oddrops

We frequently use terms like “antivaccine,” “antivax,” and “antivaxxers.” Critics think it’s a “gotcha” to ask how we define “antivax” or to accuse us of reflexively label “questioning” of vaccines as “antivax.” I’s not. There are gray areas, but not so gray that the word is never appropriate. Has anything changed since I first tried to define “antivaccine” in 2010? The answer:…

Source: What does “antivaccine” really mean since the pandemic hit?

Finally, remember that, now as then, anti-vaccine movement is a denialist movement, very similar to deniers of anthropogenic climate change, science-based medicine, and evolution. As such, it uses the same fallacious strategies and distortions of science to promote its agenda and reacts the same way to criticism. Similarly, the antivaccine movement is also far more about ideology than it is about science, which is why it remains so stubbornly resistant to reason and science. Finding an effective means to counter its message will likely require developing effective general strategies to counter science denialist movements of all types, including and emphasis, in particular medical conspiracy theories, which the antivaccine movement is but one that is a subset of all the sort of conspiracy theories that undergird all science denial.

Sadly, as much as certain aspects of what “antivaccine” means have changed, such as the politics and the global infrastructure that promotes distrust of vaccines, the central core has remained largely the same, and that core was a variant of a conspiracy theory in 2010 and remains so in 2022.