UNTIL this week I believed that anti-vaxxers were one of two kinds of people – the clearly insane and the easily misled. But this week I discovered that two people I would not put in that category at all are fervent anti-vaxxers. Indeed to such an extent that for two years or more they have not communicated with a formerly much favoured daughter. Or her children, their beloved grandchildren!
And, thinking back, a man I worked with and held in respect also cut all (digital) contact with me after a spat about vaccines.
So what is this 'cult' – for that is what it seems to be – of opposition to vaccines?
Now I get the idea that 'my body is a temple' and that this would lead to great caution in what was allowed into it. But care and concern is a long way from the fierce opposition to vaccines that we are seeing around us. This is far more akin to the Jehovah's Witness zealot who will watch a child die before ever agreeing to a blood transfusion.
Reading back into history this attitude has some provenance. When Edward Jenner proved in 1796 – with his own child! - that infecting someone with cowpox lymph could protect against the killer of the age, small pox there was fierce reaction. One cartoon even shows people with cows growing out of their arms as a result of inoculation!
But as we all now know and acknowledge smallpox has been virtually eradicated world-wide by the inoculation of the vast majority of people on the planet. And my own life experience shows me that a wide variety of potential killers and cripplers of the human race have been beaten by vaccines, from Poliomyelitis to Tuberculosis.
And I am cautious – I would not have had the Covid-19 vaccine if it had shown any sign of dangerous or severe side effects or contra-indications. It did not and I have had all five of my scheduled vaccinations. At the age of 79 and with severe underlying conditions I cannot afford to get Sars Cov 2!
So my shock at finding people I would consider sane and normal refusing the vaccine and even being hostile to those who disagree with them to such an extreme extent leaves me speechless. Well, if you know me, you will know that is impossible but anyway...
Not surprisingly I have given this some attention but I can find no logical reason – which explains everything of course. Logic, fact, evidence fail to convince these people of the efficacy of vaccination. So the cause of their attitude must be essentially, fear. Not just of the needle but of the entire process that led to the vaccine itself.
And like the fear of death and religion they become fixated on their own views – they move from evidence base to faith base. They find some support among the extremes of the modern digital world. And they come to believe not only that they are right but that in being so right they must convert others. And if those others, even loved family, will not convert, well, they are cast out of course. Its what cults do. And some go further and commit heinous crimes against non-believers and heretics.
So it is that a young woman and her sons are heartbroken at the inexplicable hostility of their parents and grandparents.
And then the surprise really hits home – these people grew up when I did. In this now so-septic Isle. They will have seen the diseases that vaccines worked so well to eliminate. Their children may even be alive thanks to those very injections! And yet they adopt the cult. They don the cloak of invincibility and certainty that is not supported by any evidence. They even believe they have a duty to proselytise their bizarre beliefs.
I am now guessing that the disappearance from my digital world of my once admired friend and beekeeper followed the realisation that from his POV I was beyond redemption!
Once again I am reminded that there is, in life, nowt so strange as folk!
Refs:
https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-021-12114-8
