Nova was a repeat tonight; I hadn’t seen the episode before. Titie? Vaccines: Caling the Shots. It will probably repeat this week. There’s a transcript at the link; most Nova shows are eventually available online.
Seemed like a pretty good summary of how vaccination works & why it’s needed.
I was a bit miffed at the group of affluent California moms at the playground with their kids. Explaining why they were delaying vaccination–& mostly just by looking blank & saying “well, who knows?” Meanwhile, their kids were vulnerable to catching diseases & spreading them–but there they were playing with each other & every other kid in the city. Oh, the expensive suburb, I’m sure…
[The following rant is not direct at any one person in this thread]
They are afraid of the kids getting a fever and then developing Reye’s syndrome from aspirin, liver failure from acetaminophen, or “well, who knows?” from ibuprofen or naproxen. Because they don’t know the risk. They haven’t read the results of the clinical trials (but they do read Pro Publica). They don’t know how to evaluate the results. They think a “common side effect” probably happens at least half the time.
They are completely ill-informed, with no real knowledge about what information is out there, where to find it, and how to evaluate it, even if they have advanced degrees, with honors, from some of the finest universities in the country.
They may be ignorant, but they are not stupid, and they trust their talent to critically evaluate an argument. If the argument is designed to re-assure or coerce rather than to inform and persuade, they are going to dig their well-shod heels in with their well toned legs until they believe they are being provided with all the facts they need to make a well informed decision, and "Trust me, little lady, I’m a ‘scientist’ " is NOT going to do it, even if the ‘scientist’ is a sibling whom they otherwise love and trust.
Do not condescend to a smart, well educated woman even if she is not entirely sure what a t-cell is and where she can find one.
(Though I will say the concept of herd immunity and reliable advice about monitoring for and treating fevers is very effective.)
No, you’re substantially right actually, and I’ve argued exactly what you are arguing, against stiff opposition, in the past. I probably shouldn’t mock.
However there have, as you probably know, been studies into what persuasive techniques actually do change people’s minds about this sort of thing and the answer at least when I last read about it was “none of them”. And indeed the last study I read concluded that - despite what you say - informing often made anti-vaxers less likely to vaccinate.
There is a vast amount of accurate information. That’s not the problem. The problem is one of what you trust. Some people are able to effectively evaluate the accuracy of - and operate based on - what might be called third party learning; stuff you learn in books and learned sources. Others operate very largely on what their friends and family tell them, and their own eyes, because those are the only things they trust.
Anti-vaxers will stop being anti-vaxers if/when the trend changes and their friends and family stop being anti-vaxers and/or when their, or their friends’, children get a serious disease. Anything else is too intangible, and not trusted.
I’m just going to stop there, while I finish my coffee.
Actually, I haven’t read the studies you refer to; please include any links you might have handy, if you get a chance.
I’m basing my attitude primarily on (here’s irony for you) on personal experience. People respond to information calmly and respectfully presented. People want to feel in control. I think it’s the same thing, trust. Are people more likely to trust and be persuaded by those who treat them with respect?
Insurance companies are not thrilled by the idea of paying for lots of illnesses and hospitalizations due to vaccine-preventable diseases, not to mention serious and lifelong disabilities. Which is way covering vaccines is a better deal for them.
“According to a major new study in the journal Pediatrics, trying to do so may actually make the problem worse. The paper tested the effectiveness of four separate pro-vaccine messages, three of which were based very closely on how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) itself talks about vaccines. The results can only be called grim: Not a single one of the messages was successful when it came to increasing parents’ professed intent to vaccinate their children. And in several cases the messages actually backfired, either increasing the ill-founded belief that vaccines cause autism or even, in one case, apparently reducing parents’ intent to vaccinate.”
People who have some concerns but have decent critical thinking skills and are not conspiracy-minded can be persuaded by good evidence from health professionals. Antivaxers are generally a hopeless cause. But not always.
I’m starting to question that again. Certainly, it seems as though a conversation with their health care professional doesn’t change minds. But that’s not what we’re doing. That’s not who we are to one another.
We’ve learned that a chat about the risks, benefits and community benefits from your doctor or nurse doesn’t work. Has anyone done research into peer group interaction?
I ask because, as a friend and sister, I’ve converted more than half a dozen strident anti-vaxxers with mostly gentle education (and the occasional sarcastic jab.) As a nurse, I’ve not been able to sway a single one.
None of them was immediate. None converted after a single conversation. I’d answer some questions (a few sincere, most JAQing off, at first) and they’d nod or say thanks and then go think about stuff for a while. They’d still be antivaxx, but eventually come back for another conversation. Each time, I was able to chip away at another layer of ignorance and add a layer of trust.
I bet my brother and I have had at least eight vaccination conversations over the last three years, all of them over Facebook. And he finally said last week that he’s “changed his mind on the main vaccines” because of our conversations, and he’s going to vaccinate my three nieces this fall. The oldest is 17, the youngest not yet 2.
