A Biden administration that vowed to restore Americans’ faith in public health has grown increasingly paralyzed over how to combat the resurgence in vaccine skepticism.
And internally, aides and advisers concede there is no comprehensive plan for countering a movement that’s steadily expanded its influence on the president’s watch.
The rising appeal of anti-vaccine activism has been underscored by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s insurgent presidential campaign and fueled by prominent factions of the GOP. The mainstreaming of a once-fringe movement has horrified federal health officials, who blame it for seeding dangerous conspiracy theories and bolstering a Covid-era backlash to the nation’s broader public health practices.
But as President Joe Biden ramps up a reelection campaign centered on his vision for a post-pandemic America, there’s little interest among his aides in courting a high-profile vaccine fight — and even less certainty of how to win.
“There’s a real challenge here,” said one senior official who’s worked on the Covid response and was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “But they keep just hoping it’ll go away.”
The White House’s reticence is compounded by legal and practical concerns that have cut off key avenues for repelling the anti-vaccine movement, according to interviews with eight current and former administration officials and others close to the process.
Lies on social media kill people. I know of one guy who believed the lies and died of covid.
Herman Cain?
No he is still twitting
The media: Here’s 72 hours of conspiracy theorists and coverage about how some people are upset with medical experts.
Also the media: Why are anti-vax conspiracy theories getting so much attention? Here’s why the people trying to fix the problem are at fault and why you should probably hate them.
Also also the media: Polls show people don’t trust the person we blamed for everything.
“The Media” isn’t some unified being.
Let the problem solve itself.
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They should do what conservatives keep insisting that they do: round them up and put them in FEMA camps in the desert. Problem solved, and AM radio pundits can be redeemed because their conspiracy theory came true.
There’s a pragmatic solution here:
1). Make vaccines free. The government pays.
2). Require vaccines for participation in publicly funded social programs. Schools. Social Security. Etc.
3). Allow doctor authorized health waivers to number 2.
4). Wait.
Most people will get the free vaccines either because they’re reasonable people, because the vaccines are free, or because they want government services. Those that don’t will die earlier. Eventually even stupid people will notice or they’ll be dead.
If it’s more convenient for them to do otherwise, you’ll end up with a large base of angry, disenfranchised and unvaccinated people that blames all their problems to the other part of the population.
Given how much weapon hoarders tend to fit in that category already, I would advocate towards a more soft approach.
And regulate misinformation and disinformation, make social media culpable, they’ll quickly change their tune if $ are at stake. The current model wants engagement, and click bait misinformation does wonders for that.
bUt wHo gEtS tO dEcIdE wHaT iS dIsInFoRmATiOn??!
Also, the proper term is “lies”.
That’s a pretty genuine question you are sweeping under the rug. Let’s say theoretically a vaccine comes out that is undertested and has some very serious side effects, but still gets the job done. There is an extremely large financial incentive on behalf of Pharmaceutical companies to brush negative effects under the rug. Surely this can’t ever go wrong in the future.
So you agree that we need government regulation of industries
Do you believe there is sufficient regulation in place to prevent the situation described from happening? Do you really want the government policing something as broad as “misinformation”
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Do you believe there’s sufficient regulation in place? Genuinely. Is that your fear? Have you tried looking into how a medical study is conducted and the regulations involved? It’s extensive. I’ve looked into it and I’m comfortable the experts are keeping things well regulated. And they create more regulations as they find they’re needed. Sometimes the misinformation isn’t trying to achieve what you think it is, what if the misinformation actually serves to remove the current regulations that work, what if it’s “big pharma” spreading the misinformation so as to cause regulations to be removed, or get a politician to head them they can manipulate to change things for them. Because all those anti vax news execs and politicians are vaccinated.
You’re comfortable, that’s great, you can make your own decisions. A lot of people believe that it’s entirely likely that big pharmaceutical companies are putting profit before human health. It happened with the rise of opiate based painkillers in the past couple decades, so it absolutely does happen, and most people in the system probably thought they were doing the right thing.
