The anti-vaccination movement has taken advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic to push conspiracy theories to a much wider audience by spreading dangerous misinformation about life-saving shots that last five years, experts warn.
Skepticism about vaccines existed long before Covid, but the pandemic “served as an accelerator, helping turn a niche movement into a more powerful force,” according to a 2023 article in The Lancet. Read also | 5 things we know and still don’t know about COVID 5 years after it started
The pandemic also marked a change in strategy for anti-vaxxers, who had previously targeted parents because children typically received the most shots.
But when next-generation vaccines were developed in record time to help bring Covid under control, many countries made vaccination compulsory for adults.
Vaccine skepticism suddenly gained a much larger audience, uniting people from across the political spectrum.
“During this period, we’ve seen several bubbles with usually well-defined boundaries converge towards anti-vaccine beliefs,” said Romy Saveir, a French sociologist who specializes in vaccine swings.
During the pandemic, conspiracy theorists, “alternative medicine” enthusiasts, politicians, and even some doctors and researchers created or spread false information about vaccines or Covid.
One example was hydroxychloroquine, which controversial French researcher Didier Raoul claimed could cure Covid in an initial study that was recently retracted.
Donald Trump, who was president of the United States at the time and will be inaugurated again on Monday, was among those promoting the drug at the time.
“Behind these sometimes rather radical doctors in the media are broader issues of trust in health authorities,” said sociologist Jeremy Ward, who has studied vaccination in France since 2020.
“The Basics of Vaccine Misinformation”
Aside from health concerns, “this movement was basically built around protecting individual freedom,” said Jocelyn Roude, a health psychology researcher.
This was seen during the pandemic when protests against mandatory vaccination and lockdown measures spread. Read also | Covishield side effects: Doctors group calls on government to review all Covid vaccines
The anti-vaccine movement has found particularly favorable ground in the far right, with some supporters reaching the highest levels of power.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick for health secretary, has repeatedly peddled anti-vaccine conspiracies, including suggesting that Covid is an “ethnically targeted” virus.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate has named RFK Jr. and his anti-vaccination group Children’s Health Defense, which Kennedy has temporarily disavowed, among its “disinformation dozen” of leading Internet anti-vaxxers.
Callum Hood, head of the think tank, said “Kennedy’s accounts were among the fastest-growing anti-vaccine accounts during the pandemic,” reaching an audience of millions.
“It’s a really strong position when you start looking to build a base of support for his political ambitions.”
Noel Brewer, a professor of public health at the University of North Carolina and one of the authors of The Lancet study, said that “social media has been at the heart of vaccine misinformation efforts.”
The rise of measles as the threat of bird flu
The consequences of this mass disinformation are difficult to calculate.
“Some researchers believe that repeated exposure to false information can make people refuse to vaccinate, while others believe that the effect is relatively weak because it will only allow them to justify existing vaccine hesitancy,” said Rowde.
Meg Schaeffer, an epidemiologist at the SAS Institute, told AFP that “misinformation surrounding Covid” is reducing overall vaccination rates in the United States, including for the long-vanquished measles. Read also | All about two rare side effects of the Covid-19 vaccine discovered during the study
“As a result of hundreds of cases of measles in children, half of which are hospitalized – we have never seen anything like this in the United States,” she said.
As concerns grow about the potential threat of bird flu causing a massive outbreak in humans, there are also fears that vaccine hesitancy could prevent the world from fighting off a new pandemic.
“If we, for example, face a pandemic in the near future, because of this we will have serious problems with the use of vaccines,” Dutch virologist Marion Koopmans told AFP.
With the world largely turning its attention away from Covid, some anti-vax influencers are turning to other conspiracy theories.
“These same accounts are now sharing pro-Russian or climate change-skeptic content,” said Laurent Cardognier, a sociologist at the Descartes Foundation.
While the topics may seem unrelated, “the driving force is anti-system sentiment,” he added.
