Research makes you a vaccination expert. Not Google
How does being a footballer’s wife who posts photos in boho dresses qualify you as an expert on the dangers of vaccines? It’s all thanks to the fact-phobic vacuum that is social media, writes Jane Hansen.
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“Footy Wag charges $200 to ‘educate’ parents on vaccines” the headlines scream.
Who in their right mind would take advice from an Instagram influencer known for being married to a rugby league footballer and who claims to have “done her own research on vaccines” as opposed to someone who spent years at university studying medicine?
It’s something I have pondered often having reported on the anti-vaccine movement for a good decade now. No matter how much legitimate science you provide, the further down the rabbit hole anti-vaxxers dig.
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Why do certain people believe “their own research” when the world’s medical and scientific community have irrefutable evidence to the contrary?
Take Taylor Winterstein (wife of NRL player Frank Winterstein), for instance.
How, when you run a blog and post fashion pics in boho dresses, can you possibly know more than Nobel Laureates like Max Theiler, who developed the yellow fever vaccine? Or more than the world’s collective immunologists who have each, at a minimum, studied the human immune system for nine years? Or the decades of collective education and efforts of Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin, who developed the polio vaccine which has saved millions of people?
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But the influencer spends a few hours googling horror stories on anti-vax sites and hey, bingo! — they suddenly match intellects with the smartest scientists on the planet.
Or as Mrs Winterstein puts it to her 17,000 Instagram followers: “I’ve dedicated years into my own vaccine research, meeting with politicians, connecting with practitioners and listening to parents — that I am now bundling it together and offering it to you in the form of a workshop to make it as easy, clear and simple for others to confidently make informed choices.”
You can get free vaccine information from a bulk billed GP, or you have the 29-year-old’s $200 workshop. If you can’t afford it, Ms Winterstein helpfully suggests: “if a money block is coming up for you, I invite you to explore that a little deeper and reflect on those limiting beliefs.”
Ms Winterstein’s social media accounts were last week restricted by Facebook in a crackdown on using social media to spread dangerous messaging against vaccination.
I get that every parent worries about vaccination, I know I did when I had children, but I trusted the science. I also know there is a very well-oiled anti-vax movement that promotes lies and conspiracy theories about vaccination. And if you are not skilled in scientific protocol, it looks legitimate and downright frightening.
No doubt Ms Winterstein will tell her vulnerable audience about the elemental compounds in vaccines: heavy metals like mercury, lead and cadmium, and other ingredients like nickel, chromium, aluminium, arsenic and lithium — oh wait … sorry, that’s what is found in tattoo ink, which Ms Winterstein sports a fair bit of. See how easy it is to scare people with a few scientific words?
And while you’re down that rabbit hole, those around you will start opining on how the ‘mainstream media’ is in on the giant conspiracy to pin kids down and stuff them full of toxins because what they see as an outrageous truth has not been reported.
There’s a good reason why you won’t see those horror stories on the front pages of newspapers: they are not true.
There is not a reporter alive who would not die for a scoop that proved big pharma was in fact killing kids in the pursuit of profit. You’d win awards and save lives — it’s what journos live for.
There have been rare cases of like the 2009 Fluvax debacle that led to children suffering febrile convulsions. It was thoroughly reported and to this day, that vaccine is banned from use in children. There is also a National Adverse Events Following Immunisation register that tracks events to monitor safety. There is a system in place to ensure safety.
RELATED: NRL anti-vaxxer WAGs have Instagram accounts restricted
I first encountered Taylor Winterstein in 2017 when she announced herself as the Australian ambassador for the conspiracy theory Vaxxed.
The problem with Vaxxed is it looks like a legitimate documentary but it was made by, and features as expert, Andrew Wakefield, who was struck off the medical register for fudging findings on just 11 kids with autism. He was secretly paid by lawyers acting on behalf of the autistic children to find a cause.
His now withdrawn Lancet paper that infamously linked the MMR vaccine to autism is one of the main reasons for the rising incidence of measles in places where it was previously eradicated.
There have now been over 100 huge epidemiological studies that have debunked
the link.
You’d think that would stop the nonsense right there, but no.
Now we have the WAG “vaccination questioner’’ charging $200 to spread her “information seminars” on immunisation. Her shows are now sold out in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.
Ms Winterstein also sells supplements — a purple rice concentrate that costs $150 for a month’s supply and which, Ms Winterstein claims, was used by ancient Chinese emperors and warriors.
Another ancient Chinese, Confucius, said: “He who learns but does not think, is lost. He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.”
I could not think of a better thought on the misinformation given to vulnerable parents about vaccination from WAGS.
Originally published as Research makes you a vaccination expert. Not Google
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