I for one am not comfortable relying on the government to prevent these monoliths from putting out products that harm people more than they help.
We are creatures of convenience, the way to make people do anything is by making it easier to comply than not to comply.
I got my first COVID vaccine and the booster at a drive-through clinic. My favorite part was the vibe there. We could finally do something to fight to get things back to normal and everybody was stoked.
Same, it was super chill. People were awesome and I never left my car.
We did too and I remember thinking a drive through shooting was about the most American thing ever.
Are vaccines (at least important ones) not free in some countries? WTF.
If enough people don’t get the vaccine then a lot more then non vaccinated people will die.
Think about the optics though: if the vaccines are free, WHY are they free?
The answer that group will give: Bill Gates is subsidizing his microchips so we will all be infected with them.There’s no reasoning with anti-vaxxers, though. So why worry about how it looks to crazy people?
Because we’re trying to specifically reach those crazy people who reject even the mention of vaccines in a beneficial light. Everyone else is, for the most part, already vaccinated.
We should not reach those people, we should mock them. Demoralize them. Make them ashamed of their stupidity. You can’t reason with a crazy person, and attempts to do so legitimize their brand of crazy. They are too dangerous to be ignored, and too far gone to be patient with.
This is not an optics play, it’s a power play. When mandates were first issued to a lot of cops their conservative asses talked a big game about mass resignations and chaos in the streets, then the due date came and went and most just got vaccinated.
The antivax base are billionaires though, who can afford to fund their poorer devotees through the worst of their government service martyrdom
- Find prominent anti-vaxxers
- Kill them
- That’s it you’re done.
Obviously this isn’t ethical or practical, but it would result in net fewer deaths than doing nothing.
15% of US adults are unvaccinated. No, killing them all would not result in fewer deaths. You are a crazy person.
15% of us adults are not prominent anti vaxxers.
Many people cannot be vaccinated for legitimate reasons. They’re fine.
It’s the people who go on YouTube or TV or a high office spreading anti vaccine misinformation that need to go in the ground.
You are crazy. Saying stupid shit, even if it’s harmful, is not and should not be punishable by death.
Nah. If we just kill them, and a lot of the Republican party, the world gets markedly better.
We could make a lot of progress on climate change, too!
They’re bad people who want to kill me and my loved ones. I don’t see why I should treat them as anything less than an existential threat.
You are too far gone. can’t believe people like you exist
Something something slippery slope something something life starts at conception something something all life has value something something murder bad.
something something life starts at conception something something all life has value
apart from that I mostly agree
Eventually even stupid people will notice or they’ll be dead.
Doesn’t work. Did early deaths stop all the smokers?
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is a problem, because it gives the government more reach to damage people with mistakes. What if the republicans (whom, I assume, you think evil) get in? How much of their policy detail would you like mandated (“for the public interest!”) and would you prefer to be able to say, I believe that’s harmful in my situation, so I chose to do differently. IMHO that sort of requirement that you’ve suggested should be very rare indeed - if ever. And wrt COVID specifically, retrospectively the vaccine results were much more muddy than we’d hoped, rather (in my eyes) proving the point.
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I like, and 3) whenever something approaching 2) is implemented.
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Eventually even stupid people will notice or they’ll be dead.
Apparently you haven’t been paying attention to this whole COVID deal? And to the other comments point you need to meet a threshold in the population for a vaccine to do what’s intended.
Tbf, the majority of deaths were in red counties with far higher rates of antivaxers. The stupid people are dying at higher rates, but it’s infuriating that they’re taking smart people who are vaccine ineligible with them.
1, 2, & 3 have already been going on for a long time with public schools (immunization records) for the most part. The determined anti vax parents will just find a Dr who will sign a waiver for their child so they don’t need to be vaccinated.
The problem is so much of anti vax today people will hunker down on their opinion of antivax no matter the truth or information presented to them. It’s the same reason people are supporting trump so much still bc they think it “triggers” the opposition so much.
