Anti-vaccine groups scale up efforts

Anti-vaccine campaigners in the United States have come out in force against the three coronavirus vaccines that have proven effective in trials, amid a worsening pandemic that has killed more than 270,000 people in the country and infected more than 13.7 million.

On Wednesday, the US also surpassed 200,000 new infections and more than 100,000 COVID-19 patients hospitalized, the first time either daily level has been reached.

The opposition to the vaccines comes as the entities behind them — Pfizer and BioNTech; Moderna; and AstraZeneca and Oxford University — seek emergency approval from the US Food and Drug Administration.

On Wednesday, the United Kingdom approved Pfizer and BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine.

So-called anti-vaxxers — those who oppose vaccines — are using Facebook and other social media sites, according to the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a Londonbased nonprofit group that aims to disrupt identity-based hate and counter its growing influence in politics.

It found that 31 million people follow anti-vaccine groups on Facebook, and 17 million people subscribe to similar YouTube accounts. The center claims that social media firms are reluctant to silence anti-vaccine accounts as they generate as much as $1 billion in annual revenue.

The anti-vaccine movement also is rebranding its efforts with an emphasis on personal freedom and suspicion of government to exploit people’s reactions to the pandemic in the US, said Dorit Reiss, a University of California Hastings law professor who specializes in policy issues related to vaccines.

More people are vulnerable, upset and distrustful, said Reiss, “and the anti-vaccine movement knows exactly what to say”.

Conspiracy theories

Jonathan M. Berman, a scientist and assistant professor in the basic sciences department at the New York Institute of College of Osteopathic Medicine at Arkansas State University, wrote a book called Anti-vaxxers, How to Challenge a Misinformed Movement. He believes that there are several reasons why wild conspiracy theories about COVID-19 vaccines are springing up online and elsewhere.

“The pandemic has created an environment where people have very little information about the vaccines and have lost a lot of control of their lives,” he said.

“Developing conspiracy theories helps people to regain a sense of control of their environment. They feel that they can find information that no one else has and can use that to make a decision.”

He said people are responding to some basic fears that almost everyone shares to a degree.

“People fear governments and corporations making decisions about their health,” Berman said. “They fear putting things they view as unnatural into their bodies. They fear living in a complex world that does not conform to intuitive answers that make sense to them.”

In 2019, the World Health Organization said that people’s hesitancy to get vaccinated was one of the top 10 threats to global health.

Health officials suggest that at least 70 to 80 percent of the world’s population must get vaccinated to quell the pandemic.

In May, a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 31 percent of people in the US were unsure if they would get a COVID-19 vaccine once released.

However, a recent Gallup poll found that 58 percent of US citizens are willing to get one.

Developing conspiracy theories helps people to regain a sense of control of their environment.”

Jonathan M. Berman, assistant professor in the basic sciences department at the New York Institute of College of Osteopathic Medicine at Arkansas State University