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Years before the anti-mask and reopening rallies, vaccine opponents were working to reinvent their image around a rallying cry for civil liberties and medical freedom. Now, fueled by the coronavirus pandemic and the current political climate, its rebranding is attractive to a different subset of society that invests in civil liberties and, some health officials say, undermines public health efforts for a moment. critical for vaccines.
Beatrice Dupuy, part of the Associated Press news verification team, reports that a new analysis from various institutions found that between 2009 and 2019, conversations about civil liberties in the anti-vaccine community had increased, and Facebook pages framed vaccines as a problem. values and civil rights.
The researchers reviewed more than 200 Facebook pages supporting vaccine rejection for their article published in the American Journal of Public Health this month. David A. Broniatowski, the lead author of the article, said the current protests against government lockdowns and masks took their pages straight from the anti-vaccine playbook.
“We could have seen it coming,” said Broniatowski, an associate professor in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at George Washington University. “All of this was happening right under our noses, and it continues to happen.”
Anita Garcia has been protesting vaccines for years and recently participated in protests against the flu mandate in Massachusetts, where she is from. Garcia is a member of a Facebook group called “Massachusetts for Medical Freedom.”
He said that with the demonstrations of the flu mandate, he is seeing protesters oppose what they see as government overreach. “All you can do is fight for your freedom,” Garcia said. “We are for medical freedom, bodily autonomy. Our bodies are ours, not for others to rule. “
Vaccines, however, save 2-3 million lives a year, according to estimates by the World Health Organization. And vaccines have practically eliminated childhood diseases like measles from American life, which regularly infected 3-4 million people a year in the United States before a vaccine was developed.
Historically, the anti-vaccine community has been known for its concerns about vaccine safety and the long-discredited theory that vaccines cause autism. Broniatowski and the researchers found, however, that Civil liberties have emerged as a common narrative among vaccine refusal Facebook pages, including those who also supported alternative medicine and conspiracy theories about the pharmaceutical industry and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates.
The rebranding to emphasize freedoms is allowing vaccine opponents to exploit American reactions to the pandemic, said Dorit Reiss, a law professor at the University of California at Hastings who specializes in policy issues related to vaccines.
“I think we are seeing an increase in people supporting them just because more people are vulnerable, angry and distrustful,” Reiss said. “And the anti-vaccine movement knows exactly what to say.”
In May, a survey by the Associated Press-NORC Public Affairs Research Center found that 31 percent of Americans were unsure whether they would receive the Covid-19 vaccine once it was released.
“You can see the consequences for these groups by sowing mistrust around vaccines. And they really matter, and they are going to come to light in this pandemic, “said Mark Dredze, associate professor of informatics at Johns Hopkins University and one of the authors of the paper.