How to talk to vaccine skeptics and make friends, not Trump voters
This fact might be hard to believe, but there’s no denying it: Antivaccine sentiments are likely to play a key role in this year’s election. President Biden is fending off challenges from not one but two opponents regularly spouting anti-vaccine messages.
Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has repeatedly declared in campaign speeches that he “will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate,” even though all 50 states require specific vaccines for students. These regulations have been key to the United States’ successful near-elimination of measles and polio and to preventing countless outbreaks of chickenpox, rotavirus and whooping cough.
Then there’s Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who’s running as an independent and has much as 21% support in some polling. He has an unenviable history of antivaccine advocacy, including peddling debunked claims linking vaccines to autism and leading an anti-vaccine group.
He claims he is not opposed to vaccines, though that’s hard to square with his recent comments that “there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective” and “I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby, and I say to him, better not get them vaccinated.”
Countering misinformation
Public health proponents are right to be dismayed about this apparent normalization of antivaccine sentiments, but they are not helpless. Here are four tips to counter vaccine misinformation.
Explain the suffering caused by vaccine-preventable diseases.
Those who lived through the polio era recall the terror parents felt about the possibility of their children becoming paralyzed or dying because of the virus. Some still live with the permanent effects from childhood bouts of measles and mumps.
Paradoxically, the remarkable success of childhood immunizations has rendered younger generations complacent. Those who remember the pre-vaccine days should share their stories. It could help inform others who take these vaccines for granted.
Separate public responses from individual conversations.
The evidence cannot be clearer that childhood immunizations are safe and effective and prevent suffering. Politicians who make public statements to the contrary should be called out by the media and their false claims immediately corrected.
The need for childhood vaccinations is one area in which the medical and scientific communities are in lockstep, and there areplenty of health-care professionals eager to help supply evidence-based information.
One-on-one conversations require a different approach. In medical practice, health-care providers know that berating patients for their views does not work. Rather, they must approach each patient with empathy and a genuine desire to understand each concern. Skepticism about medical recommendations, including vaccines, can often be overcome in this way.
People who aren’t medical professionals should use a similar strategy when speaking with neighbors and family members who express skepticism about vaccines. Shunning them and labeling them as conspiracy theorists will do no good. Instead, seek to understand where they are coming from and begin a conversation on a foundation of mutual respect.
Different kinds of vaccines
Do not equate childhood vaccinations with the coronavirus vaccine. Covid-19 has been a boon to anti-vaccine activists. Concerns over the coronavirus vaccine being rushed in its development, questions about its safety and usefulness, and denialism over the severity of covid itself have fueled skepticism of all vaccines.
The anti-vaccine movement’s eagerness to take advantage during a pandemic is a grave insult to the more than 1 million Americans who died of covid and the millions more who bear its scars.
But vaccine proponents should not fall into the trap of speaking about routine childhood immunizations, which have long enjoyed popular support, in the same breath as coronavirus vaccines, which have unfortunately been so politicized.
In fact, these vaccines are not equivalent. The measles vaccine is 97% effective at preventing infection. The polio vaccine stops 99% of paralytic polio. Both last for a lifetime, and sufficient immunity in the population will stop the viruses from spreading.
The coronavirus vaccine, on the other hand, is about 50% effective against infection, and protection starts waning after a couple of months. And no level of vaccine uptake will put an end to covid.
Of course, health-care providers should keep urging the coronavirus vaccine for high-risk individuals, especially the elderly and nursing home residents. But insisting on this vaccine for everyone won’t increase uptake and could instead bolster antivaccine sentiment toward childhood immunizations.
Different kinds of skeptics
Criticize the politician, not their supporters. Public health proponents should take care to focus their criticism on the politician making anti-vaccine statements. Labeling all supporters of Trump or Kennedy as “antivax” is not only inaccurate; it could also harden their opposition on this and other crucial public health issues.
The last thing we want is to have people’s views on vaccination become inseparable from their political identity. “Us vs. them” thinking will only worsen infectious-disease spread.
Instead of embracing vaccine advocacy as part of partisan campaigning, Democrats should warmly welcome independents and Republicans who can agree on the lifesaving impact of childhood immunizations, no matter their disagreements on other issues.