’t we see nuances? Edit: Actually, it’s not just HN. It’s quite unfortunate.
  - vibrio 4y ago
    I think fully differentiating anti-vax and vax-hesitatant lacks nuance. There is no way there is a sharp line between the groups. Is it a coincidence that the increase in prevalence of vax hesitance correlates with the increase in prevalence full-on anti-vax, which went from niche to mainstream? The data are clear. How we resolve and educate the fence sitters is the relevant question. Browbeating or shaming either group isn't productive. (arguably Trolling the mainstream is one goal of anti-vaxers.) Regrettably we are up against Brandolini's Law , where anti-vax misinformation has reached a critical mass with 'respected' personalities in media and politics participating, splashing this misinformation way beyond the niche conspiracy theorists that used to be the core.
    - elvis10ten 4y ago
      What data are you referring to? My original comment was based on anecdotal data tho. None of the people I know that refused the Covid vaccine (initially) had any issues taking other vaccines. One friend for example who was a vocal critic of Covid vaccines, didn’t have any issues vaccinating his child this year against other things. Basically they wanted a vaccine with a “track record” was my conclusion. When you lump these type of people with people who think the vaccines are from the deep state or stuff like that, you can’t create good and effective policies IMO.
- epgui 4y ago
  Anti-vaxx and vaccine-hesitancy, while both extremely dangerous and concerning, are two different parts of the same spectrum. The origin of the term "vaccine hesitancy" is actually scholarly research on the subject, not the media.
swatcoder 4y ago
> Science skepticism has always been a thing; its only in recent years though that internet has allowed the rapid spread of disinformation. Glossy content created for misinforming Americans inspires copycats in other countries. It’s really depressing. It may be depressing, but it's not helpful to associate it with "science skepticism". The vaccine "hesitant" you refer to are not skeptical of science. They freely use the language and processes of science as their argument. You or I may think they misuse the language, make unconvincing assumptions, etc, but there's nothing to it that's skeptical of science. Where vaccine hesitancy is rooted in science skepticism, you see the hesitant relying on alternative means of knowing why vaccines aren't right for them. You can think of the classic faith healing communities l̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶C̶h̶r̶i̶s̶t̶i̶a̶n̶ ̶S̶c̶i̶e̶n̶t̶i̶s̶t̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶J̶e̶h̶o̶v̶a̶h̶'̶s̶ ̶W̶i̶t̶n̶e̶s̶s̶e̶s̶ as an example of that. The contagious skepticism that you're talking about is of institutions and authority. They don't trust Fauci or the CDC or the WHO or Pfizer or whomever to to communicate honestly, objectively, and in their own interests. They believe that these institutions can not be trusted to communicate scientific knowledge free of political bias. And when you look at it that way, of course America is the exporter of that. While responsible for founding some impressive modern institutions, the founding myth of the nation is all about skepticism of institution and authority. The country is constitutionally designed to live in perpetual tension with itself, and that's what's getting exported now.
- retox 4y ago
  Can you expand on what you mean by 'The country is constitutionally designed to live in perpetual tension with itself'? Let's also not lose sight of the fake vaccine operation run by the CIA in Pakistan to catch Bin Laden. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vaccinations-osama-bin-ladens-dna https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vacci...
  - miguelazo 4y ago
    Thank you-- the CIA's fake vaccine operation should be in the first or second paragraph of every article that discusses polio outbreaks. It has had a huge effect on public health.
  - 4y ago
bvoq 4y ago
Yeah, I wish it was only America, but the UK have their own antivaxx propagandists. What's the motivation behind this anyways? Aren't there other topics to make money off off, like spreading flat earth information?
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  Most people spreading flat earth memes never make a penny from it. Their payoff is the arguments and frustration it causes. Trolls, not shills.
