Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have seen people opposed the rules, campaigns, pandemic measures and vaccination.
Virus takes place more and more in our life every passing month and it is also normalized. This normalization creates a good opportunity for anti-vaxxers. Irrational measures in different countries, inconsistent rules, excessive force of governments, ignored special cases help anti-vaxxers more to increase their voice.
Recently, we have seen also in Joe Rogan’s Podcast how misinformation can be spread all over rapidly. Unfortunately, conspiracies are growing and ‘true information’ become impossible to obtain. It is even not important what is true and what is wrong. Post-modern era’s illusion, the freedom of speech, makes the the correct information insignificant.
The World Health Organisation and many other institutes were aware of this already since the beginning of the pandemic and they created a guideline about how to talk with anti-vaccine people. [1]
In short, it says: ‘Be scientific and factful!’
Although the vaccination campaigns was successful to fight against and make them disappear in the past, diseases such as measles, mumps, whooping cough, chicken pox became widespread again after the 2000s because of those who refused the vaccine.[2]
Anti-vaccination becomes a big problem every day. There are many anti-vaccination organisations and they are pretty powerful to make a significant impact. You can see the examples in every country that they say:
“Don’t use mask!”, “It is just an influenza”, “Covid is not real!”, “Do not keep distance!”, “Live as you wish!”
The worst part is their impact area is quite wide and many famous people, medical doctors, scientists are also supporting this even some of them are already vaccinated.
On the link below you can find some statistics about different diseases before and after vaccination:
and here you can see how measles cases increased after the anti-vax campaign had gained popularity. This situation is not only the fact for US but for the whole world.
https://www.cdc.gov/measles/cases-outbreaks.html
Measles, mumps, rubella… Three childhood vaccines made a great work in the past:
The cases of measles decreased from %98 to %3 and fatality rate fell from 1/500 to 0.
The cases of rubella on pregnants decreased from %60 to 0.
The deafness rate of mumps went down to 0 as well from 1/20000.
Arguments of Anti-vaxxers:
This is also quite interesting. The most common arguments are:
- Don’t let anyone to tell what you should do
- Side effects are more dangerous than the disease itself
- Vaccine reduces the immunity
- Vaccines are for money and doctors make benefit. All you do is wasting your time
- You cannot sue the company if you are damaged by the vaccine
- You know better than anyone what is right for your child
- Vaccines have poisonous material
- Vaccines make extra pressure and stress on babies’ immunity
- Most of the sicknesses in the past disappeared by itself. (I like this argument. Somehow they disappeared and emerged again after years. In this case they blame medical and pharmacy companies. However, before the modern medicine, life expectancy was 30–40 years until 1900, 50–60 years until 1950s and today, it is around 80 years. [4]
Other arguments are:
- Vaccine is against God’s will
- Nature knows the best (most popular hippie argument. Therefore, many people suffer in the future because of uncontrolled high fever in their childhood)
- You and your family are special. You don’t need vaccination
- The world population is too much and it is tried to be reduced. (I can tell thousand of sophisticated and easy way to reduce population and nobody even can understand. Sicknesses are not effective at all)
- Vaccines makes you gay, barren, causes autism. (I think this is a ready package that at the beginning all anti-vaxxers start from here)
There are dozens of absurd arguments like this. I am afraid, Covid-19 pandemic will continue more years because of these kind of people.
Comment:
I don’t find all anti-vaxxers senseless. There are some incidents in the past. Even science simulates and models possible outcome, it is not %100 sure. It cannot be. Besides, you can really have a special case like allergy, other tendencies. It is understandable to have doubts, especially about a new technology. It is caveman reaction. We are afraid of everything is not familiar for us.
However, it is the same for every medicines and food we take. Therefore, consistency is the key. If it is only about one particular thing, it is just manipulation.
Today, we are receiving many information in short time. Our brain is not sufficient to digest all these information. We don’t have also background to process and understand it. Past incidents can be the source of doubt but we should also know that technology has advance a lot in last 20–30 years. Even in few months, many things are changing. Science is not only developing the new technology but also it tries to assure the safety. When we think about general picture, we can see that life is improving.
People are also expecting from scientists to explain things clear and assure them. Science never say %100 and this fact is perfect starting point for conspiracies. In the end, it is just weird era. We have access to every knowledge and information but we are not trained to evaluate them.
Sources:
[3] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMR-Impfstoff#Nebenwirkungen
bahadirhancicek 
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