I’m not sure if there is a way to turn things around especially when you have multiple prominent media members questioning vaccines that is constantly being parroted.
At this point anything tried they’ll cry about information being suppressed or why is the government trying so hard to do this must mean bad things.
Yeah forcing mandatory injections is definitely a really cool thing for a government to do. Can’t wait to see where that goes.
We already do it for school children
yeah don’t agree with it
Ok, have fun with stuff like measles smallpox and polio
skepticism
The media keeps using that word, I do not think it means what they think it means. These people aren’t questioning, they’re not doubtful; they’re convinced. They are certain that their position is the correct one and no amount of new information will change their minds.
Stop calling this “skepticism”
We call those people wappies where I live. There’s no reasoning with them. No one takes them seriously.
That’s a very good point I had never though before
I despise journalistic weasel words. Thanks for pointing this one out.
It should be called “vaccine cynicism”
Get your flu and COVID shots this winter, please. Don’t get yourself sick, and don’t get other people sick.
Similarly, I hate the term ‘conspiracy theorist.’ They’re not coming up with theories, they’re making up bullshit. I prefer ‘conspiracy monger.’
This is a self solving problem.
That’s unfortunately not how vaccines work. You need a certain threshold of participants.
Of course the government can’t do mych. In the eye of anti vaxxers the government is the problem. In fact any expert or authority will be distrusted because they are an expert or authority figure.
And you have an extremely large and trusted group GOP, actively discrediting vaccines every chance they get.
While all being vaccinated, themselves.
A fact that their supporters gleefully ignore.
Hell, I heard something earlier in covid about hospitals and clincs setting up private back door entrances so antivaxers could get vaccinated without anyone knowing. Its ridiculous.
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Dangerous quackery like this is why the mods allow misinformation.
The mods here have been pretty good about blocking disinfo. I just reported the comment, you should too.
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Lol wtf link to this thread?
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Wow. I would love to be run through the logic used to think that allowing misinformation was important for a relevant groups to be heard.
We don’t allow misinformation, always report it.
The comments I posted with the thread that indicates otherwise are still in the modlog for anyone to see.
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Yeah, he’s been recommended to have his board certification revoked because what he’s been handing out recently is very wrong information. Bordering liability for any place that dares keep him resident. Considering the level of recommendation for revocation, he’s not going to be a doctor much longer.
He better hope those book sales get him through retirement because he’s about to become very unemployable soon enough.
The easiest and most effective solution would be to just get Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter/X to crack down harder on misinformation.
Optimally, there should even be a sort of “social reputation ranking” system in place to disincentivize online misinformation and hate speech by tying it to real-life ramifications. We sort of already have something like that for job applications, and I’m proud of that, but if we could extend the enforcement and implementation of this kind of thing to, say, transportation, real estate, or banking, that would certainly be a commendable step in the right direction. Ranted about the mask and vaccine mandates in 2020? Good luck buying that car.
Too bad an increasing and worrisome number of these platforms are being owned by right-wing shrinks. Heil Spez and Heil Musk.
How does this work if you’re smart enough to not post under your full legal name and photo?
I know the CCP in China is way ahead of you. They already have a social credit system. You wanted a passport? Maybe you shouldn’t have spoken out against government policy.
It doesn’t sound authoritarian at all /s
Maybe if the entire medical industry wasn’t already shady and deplorable enough we wouldn’t have these vaccine skeptics. The biden administration needs to focus on fixing the medical industry if they want these people to trust it.
Except it has nothing to do with the medical industry being shady or not. The big recent hullaballoo started because Andrew Wakefield lied to everyone. But that largely only affected the crunchy New Age mom types at the time.
The big explosion of right wing idiots being anti-vaxxers simply has to do with Republican politicians and Fox News repeatedly claiming all scientists and experts on topics are lying (to make money somehow, despite that money never materializing). They started making such anti-science claims with climate change and just expanded it to everything else.
What I’m trying to say is that if the medical industry wasn’t filled with liars to begin with then there wouldn’t be as big of an issue.