- babypuncher 4y ago
  It became a political tool during the pandemic. People who were already campaigning on a general distrust of government institutions capitalized on this as a way to attract idiots into voting for them.
beambot 4y ago
To be fair, America-induced vaccine hesitancy isn't just a byproduct of the modern zeitgeist; the CIA has been using vaccine drives as cover for foreign operations for decades, including the most recent documented use in 2011. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vaccinations-osama-bin-ladens-dna https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vacci...
spaceman_2020 4y ago
I’ve been pro vaccine since forever but the idea that vaccines with decades of testing have the same risk profile as an experimental vaccine rushed through the labs to combat a deadly new disease is absurd.
- flukus 4y ago
  Nothing goes through decades of testing, they go through human trials and then monitor safety at a mass scale for a year or two and then they're done. Same as with the covid vaccines.
  - eric-hu 4y ago
    I read spaceman’s comment as saying decades of public use is the additional testing.
  - logic_beats_pro 4y ago
    The previous average vaccine testing duration was ~5 years. Let's not pretend that the mRNA vaccines were even close to that. Fun fact, the Omicron BA.5 booster isn't tested at all.
    - SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
      You can amass 1000 person-years of testing with 10 subjects and 100 years, or with 1000 subjects and 1 year. Or with some intermediate ramp-up plan. The "decades of public use" metric needs to also take into account how widespread that use is. Now consider how many doses of mRNA vaccines have been given worldwide (1), since the public rollouts began in December 2020. mRNA vaccines are no longer unknown, at all. 1) Billions of doses https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-global-distribution/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-glo...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
ChrisCinelli 4y ago
Apparently it is not only an American thing. José María Fernández Sousa-Faro, the founder, CEO and president of the European pharmaceutical giant PharmaMar, a pharmaceutical company that creates and distributes drugs to treat coronavirus, was caught with fake paperwork that stated he was fully vaccinated. I am not sure why someone leading a large pharmaceutical company would decide not to take the vaccine and pay a large sum of money to get fake paperwork with the risk of being caught but he was also obviously VERY hesitant. You would think he knows better...
- kurupt213 4y ago
  Not getting the covid vaccine and not getting the polio vaccine are 2 entirely different things. Most of the population is not at risk from covid
- origin_path 4y ago
  Hearing that fact and then concluding he must just "not know better" is exactly the sort of vaccine fanaticism that creates anti vaxxers and vast numbers of hesitants. The obvious conclusion is that a highly informed person - who would also have access to non public information - thought the risks significantly outweighed the benefits for him and that he wanted to avoid taking it badly enough to break the law. Yet to people on HN it's just a totally inexplicable mystery why anyone wouldn't want to take a new experimental vaccine every morning with their breakfast cereal. Note that the German health minister was also caught lying about his own vaccine history. He claimed to have taken a fourth shot but then rather stupidly flashed his own vaccine passport on TV, so other people scanned it and found he'd actually never done so. Given these sorts of facts the truly disturbing anti-rationalists are out in abundance on this thread, and they're not the hesitants!
baybal2 4y ago
[dead]
hilbert42 4y ago
I dispair. That people can think so irrationally that they'd risk dying in preference to being vaccinated has truly shaken my faith in humanity.
SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
It is not only an American thing. Andrew Wakefield's actions have contributed to this problem since 1998, and he is British, so it's not just being lead from the USA, it's an international con. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield And more recently there's Piers Corbyn and co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piers_Corbyn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piers_Corbyn