I’m sure his doctor was trying to educate him, maybe saying a lot of the same things I did. But it took time and trust, not just information.
So I’m mostly back in the corner of, “don’t be a jerk.” We know that doctors and nurses being kind and informative during an office visit doesn’t work…we don’t know if it might work at the peer group level. Anecdotally, I’ve had pretty good success with it. Anecdotally, I was once the antivaxxer who was swayed by reason and research.
I don’t get your point here. My point was that some people do not trust medical products companies for the same reason that they, or others, might not trust health care insurance companies - they do not believe the profit motive ensures the best quality health care.
The tone of the MJ’s article isn’t particularly respectful.
I’ve only skimmed the Pediatrics article so far, so I cannot evaluate that; I’m confused about the sampling plan.
The issue is what constitutes “good evidence” for people. People are not necessarily hopeless or conspiracy-minded because they do not trust Mother Jones or government agencies, or because they cannot easily evaluate the methodology and statistical analytical in psycho - / sociological studies, or just are not persuaded by studies that only conclude more studies are necessary.
I don’t know anyone who doesn’t fall into at least one of those categories.
I think the Washington Post articles proves my point -
“We stopped because we were scared and didn’t know who to trust, …”
But the real cure is to fix the scared. Then the trust can bloom in an arena not poisoned with irrational fears.
Trying to build trust with a scared person is all but pointless. IMO, being scared is a mental habit some people fall into. And since it can make for an easily stampeded herd, there are entities out there which persist in reinforcing fear-based thinking, trying to sell threats anywhere and everywhere. Whether it’s a Communist under every bush, “toxins” in every product, or malevolent motives in every business. The result is we have a lot more scared people than would be the case absent the fear propaganda.
A scared person will choose to trust the entity that, paradoxically, most carefully stokes the fears with further tightly congruent scare-mongering. Why? Because it’s emotionally consistent and at bottom these are people who emote their way into decisions and actions, not think their way into them.
It’s been said by many experts in human behavior that “perception is reality”. IOW, people react to what they *think / perceive *is the truth, not whatever the truth actually is.
For these kinds of people IMO “emotional congruity is reality.” IOW, if it *feels *right, it is right. If it *feels *true, it is true.
There is such a tremendous impedance mismatch between this kind of “thinking” and scientific thinking that it’s hardly surprising we have little progress talking across the gap. It also explains why persuasive approaches based in science or math/statistics have had, and will have, negligible success.
The solution, such as it is, is to stop the incessant fear mongering, then slowly calm the fears. Then, and only then, can we construct a strictly emotional appeal that will take root and have the desired effect.
While we do have a number of strident anti-vaxers here in the UK, it is a fairly small proportion of those who fail to get their children protected. Far more common is the feeling that diseases like measles and mumps are not worth worrying about. Most 20 -somethings have never known anyone get these diseases so they assume that, like Smallpox, they are no longer a risk and then don’t want to let the nasty nurse stick needles into their little precious.
In many of these cases you have people who do not trust their physician, do not trust the American Academy of Pediatrics, do not trust the CDC or WHO, do not trust their local health department, and do not trust the vast body of research validating the safety and efficacy of vaccines.
However, they do trust a scaremongering article they read on antivaxloon.com.
That’s where lack of critical thinking skills and susceptibility to conspiracy-theorizing come in. Reasonable people give far greater weight to the word of experts in a medical field than to those who lack training and common sense.
If this was their true motivation, they would not be using any kind of drug, since all are created and sold by for-profit companies, or even alternative medicines - ditto.
So, perhaps it is more that they don’t trust the government or big companies, as opposed to for-profit companies. That covers both ends of the spectrum. Some might fall into the any expressed opinion - whether it is by washed up former TV star or trained expert - should be given equivalent weight. Some might fall into the “artificial” things are bad fallacy. I doubt most of these people would suddenly start vaccinating their kids if the vaccine came from a not-for-profit collective.
We tried being nice. The antivaxxers called us shills
We tried giving the facts, plainly and calmly. The anitvaxxers accused us of crippling their children.
We tried using statistics and data. The antivaxxers photshopped images of prominent pro-vaccines people eating babies
We started giving examples of children injured or lost due to antivaccine fears. The antivaxxers accused us of using emotional appeals as they bemoaned and wailed about the odd fates of their children they ‘knew’ were damaged by vaccines
Then we started seeing outbreaks, and we were done doing this the polite way.
I could go through all these posts, snipping out parts, agreeing here, disagreeing there; I still might, but I’d like to make two quick points first.
A lot of you appear incapable of viewing people who do not want to vaccinate their children as anything other than ignorant Conspiracy Theorists incapable of critical thought; this is not the case. There are smart, well-educated people who make considered and rational (if fundamentally wrong) decisions to not vaccinate.
