This has been my observation as well. The danger is in increasing the extremist rhetoric in an attempt to outdo competing anti-establishment "gurus"/anti-vax influencers in their fight to attract and retain paying followers.
That's a bit extreme to call "anti-vax" as a "terrorist organization" "proliferating plagues". This is why we are having problems having a sensible debate in this country. Every side paints the other side as extremists.
I find that behaviour more dangerous than any other anti-science or anti-vax movements. That behaviour degrades the public trust in institutions, in science and in scientists. It will breed even more anti-science and anti-vax people for years to come.
Antivaxxers tend to do their proselyting for free. What this may discourage is that professional trolls meddle with it because they promote any "oppressed" outlandish claim to optimize for clicks (and therefore ad revenue).
I suppose one more dangerous thing with this, could be how popular anti vaccination ideas could become, when the anti-vaxxers start saying that vaccine is live virus
You're getting downvoted because you're dangerously wrong. Yes some anti-vaxers send threats, but the idea that they have managed to silence the mainstream scientific opinion on vaccines is ludicrous. That information is widely available to everybody. I bet you can't find a single anti-vaxer who isn't aware of what the mainstream position on vaccine safety is. Being opposed to the orthodox position is a big part of the appeal!
Also anti-vax isn't something new. It dates back to at least the mid 90s and the original Wakefield paper. There were no cult like organisations pushing it at that time. What did exist was a mainstream media willing to push the story for many years, even long after they knew the original paper was faulty. The problem wasn't born out of fervent zealots, it was created by con artists and co-conspirators in the media who exploited liberal ideas of "free speech" and "media balance" to knowingly spread a conspiracy for their own financial gain. There was no "subculture" at the time. I'm not sure you can even really say there is one now, given that anti-vax is one of the conspiracy theories that has wide appeal across different groups (i.e. it exists across the left/liberal/conservative/right political spectrum).
You are trying to push your own ideological position (more "free speech" is good and will solve the problem) onto an issue, and it doesn't fit what actually happened at all, or what we know about how conspiracy theories spread (it's not a lack of counter-information, because conspiracy theories by definition include the fact that they are being suppressed by central authority).
While that's galling to see, it's targeted to convince the anti-vaxxer, or really the person who's on the fence. If they just dismiss the ideas, the anti-vaxxer says, "Oh look, the mainstream media covering up the truth again. Must be paid off by ${EVIL_BILLIONAIRE}." If he's given a chance, debates, and loses, that's a much better impression.
I think it’s likely that ‘conservatives’ (and New Age enthusiasts, and others) wanted to hear anti-elitist messages, messages that discredited experts, which anti-vax messaging is congruent with.
I'm completely sure the anti-vaxxers will find a way to scaremonger against this too. Alas, that movement is the result of ideological and sociological forces that are not going away. The only possibility is to suppress them lawfully and even that won't finish them off.
We almost don't have these anti-vaxer folks here, but it seems to me that people who spread hate towards them are incomparably more worse. It's like a hate cult. People buy whatever the media sell them and start to harass any group they were told to hate and fear, actually giving these groups growth.
I'm glad that steps are being taken by doctors to fight against anti-vaxxers. But what concerns me is that these people are so extreme that they believe doxxing and harassing anyone who says something pro-vaccine is the right way to engage.
I think fully differentiating anti-vax and vax-hesitatant lacks nuance.
There is no way there is a sharp line between the groups. Is it a coincidence that the increase in prevalence of vax hesitance correlates with the increase in prevalence full-on anti-vax, which went from niche to mainstream?
The data are clear. How we resolve and educate the fence sitters is the relevant question. Browbeating or shaming either group isn't productive. (arguably Trolling the mainstream is one goal of anti-vaxers.) Regrettably we are up against Brandolini's Law , where anti-vax misinformation has reached a critical mass with 'respected' personalities in media and politics participating, splashing this misinformation way beyond the niche conspiracy theorists that used to be the core.
I'm in my 50s and remember the public vaccination campaigns against diseases like measles and chickenpox - and the fear of catching such a disease, because it wasn't uncommon to see older children and adults suffering from deafness and profound cognitive disabilities. I was also placed in sleepovers with children infected with less dangerous diseases like mumps for which no vaccine was available, to cultivate natural immunity.
The anti-vax 'movement' is in my view largely astroturfed, leveraging understandable parental and public uncertainty in the face of medical complexity, technological change, and conflicting economic interests. What may have begun as sincere skepticism was overtaken by financial and then strategic considerations. There's some evidence to show vaccine controversies have been shaped by nation state influence operations* and the COVID-19 pandemic has seen increasingly close ties between anti-vax activism and right wing radical politics.
This doesn't absolve governments and public health advocates of missteps in policy, logistics, and public communication, by any means. But I think it's fair to say that the resurgence of avoidable disease outcomes at scale is a kind of institutional sabotage with a body count of horrific proportions.
Why is activism against anti-vaccine groups the only problem, not the activism of anti-vaccine groups?
They're not just sitting in private chatting about how much they dislike vaccinations and not bothering anyone, they're spreading anti-vaccine propaganda and actively trying to undermine vaccinations. Why do you feel vaccinations would be higher if these groups were left alone to do as much damage as possible, when we already know how effective their campaigns can be?
To say nothing of the actual threat to herd immunity these people present.
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