by pm90 4y ago

ryandrake 4y ago

You're very kind calling it "hesitancy", too! I know that's the soft euphemism that the media has coalesced around, but "hesitancy" implies that one is on the fence, unsure, open to debate and open to being convinced. That's not what America is exporting. America's Anti-Vax movement is religiously sure of itself. They aren't on the fence. They're not weighing the pros and cons. They're convinced that they know the secret capital-T Truth, and that spreading their gospel saves lives. COVID brought it mainstream, but if you look back at the "Anti-vax Moms groups" long before COVID, there was still no hesitancy. Their minds were also made up.

VLM 4y ago
- mongol 4y ago
  I understand it as they have faith in their beliefs despite lack of scientific evidence
anigbrowl 4y ago
This seems to be a international effort, sadly. Article is also pre-covid. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6137759/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6137759/
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> America's Anti-Vax movement is religiously sure of itself. They aren't on the fence. They're not weighing the pros and cons. This is the activist wing of the movement. Many more Americans are genuinely, in many cases reasonably, hesitant.
- mentalpiracy 4y ago
  I don't actually believe this anymore. Hesitancy is a cover for those who lack the confidence to publicly affirm their anti-vaccination attitudes.
  - epgui 4y ago
    You don't have to guess, we have data on this. The vaccine-hesitant group is much larger than the anti-vaxx group, and the anti-vaxx group wields a very disproportionate influence on the undecided, vaccine-hesitant group, than actual real expert groups do. We know this.
    - hilbert42 4y ago
      The big question is why the 'undecided' are undecided and why anti-vaxx groups have such a large influence. I think we actually know the answers to these questions but we're too frightened to tackle the problem head-on.
      - epgui 4y ago
        IMO the answer is clear: at the root, it’s a lack of basic science education intertwined with a deep anti-intellectualism culture in western society. (biochemist, no conflict of interest)
- hilbert42 4y ago
  "...are genuinely, in many cases reasonably, hesitant." Why? Are you saying they're too stupid to weigh up the facts? The amount of factual evidence is enormous, and it's a trivial exercise to evaluate it accurately.
california2077 4y ago
[flagged]
- Nursie 4y ago
  There were no quarantine camps for antivaxxers in Australia. There was mandatory hotel quarantine for two weeks for incoming international travellers. Some states built 'camps' to take over from the hotels and provide future capacity, though these largely remained unused. You couldn't travel here at all for a while without a good reason, and even then you had to be vaccinated. The restrictions on incoming travellers have largely been lifted now. There were some restrictions on going to pubs and restaurants, and even to the liquor store if you were unvaccinated. Again, lifted now. But antivaxxers in Australia were never put in 'camps'.
  - california2077 4y ago
- logic_beats_pro 4y ago
elvis10ten 4y ago
There are hesitant people and there are anti-vax people. Unfortunately discourse here seems to lump both groups together. Why can’t we see nuances? Edit: Actually, it’s not just HN. It’s quite unfortunate.
- vibrio 4y ago
  I think fully differentiating anti-vax and vax-hesitatant lacks nuance. There is no way there is a sharp line between the groups. Is it a coincidence that the increase in prevalence of vax hesitance correlates with the increase in prevalence full-on anti-vax, which went from niche to mainstream? The data are clear. How we resolve and educate the fence sitters is the relevant question. Browbeating or shaming either group isn't productive. (arguably Trolling the mainstream is one goal of anti-vaxers.) Regrettably we are up against Brandolini's Law , where anti-vax misinformation has reached a critical mass with 'respected' personalities in media and politics participating, splashing this misinformation way beyond the niche conspiracy theorists that used to be the core.
  - elvis10ten 4y ago
    What data are you referring to? My original comment was based on anecdotal data tho. None of the people I know that refused the Covid vaccine (initially) had any issues taking other vaccines. One friend for example who was a vocal critic of Covid vaccines, didn’t have any issues vaccinating his child this year against other things. Basically they wanted a vaccine with a “track record” was my conclusion. When you lump these type of people with people who think the vaccines are from the deep state or stuff like that, you can’t create good and effective policies IMO.
epgui 4y ago
Anti-vaxx and vaccine-hesitancy, while both extremely dangerous and concerning, are two different parts of the same spectrum. The origin of the term "vaccine hesitancy" is actually scholarly research on the subject, not the media.

swatcoder 4y ago

> Science skepticism has always been a thing; its only in recent years though that internet has allowed the rapid spread of disinformation. Glossy content created for misinforming Americans inspires copycats in other countries. It’s really depressing. It may be depressing, but it's not helpful to associate it with "science skepticism". The vaccine "hesitant" you refer to are not skeptical of science. They freely use the language and processes of science as their argument. You or I may think they misuse the language, make unconvincing assumptions, etc, but there's nothing to it that's skeptical of science. Where vaccine hesitancy is rooted in science skepticism, you see the hesitant relying on alternative means of knowing why vaccines aren't right for them. You can think of the classic faith healing communities l̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶C̶h̶r̶i̶s̶t̶i̶a̶n̶ ̶S̶c̶i̶e̶n̶t̶i̶s̶t̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶J̶e̶h̶o̶v̶a̶h̶'̶s̶ ̶W̶i̶t̶n̶e̶s̶s̶e̶s̶ as an example of that. The contagious skepticism that you're talking about is of institutions and authority. They don't trust Fauci or the CDC or the WHO or Pfizer or whomever to to communicate honestly, objectively, and in their own interests. They believe that these institutions can not be trusted to communicate scientific knowledge free of political bias. And when you look at it that way, of course America is the exporter of that. While responsible for founding some impressive modern institutions, the founding myth of the nation is all about skepticism of institution and authority. The country is constitutionally designed to live in perpetual tension with itself, and that's what's getting exported now.