Re-read WhyNot’s post; she has experienced the same thing I have (although I don’t mean to put words in her mouth, or claim she agrees with me.)
Maybe there are, but I’ve never met any. Every anti-vaxxer I’ve ever encountered reached the decision through a fundamentally irrational emotion-driven process. It always seems to come down to faith and trust (“I don’t trust doctors, researchers, statisticians, the CDC, or anybody else who might be an expert in the field because they are all corrupted by Big Pharma. All your arguments are flawed because all of your data comes from Big Pharma, and Big Pharma is evil. I believe in these other people who tell me so.”). What kind of consideration or rational thought is involved when all of the vetted evidence is dismissed out of hand as being untrustworthy?
It’s like the old line that you can’t reason somebody out of a position they weren’t reasoned into in the first place. In the people I’ve met, anti-vax is a matter of faith, and even “gentle education” might as well be an attack on their religious beliefs.
Now? I don’t know. Then? Wakefield. Wakefield and The Lancet, along with literally every peer surrounding me being anti-vaxx, was the consideration and rational thought involved back when I was antivaxx.
This book was recommended to me over and over. I recommended it to others. I still see it recommended a lot, although it’s pretty old at this point. It’s full of what seems like good science when you haven’t studied science: Vaccinations: A Thoughtful Parent’s Guide
I was the mother of infants a bit before Dr. Sears the Younger came into the spotlight, but I’m sure I would have been recommended his work, as well.
There is lots of very well written stuff out there that is just…wrong. But unless you know the science, unless you understand immunology and dosing and biochemistry and statistics and research design, at least a little, you don’t know how to vet them. You just don’t. If you don’t know how to science, then it’s all a matter of faith. Even those who support vaccination are largely doing so not because they’ve made a well researched and carefully considered rational choice…they’re doing it because they have *faith *that their doctor considers the best interests of their child and that the research says what she says it does.
I wrote a piece about my transition here, if you’re interested. I’m not a research scientist, by any means, but I learned a little bit more, and then the house of cards crumbled. But, and I think this is important, that didn’t happen until I was out of that peer group. Anyone who says they’re completely free of influence from their peers…well, I won’t say they’re lying, I’ll just say that I don’t work that way. The power of a group of people you like and trust all telling you the same thing, with what appears to be evidence to back it up, is a pretty big influence, especially for young mothers, who are very vulnerable to feeling like any teeny mistake is going to harm their baby irreparably, and who look to our mothers, aunts and more experienced friends for advice on pretty much everything.
This. I’ve spent years of my time on message boards arguing about this issue. Years. I’ve spent hours hours patiently explaining to people why vaccines are a good thing. Years being polite and nice and all sciency.
I’ve also spent years being all kinds of terrible names in turn. I’ve been called everything from a pHARMashill to a troll to a Nazi to someone who does not care about children to a fugly cunt. My poor daughters have also been called dozens of names including funny looking and obviously vaccine damaged.
Why do people think that we’re meanies and the anti-vaxers are just nice, sweet, vaguely misguided people? Here they are tormenting a woman who lost her son to pertussis. That’s jus one example. I could pull up dozens more.
That’s because many of us have spent time directly interacting with a quite a number of them. Most of us try to be nice but once in a while I think we’re entitled to call them what most of them are: a group of fucking morons who do nothing but cozy up to diseases and directly endanger children. Trying to imply that this reaction comes out just because the pro-vax movement is run by jerks is absurd.
Read this and tell me again how smart and rational many of the anti-vaxers are.
If it helps any, there are lots of quiet, peaceful antivaxxers out there who aren’t doing horrible things like that. There are also lots of intelligent and rational *former *ones who you’ve already convinced. I’m afraid you’ve an uninvited access pass to the worst of the worst. (I’m tempted to make a WBC /= Christians or ISIS =/ Muslims comparison.)
I personally think you really can’t do much to convince the hard core anti-vaxers. However, they are a minority. The problem is that they are a very dangerous minority. So I’m fully in favor of mandates like the one in California. We have no other choice. We have to protect our kids. You can’t reason with them. The only thing you can do is force them to deal with the consequences of their belief system. Don’t want to vaccinate your kids? Fine. Well we don’t want our kids getting measles, dear. So you have to homeschool them and deal with your stupid choice.
I think the only things you can really do when dealing with this very old movement are to a) make it hard for anti-vaxers to get access to the public square or become a health professional and b) help those who are vaccinate become more convinced of the goodness of their decision. I’ve seen parents who were okay with their choice but not particularly inclined to think about it turn into very fierce advocates with help from others. It is they who need our support, respect and understanding, not a handful of stubborn schmucks mired in antediluvian bullshit.
I have to disagree. Being anti-vaccine is not peaceful. Deliberately choosing not to engage in necessary public health measures is inherrently a horrible thing. Silently behaving badly is still behaving badly.