As long as there have been vaccines, there have been people who doubted their science and safety.
Back in 19th-century England, people rioted against a mandatory smallpox vaccine, claiming that it violated civil rights and was . In the United States, organizations dedicated to resisting vaccines have existed since the was established in 1894.
Researchers generally refer to people who do not follow the standard advice of health professionals about vaccines, by either , as . Today, vaccine hesitancy is most famously associated with the and its standard-bearer, Health and Human Services Secretary
Public health advocates and science communicators have largely tried to counter these ideas by offering accurate, factual information. But as a studying how groups that embrace vaccine hesitancy , I’ve learned that part of why vaccine hesitancy is so hard to combat is how these groups use storytelling to spread their views.
Vaccine-hesitant groups have fewer limitations than pro-vaccine groups on the kinds of stories they can tell about the development and impact of vaccines. While science-driven messaging that encourages vaccination has to be faithful to the complex and often uneventful reality of science, vaccine-skeptic stories tend to make .
Why facts aren’t enough
It’s easy to assume that people who mistrust vaccines are undereducated, and therefore, that providing better information about science and vaccines would increase confidence in vaccines. This is sometimes called .
In response to this perceived information deficit, public health experts and science communicators have worked hard to create about vaccines in order to .
But this approach has had only . One indication: The who express vaccine-hesitant views .
This partly relates to a misunderstanding about vaccine hesitancy: or don’t have access to high-quality medical information. Vaccine hesitancy is what policymakers call a “” – one that’s particularly hard to solve because it’s fueled by a range of issues, including misinformation, the desire for social belonging and deeply held religious beliefs.
While there are many stereotypes about what kind of person is vaccine hesitant, the truth is that there is who expresses skepticism. Vaccine hesitancy includes people with and .
People might embrace these views for many reasons – for example, because they the , are , are trying to or are – for example, about personal freedom.
Vaccine symbols
To some degree, all health information . A patient’s medical history, for example, simply strings together a person’s health information into a coherent tale.
But vaccine-hesitant groups are particularly adept at using narrative to craft compelling, nerve-wracking or of doctors ignoring patient concerns and children developing devastating health conditions after getting vaccinated.
What makes these stories the secret weapons of vaccine hesitancy is that they often are not actually about vaccines at all. When vaccines become detached from medicine, they can function like a symbol or a metaphor in a story, reflecting a worldview that and is . These stories use , to undermine vaccine confidence.
For example, online forums use vaccine refusal as an example of , symbolizing a loss of general individual freedom – even when vaccines pose no practical threat to their political or social liberty. In some contexts, refusing the COVID-19 vaccine in particular has been framed as .
A new normal
Under Kennedy, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has started to release material that matches the messaging, ideas and narrative strategies of vaccine-hesitant groups.
When the CDC announced , for example, the proposed changes as a return to what the agency is calling “individual-based decision-making.” of the , a panel of experts that , described vaccine debates as a question of “.”
Treating vaccines as representing a challenge to individuality or autonomy highlights a possible philosophical and existential threat, but in the process, it minimizes real physical risk. Here, the story implies that vaccines are a threat to individuality. Medically, that’s not true. But thematically, the references to threatened individuality suggest that people are feeling vulnerable and afraid. In this story, vaccines symbolize perceived dangers to a person’s sense of self, not real medical ones.
Becoming better readers
As vaccine hesitancy continues to , it seems increasingly clear that promoting health and scientific literacy, on their own, won’t be enough to allay the concerns of people who have aligned their ideas about vaccines with broader narratives about untrustworthy institutions and physical risk.
Yet dismissing the perspectives of people who raise concerns about vaccines risks losing opportunities to better understand the . Those reasons are often shaped by people’s experiences with medicine and other institutions. For example, there are many well-founded reasons for to be . For some Black Americans, for example, forms .
Some researchers studying public health and communication have started to embrace strategies that , to address vaccine hesitancy. This includes both identifying the to make them less persuasive and of vaccine-hesitant people to create a more respectful environment.
Understanding the narratives and learning from the valid critiques that draw people into feeling hesitant about vaccines offers a more nuanced way to understand these views – and may open the way for a .
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