Engaging with the anti-vax

Who doesn’t love hearing about a good conspiracy theory; from the grassy knoll to Q-anon or, my favourite, the fl at earthers? In my experience, conspiracy theories always have a grain of truth and around these grains are the fantastical claims that commonly don’t stand up to critical analysis. I’ve experienced this fi rst-hand on social media whilst discussing laboratory testing and acknowledging that false positives do occur with PCR testing. It led to a cascade of logic that defi ed belief and ultimately a ridiculous conclusion that included COVID being a hoax.

The COVID vaccine should be the crown jewel in our SARS-CoV-2 story; our D-Day – the defi ning moment that changed the course of the war against this coronaviridae. Instead, it could be the

battleground upon which all our responses against emerging pathogen outbreaks are fought.

The new social media-driven world we live in isn’t going anywhere and whilst we may just be emerging from this coronavirus pandemic and probably think the chances of another pandemic in our lifetimes is now remote, it actually has done little to reduce the risk of major antigenic shift and an infl uenza pandemic. Vaccination is likely to be key in our armoury in managing that pandemic, or others that may appear, and if the anti-vax community continues to grow, we are only going to have further battles along the vaccination frontline.

To me it’s quite easy for anti-vaxxers to be lazily grouped together, however, within the community there are many subgroups – too many to list here.

As scientists I believe we are inherently rational people who like data and normally accept what the data indicate. We can see the obvious benefi ts of the vaccine, and the infi nitesimally small risks.

There are extreme anti-vaxxers who believe the 5G myth, that Bill Gates is at the centre of all of it and who are arguably anti-establishment contrarians who we are never likely to win over and I think we have to accept that. Maybe we even have tolerate their views if we are all to live in a civil society, where people can have a diff erent opinion, however ludicrous it may seem to us.

There are sports stars and athletes who are meticulous on a daily basis as to what they put in their bodies so that they can achieve peak performance. As we have no desire to follow their daily regimented routine to achieve exceptional performance, maybe we shouldn’t follow their lead or worry about their views on vaccinations.

However the “swing voter” is somebody we need certainly to engage with and we need to have better stories, not just data, to counter their immoderate views. We must also encourage them to change their positions without feeling the need to gloat that we were correct, or they will only become in entrenched in their views.

Some of the more sensible question around vaccine safety involved querying the time it takes for vaccines to be developed. Yes, it normally takes around eight years to develop a vaccine, but we’ve probably had more than eight times the normal investment and resources looking into COVID vaccines.

It’s not that it normally takes eight years to “grow” a vaccine, but eight years of normal human time and ingenuity when a pandemic isn’t there to focus the mind and money. There was a study in 2018 that highlighted how false news spreads quicker and further than truthful news. This of course helps fuel anti-vaccines myths, which in turn makes the falsehood more visible and people more likely to interact and convert. We have to accept this and counteract it, otherwise when other pathogens emerge we may not be able to encourage enough people to get vaccinated.

We have to accept that, unlike what we believe to be good scientifi c principles, facts alone will not change many antivaxxers’ views. We must continue to open the door to truths, but they must walk through it, we cannot push them through. And as the vaccine continues to age, continues to be used with boosters, and the 5G apocalypse predicted doesn’t happen, Bill Gates doesn’t become the world overlord and the obvious lack of increase in whatever myriad illnesses it has been linked to, whilst we also continue to see decreasing hospitalisations and thankfully less mortality linked to COVID, perhaps the swing voters will slowly walk through the door and we should be there with a warm greeting and not a smirk or an I-told-you-so.

Jonathan M Evans is Lead Biomedical Scientist and Operational Manager at the Virology Specialist Centre, Public Health Wales