retox 4y ago
Can you expand on what you mean by 'The country is constitutionally designed to live in perpetual tension with itself'? Let's also not lose sight of the fake vaccine operation run by the CIA in Pakistan to catch Bin Laden. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vaccinations-osama-bin-ladens-dna https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vacci...
- miguelazo 4y ago
  Thank you-- the CIA's fake vaccine operation should be in the first or second paragraph of every article that discusses polio outbreaks. It has had a huge effect on public health.
- 4y ago

bvoq 4y ago

Yeah, I wish it was only America, but the UK have their own antivaxx propagandists. What's the motivation behind this anyways? Aren't there other topics to make money off off, like spreading flat earth information?

MichaelCollins 4y ago
Most people spreading flat earth memes never make a penny from it. Their payoff is the arguments and frustration it causes. Trolls, not shills.
babypuncher 4y ago
It became a political tool during the pandemic. People who were already campaigning on a general distrust of government institutions capitalized on this as a way to attract idiots into voting for them.

beambot 4y ago

To be fair, America-induced vaccine hesitancy isn't just a byproduct of the modern zeitgeist; the CIA has been using vaccine drives as cover for foreign operations for decades, including the most recent documented use in 2011. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vaccinations-osama-bin-ladens-dna https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vacci...

spaceman_2020 4y ago

I’ve been pro vaccine since forever but the idea that vaccines with decades of testing have the same risk profile as an experimental vaccine rushed through the labs to combat a deadly new disease is absurd.

flukus 4y ago
Nothing goes through decades of testing, they go through human trials and then monitor safety at a mass scale for a year or two and then they're done. Same as with the covid vaccines.
- eric-hu 4y ago
  I read spaceman’s comment as saying decades of public use is the additional testing.
- logic_beats_pro 4y ago
  The previous average vaccine testing duration was ~5 years. Let's not pretend that the mRNA vaccines were even close to that. Fun fact, the Omicron BA.5 booster isn't tested at all.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
    You can amass 1000 person-years of testing with 10 subjects and 100 years, or with 1000 subjects and 1 year. Or with some intermediate ramp-up plan. The "decades of public use" metric needs to also take into account how widespread that use is. Now consider how many doses of mRNA vaccines have been given worldwide (1), since the public rollouts began in December 2020. mRNA vaccines are no longer unknown, at all. 1) Billions of doses https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-global-distribution/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-glo...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

ChrisCinelli 4y ago

Apparently it is not only an American thing. José María Fernández Sousa-Faro, the founder, CEO and president of the European pharmaceutical giant PharmaMar, a pharmaceutical company that creates and distributes drugs to treat coronavirus, was caught with fake paperwork that stated he was fully vaccinated. I am not sure why someone leading a large pharmaceutical company would decide not to take the vaccine and pay a large sum of money to get fake paperwork with the risk of being caught but he was also obviously VERY hesitant. You would think he knows better...

kurupt213 4y ago
Not getting the covid vaccine and not getting the polio vaccine are 2 entirely different things. Most of the population is not at risk from covid
origin_path 4y ago
Hearing that fact and then concluding he must just "not know better" is exactly the sort of vaccine fanaticism that creates anti vaxxers and vast numbers of hesitants. The obvious conclusion is that a highly informed person - who would also have access to non public information - thought the risks significantly outweighed the benefits for him and that he wanted to avoid taking it badly enough to break the law. Yet to people on HN it's just a totally inexplicable mystery why anyone wouldn't want to take a new experimental vaccine every morning with their breakfast cereal. Note that the German health minister was also caught lying about his own vaccine history. He claimed to have taken a fourth shot but then rather stupidly flashed his own vaccine passport on TV, so other people scanned it and found he'd actually never done so. Given these sorts of facts the truly disturbing anti-rationalists are out in abundance on this thread, and they're not the hesitants!

baybal2 4y ago

[dead]

hilbert42 4y ago

I dispair. That people can think so irrationally that they'd risk dying in preference to being vaccinated has truly shaken my faith in humanity.

SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago

It is not only an American thing. Andrew Wakefield's actions have contributed to this problem since 1998, and he is British, so it's not just being lead from the USA, it's an international con. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield And more recently there's Piers Corbyn and co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piers_Corbyn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piers_Corbyn