I honestly think you’re misunderstanding me a bit here. I’m not advocating for privileging anti-vaxxer rhetoric or jumping through hoops to “let them have some wins”. I’m trying to underscore that the first step to developing education, informational campaigns, deprogramming regimes, etc. is to understand the thought process behind becoming an anti-vaxxer. There are plenty of comments in this thread alone along the lines of “When presented a choice between a small risk of a mild fever versus getting tuberculosis, obviously the correct choice is to get the vaccine”. I think that line of argumentation is counter-productive, since it
Underplays the documented risk of many vaccines
Doesn’t address the core issue I think causes vaccine scepticism in the first place.
Firstly, nobody who’s afraid of getting a vaccine due to the associated risks will be convinced by “The only risk is a small risk of a light fever”, since that’s just provably false. Secondly, the line of argumentation anchors on the risk associated with vaccines, rather than anchoring on the risk associated with not getting them. Since I think the root cause of vaccine scepticism is irrational fear of getting them, I think it’s more productive to anchor counter arguments, education, information campaigns, etc. on the very real danger associated with not having vaccines. Since fear is the underlying driving force here, we should aim to make fear of the disease outweigh fear of vaccines, not by down-playing the risk of vaccines, but rather by emphasising the risk of the diseases (which many or most vaccine sceptics downplay into absurdity).
Basically, many vaccines do have a very low but non-zero probability of causing severe side effects. We humans are known to place irrationally large weight on these kind of unlikely but severe outcomes. Trying to downplay these outcomes is not likely affect peoples perception of the risk, because we’re notoriously bad at this kind of risk assessment.
I honestly think you’re misunderstanding me a bit here. I’m not advocating for privileging anti-vaxxer rhetoric or jumping through hoops to “let them have some wins”. I’m trying to underscore that the first step to developing education, informational campaigns, deprogramming regimes, etc. is to understand the thought process behind becoming an anti-vaxxer. There are plenty of comments in this thread alone along the lines of “When presented a choice between a small risk of a mild fever versus getting tuberculosis, obviously the correct choice is to get the vaccine”. I think that line of argumentation is counter-productive, since it
Firstly, nobody who’s afraid of getting a vaccine due to the associated risks will be convinced by “The only risk is a small risk of a light fever”, since that’s just provably false. Secondly, the line of argumentation anchors on the risk associated with vaccines, rather than anchoring on the risk associated with not getting them. Since I think the root cause of vaccine scepticism is irrational fear of getting them, I think it’s more productive to anchor counter arguments, education, information campaigns, etc. on the very real danger associated with not having vaccines. Since fear is the underlying driving force here, we should aim to make fear of the disease outweigh fear of vaccines, not by down-playing the risk of vaccines, but rather by emphasising the risk of the diseases (which many or most vaccine sceptics downplay into absurdity).
Basically, many vaccines do have a very low but non-zero probability of causing severe side effects. We humans are known to place irrationally large weight on these kind of unlikely but severe outcomes. Trying to downplay these outcomes is not likely affect peoples perception of the risk, because we’re notoriously bad at this kind of risk assessment.