Anti-vax message is a social ill

A striking image from the anti-vaccination demonstrations in state capitals on Saturday was of a pregnant woman wearing a bikini, a unicorn horn and a face mask, and brandishing a sign that said “my body my choice”. Easy to dismiss as the usual rabble in protest-happy Melbourne, where heavy-handed police arrest the working media by mistake. But unicorn woman was far from alone. Thousands of people gathered to demonstrate against a voluntary COVID-19 vaccination scheme because they feared that one day it might be made compulsory or they would be discriminated against for refusing to participate. In Sydney, leading the charge was discredited celebrity chef Pete Evans. In Brisbane, more than 1000 people gathered at the Botanic Gardens before marching through the streets.

The protests are a clear signal that vaccinating the population against the COVID-19 virus is not going to be all smooth sailing. And much of the disruption will have been facilitated by the modern-day social media monopolists who give kooky conspiracy theories fertile ground to propagate. The community reservoir of anti-vaccination sentiment is well studied and understood. In most cases it has not led to public health calamities because herd immunity has been achieved by most people making the decision to vaccinate themselves and their children from formerly catastrophic diseases such as polio, measles and mumps. A widespread breakdown in trust in vaccinations in Samoa in 2019 because of human error did cause a worrying outbreak of measles that threatened to spread throughout the Pacific. Because the COVID-19 vaccine is so new, a high take-up will be required. The newness of the vaccine also means inevitably there will be a lot of unknowns, the conditions needed for herd immunity being one of them.

The list of concerns held by anti-vaccination groups is extensive. The World Health Organisation says common misunderstandings include that the COVID-19 vaccine causes infertility. WHO says there is no truth to this, a rumour that is common to many vaccines. Another rumour is that mRNA vaccines, a new type of vaccine that includes the Pfizer vaccine for COVID-19, can change the DNA of recipients. Again untrue, say scientists. WHO says rigorous testing should be enough to convince the public that vaccines are safe to use, but many still choose to believe the messages they receive on social media rather than from official sources.

In scientific circles, anti-vaccination belief is called vaccine hesitancy and it has been widely studied. Peer-reviewed studies say the identity politics associated with vaccine hesitancy is inherently social rather than a matter of pure individual rationality. Before the pandemic, WHO said vaccine hesitancy was judged one of the 10 most notable threats to global health. Research by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-supported Aspen Institute says the spread of vaccine hesitancy comes from having misinformation socially reinforced to the extent that citizens believe it to be credible. It says a significant concern is misinformation that has infiltrated the conversation about vaccinations online and via social media. A study published in February last year demonstrated that people exposed to vaccine content on social media were likelier to be misinformed than those exposed to it on traditional media.

To avoid contamination of the public health message, federal Health Minister Greg Hunt has pulled government advertising on the vaccine rollout from Facebook. Mr Hunt said on Sunday his department would rely instead on other platforms and traditional media. The issue highlights the need for greater scrutiny of the role social media plays in public information. Yet the Senate’s media diversity inquiry last Friday was unable to identify what a media monopoly was. It’s certainly not something enjoyed by the traditional media. The monopolistic example wrecking public policy objectives on the vaccine rollout is staring committee members in the Facebook.