If you are already untrustworthy to begin with it’s going to be really easy to convince someone that you did something else wrong.
I could very easily convince many people that Andrew Tate said that a woman should never be a CEO of a company because it sounds like something he would say and he already says plenty of other sexist shit.
Fox News: “THE VACCINE IS A SCAM! VACCINES DONT WORK!”
Also Fox News: You can not enter this building unless your are vaccinated.
And their hosts saying the vaccine is evil and will kill you, while all of them are fully vaccinated. I’ve even seen some of the hosts say they aren’t vaccinated when discussing the topic, despite knowing they 100% are because Fox requires it.
Alternatively I think we need to remind these people how far from experts they are.
Nah, it’s not that it’s that one asshole who decided to write an article about how “Vaccines cause autism.” That’s how the whole anti-vaxxer movement came to be.
I don’t really worry for me (I’m vaccinated), I just worry for those who cannot take the vaccine. Those who don’t want to be protected from a potentially deadly disease, well, they can rot. No issues.
Once more Republicans twiddle their thumbs as right wing conspiracy needlessly kills their base. It seems they’ve learned nothing at all, which I suppose shouldn’t be a surprise.
They can’t figure out a winning strategy because their position on the issue is very dicey. Their credibility has been eroded with that particular audience, and without the credibility to really speak to them, all they can really do is make things worse.
Since the anti-vaxxers have lost trust in establishments and given their trust to individuals instead, it becomes only individuals operating outside of an established structure that have any real chance of possibly getting through to them.
In other words, since it’s randos online causing the problem, there’s really only one group that can effectively combat it–other randos online. Offline we’d call this grassroots. Now though, welcome to the Information Age.
I’ll do my part.
The vaccine is good. Get the vaccine.
Hopefully this helps. :/
If only it was that easy. Life, unfortunately, is much harder than that though, and if someone says its supposed to be easy, they’re selling something.
When the vaccine became a litmus test for ideologies you know that folks who would gain from fewer constituents would go full bore in denialism… got my shots and standing on the balcony watching the pure bloods choke on their sputum and succumbing to Darwin’s kiss
The problem is that the anti-vaxxers aren’t just believing any individual, they’re believing a conspiracy theory. Anyone with evidence showing that their conspiracy theory is false is told that they are either part of the conspiracy or are a sheep falling for the conspiracy.
You can’t just talk people out of this. If there’s a pile of 100 points in favor of a vaccine and 1 point against it, they’ll ignore the 100 in favor, focus on the 1 against, add 20 more points that have been debunked repeatedly but still circulate on Facebook, and declare the vaccine too dangerous to use.
I don’t have a solution because “force everyone to say X online under penalty of law” is NOT a good solution. At the very least, imagine what another administration might do if that was the law. What other topics would we be forced to repeat the “official government sanctioned view” on? I don’t think this is a problem with an easy solution.
Certainly. I’d also depart from the evidence-based approach. Evidence-based approaches only work on people that believe in evidence-based approaches. If this was believed in, then the problem would not exist in the first place. Evidence-based approaches are a prevention method, not a treatment method. Once illness is established, they become useless for treatment.
Fortunately, the evidence-based toolbox is just one of many that people have access to. It’s just that being trained to prefer the evidence-based one makes the others unpalatable. They can, however, get results where evidence and rationality fail.
edit: I think the most powerful, reliable toolbox is humor, incidentally. Being able to make people laugh is frankly a superpower sometimes. But people have different senses of humor, so it’s never easy, comedian is just a tough job. Much easier to be a scientist, and have a reliable, proven methodology to work with imo.
The problem is the instant someone disagrees with them they ignore everything they say. If one of their own changes their mind even a little, they ostracize them. It’s a self-reinforcing delusion which are really hard to break people out of.
Harder than really hard, nigh-impossible usually.
That’s better than legit-impossible though, which is the odds all major establishment sources get. If you’ve been taught that doctors, politicians, educators and media are all lying to you, who is left remaining?
