In the 20 years I’ve spent researching vaccine decisions, I have spoken to plenty of parents who reject shots for their children. Some say vaccines are never safe or necessary or that polio went away on its own and the vaccine wrongly got credit. I’ve heard comparisons of vaccines to snake venom. In reality, however, the number of people who reject all vaccines is quite small — so small that they are unlikely to compromise public health.
The greater issue, the one we don’t discuss often enough, is the many parents who don’t identify as being opposed to vaccines but don’t always consent to them.
Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, one-quarter to one-third of American parents were delaying vaccines or picking and choosing them cafeteria-style, deciding certain vaccines weren’t relevant to their family because they believed the risk for the disease was low. Some parents design their own vaccine schedules, often customizing for each child based on their perceptions of risk, benefit and how they believe their child will handle it.
Often, these families don’t consider themselves anti-vaccine. They just trust their own judgment more than expert recommendations. But the outcome is the same: Their children are not immunized at the ages when they’re most vulnerable to the worst outcomes of infection and can spread disease to others.
The growth of vaccine hesitance in America may feel inexplicable, ignorant or irrational to those who feel confident in their decisions to vaccinate. Yet my research suggests that this approach to vaccines is entirely logical in a culture that insists that health is the result of hard work and informed consumer decisions and too often sees illness as a personal failure.
In many ways, especially now, parents who reject vaccines are following expert advice. Myriad parenting books and specialists have encouraged women, starting during pregnancy, to see themselves as experts on their children and to trust their instincts. This matches public health messaging, which over the past several decades moved away from collective aims like improving the quality of air and water toward a focus on behavior modifications, like diet and exercise. It also echoes the recommendations of the health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose Make America Healthy Again campaign insists Americans can take control of their own health with wider use of wearable technology and more focus on nutrition.
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The post What 20 Years of Listening to Vaccine-Hesitant Parents Has Taught Me appeared first on New York Times.
