Why vaccines are so prone to misinformation
Herd immunity is in trouble. As World Immunisation Week acknowledges, global vaccination coverage has seen the largest continuous fall in the past 3 out of 30 years. This, of course, is largely due to Covid-19. With the lockdown of 2020-2022 came enormous numbers of children and young people missing out on essential immunisations. The knock-on effects, of which, have resulted in notable shifts in global immunity.
Yet even post-lockdown, immunisation rates have not picked up. Merely glancing at the misinformation surrounding Strep-A and Monkeypox can tell you as much. Yet what solution have governments come up with?
Cue: deploy ‘The Big Catch-Up’. Described as a worldwide vaccination initiative, it aims to recoup lost immunisation progress through catch-up, recovery, and programme strengthening measures. But will ‘The Big Catch-Up’ be successful?
A rise in misinformation; a decline in trust.
As it is, the past three years saw the trust towards vaccines significantly diminish. The reason? Misinformation narratives circulating online. Jumping on any mention of disease (particularly COVID) became a routine technique for conspiracy accounts and social media groups. Vulnerability skyrocketed and, with it, vaccination hesitancy reached an all time high.
Yet why the vulnerability? Because misinformation appeals to our primal fears of losing life and liberty, rather than appealing to our logic or intellects. The COVID vaccination, for instance, fell into both of these categories: health was supposedly threatened if you were to take the vaccine, and liberty was threatened if you didn’t. It makes sense, then, that when appealing to primal fears, it is parents who are primary targets of misleading vaccine misinformation. After all, if fear for your own safety isn’t enough to scare you, fear for your child’s safety certainly might be.
The ripple effect
Most information we learn online, stays online. Content may be of interest, but if they have little resonance with our core beliefs, then they are unlikely to influence any actions offline. However, what of the ones that do?
As ever, the most dangerous misinformation narratives are the ones with real world consequences. In the case of vaccinations, the seed of distrust has blossomed to negatively impact government efforts towards herd immunisation. With the threat to health and wellbeing sowing the seed of distrust, the decision to get vaccinated – which should be a relatively easy decision to make – becomes clouded. Victims begin to weigh the risk of getting the disease over the risks of the ‘side effects’.
Overcoming this hesitancy will be a trial for ‘The Big Catch-Up’ if governments are to be successful in bringing back immunisation to at least the 2019 coverage. Indeed, a new COVID-19 vaccine is predicted to require the acceptance of at least 55% of the population in order to achieve herd immunity. Yet with the prevalence of misinformation-fueled vaccine hesitancy across the world, how will this percentage be reached? Despite the fact that vaccines are widely available, vaccine hesitancy persists, inviting the comeback of many infectious diseases.
Adding fuel to the fire
Not only are the algorithms of social media platforms adding fuel to the fire, but so, too, are their policies. Prior to the pandemic, most platforms had few, if any, policies in place to address vaccine misinformation. At this stage, any form of news – be it real or fake – could be posted, liked and shared without so much as a fact-check. Couple this with the social media spikes of users trapped indoors in worldwide lockdowns, alone but for their phones, and the platforms became hotbeds for misinformation.
Such policies to stem the flow of fake news have only recently been properly implemented. Yet with the recent Twitter takeover, yet a new infodemic may be set to breakout—filled with ignorance, fear, and rumour. The fire, it appears, is set to become an anxiety-fuelled inferno.
Are conspiracy theories a product of our existential anxiety, or might anxiety be a catalyst for the spread of false information in the world?
Anxiety, along with a series of other factors, was listed as a trigger in spreading false information. To ease this stress, people often collect and validate the information they have already from outlets like the news media and official government social media accounts. Yet where do they turn when they are unable to get information from official sources? Peer groups. Family. Those sources of information we are biologically programmed to trust. Or – as is the case with the 21st century – other unofficial sources. All this enables individuals to manage social stress.
Misinformation also aids community members in developing a shared perspective of the cloudy, uncertain emergency situation. Conspiracy theorists who focus on health concerns often reject medical advice or measures given to stop pandemics, like vaccines, because they are misinformed. They hold to a monological belief system, which offers a quick, straightforward justification for anything that runs against their ideology.
Inevitably, these conspiracy theories reduce the intention to get vaccinated. However, developing counter narratives that emphasise the underlying facts behind vaccines helps lessen the symptoms of disinformation. Governments need to publish ahead of the curve. They need to have the first word. ‘The Big Catch-up’ needs to first inoculate its audiences from misinformation, before going on to inoculate them from viral infections.
We, at Lynn, are supporting World Immunisation Week’s goals to protect more children, people, and their communities from diseases that can be prevented through vaccination, by improving and saving lives.
