We are all assessing risk to some degree when we put on our seat belts or when we choose to eat healthy and exercise – or not. But too often risk assessment becomes a prisoner to outright lies, hysterical insinuations and treacherous global conspiracies that seek to injure or murder millions of supposedly naïve consumers. This is primarily true of the anti-vaccine movement. Without sound science and evidence, they attempt to circumvent the intellect with emotional appeals and good-looking celebrities. The following are just a few ways the movement fails when it comes to risk perception.
Some anti-vaccine parents mistakenly believe the risks are entirely
taken only by themselves:
“This is of concern because maintenance of vaccination successes
requires high immunization uptake. It needs to be seen as normal parental
behavior to have your child immunized on schedule and on time. Vaccination is
an individual measure that benefits not only the individual, but also produces
a common good: herd immunity. Unlike many other health prevention
interventions, if a parent refuses to vaccinate his or her child, it is not
only this child who will be at risk of suffering from the negative consequences
of this decision, but the risk to the whole community increases. Thus, vaccine
hesitancy and vaccine opposition needs to be addressed both at the individual
and community levels. The broader social, cultural and political context in
which parents are living needs to be considered.”
Risks are
taken when the consumer is bombarded and believes the endless false information
spewed out on social media and alarmist blogs:
“In today’s risk-averse world, people are increasingly encouraged to
take responsibility over their own lives, to stay continuously aware of risks
and benefits in order to make their future more secure. Notions of empowerment and
individual choices are predominant health themes. Consumerism in healthcare is growing.
Patients want to be involved in their own health decisions. The rise of the informed
patient has shifted the traditional locus of power from doctors as sole directors
of patient care to shared decision-making between health professionals and
patients who want to be active participants in decisions concerning their
health. In addition, with the Internet, health information based on individual
experience (experience-based) has gained legitimacy and credibility similar to
scientific information based on research data (evidence-based).
“Eysenbach uses the concept of ‘apomediation’
to refer to the observation that individuals are relying more heavily on
social media and social networks than on experts and institutions to gather
useful and trustworthy health information in an accessible format. With social media,
Internet user’s personal stories add a new dimension to health information: the
knowledge and emotional experience of disease and treatments as well as their
physical and psychological consequences. These powerful tools have been widely
used by anti-vaccination activists.”
Anti-vaxxers either don’t know or
don’t believe the actual risks of vaccinations:
“It depends
on the vaccine and side effect, but they range from about 1 in 50 to 1 in 3
people. These side effects are typically mild and only last a day or two. And
they don’t cause lasting problems. While not all possible side effects are
mild, those that are more moderate or severe are much more uncommon. Febrile
seizures, for example, only happen after about 1 out of 3,000 doses of MMR and
some other vaccines. And while scary, febrile seizures, crying for 3 hours or
more, or having a very swollen arm or leg, some other uncommon vaccine side
effects, also don’t cause lasting problems.
“Fortunately,
the most severe side effects, including severe allergic reactions, are only
thought to happen in less than 1 out of a million doses. And although these
types of severe reactions can be life threatening, they are often treatable,
just like severe allergic reactions to peanuts. For others, like encephalitis,
although they are table injuries, it isn’t clear that they are even side
effects of vaccines, since they occur so rarely.
“All of
these side effects can be reported to the Vaccine Adverse Reporting System (VAERS),
either by your doctor or yourself. No medical product or intervention, from
aspirin to heart surgery, can ever be guaranteed 100% safe. Even though we will
never be able to ensure 100% safety, we know that the risks of
vaccine-preventable diseases by far outweigh those of the vaccines administered
to prevent them. (World Health Organization)"
Vaccines have been so successful that
the original urgency and risks have been lost:
“Finally,
the increase in the number of vaccines and the consequent decline in vaccine-preventable
illnesses have focused attention by both health professionals and parents on
vaccine usefulness and safety. Because vaccination programs have been
successful, VPD (vaccine-preventable diseases) are
becoming less visible and many individuals, as well as health professionals,
have no first-hand knowledge of the risks of the diseases. Indeed, attention is
more often directed to the risk, or alleged risk, of the vaccines rather than
to the risk of the diseases. That is why it can be argued that ‘vaccination is
victim of its own success.’ In addition, some new vaccines prevent diseases
perceived as mild (e.g., chickenpox or gastroenteritis), which can compromise
their acceptability.”
An
overview of the incredible amount of reduction in major diseases in the past
century to the year 2006 offers a lens on past and present risks:
Disease
|
Baseline 20th Century Annual Cases
|
2006 Cases
|
Percent Decrease
|
Measles
|
503,282
|
55
|
99.9%
|
Diphtheria
|
175,885
|
0
|
100%
|
Mumps
|
152,209
|
6,584
|
95.7%
|
Pertussis (Whooping Cough)
|
147,271
|
15,632
|
89.4%
|
Smallpox
|
48,164
|
0
|
100%
|
Rubella
|
47,745
|
11
|
99.9%
|
Haemophilus influenzae type b, invasive (HiB)
|
20,000
|
29
|
99.9%
|
Polio
|
16,316
|
0
|
100%
|
Tetanus
|
1,314
|
41
|
96.9%
|
Another
overview:
"Before smallpox was eradicated with a vaccine, it killed an
estimated 500 million people. And just 60 years ago, polio paralyzed 16,000
Americans every year, while rubella caused birth defects and mental retardation
in as many as 20,000 newborns. Measles infected 4 million children, killing
3,000 annually, and a bacterium called Haemophilus influenzae type b caused Hib
meningitis in more than 15,000 children, leaving many with permanent brain
damage. Infant mortality and abbreviated life spans — now regarded as a third
world problem — were a first world reality.”
Thinking with one’s emotions and
instincts instead of thinking rationally and logically leads to a warped
perception of risk:
“Professor
Slovic and Professor Fischhoff and others have found that a risk imposed upon a
person, like mandatory vaccination programs (nearly all of which allow people
to opt out), feels scarier than the same risk if taken voluntarily. Risk
perception also depends on trust. A risk created by a source you don’t trust
will feel scarier. The anti-vaccination movement is thick with mistrust of
government and the drug industry. Finally, risks that are human-made, like
vaccines, evoke more worry than risks that are natural. Some parents who refuse
to have their kids vaccinated say they are willing to accept the risk of the
disease, because the disease is ‘natural.’
“Still,
shouldn’t our wonderful powers of reason be able to overcome these instinctive impediments
to clear thinking? The neuroscience of fear makes clear that such hope is
hubris. Work on the neural roots of fear by the neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux of
New York University, and others, has found that in the complex interplay of
slower, conscious reason and quicker, subconscious emotion and instinct, the
basic architecture of the brain ensures that we feel first and think second.
The part of the brain where the instinctive ‘fight or flight’ signal is first
triggered — the amygdala — is situated such that it receives incoming stimuli
before the parts of the brain that think things over. Then, in our ongoing
response to potential peril, the way the brain is built and operates assures
that we are likely to feel more and think less. As Professor LeDoux puts it in
‘The Emotional Brain’: “the wiring of the brain ….. is such that connections from the emotional
systems to the cognitive systems are stronger than connections from the
cognitive systems to the emotional systems.”
Additional Resources
50 Anti-Vaccine Myths and Misinformation: Myths That Keep Parents From Vaccinating Their Kids https://www.verywellfamily.com/anti-vaccine-myths-and-misinformation-2633730
10 hypocrisies/double standards of the anti-vaccine movement https://thelogicofscience.com/2015/07/13/10-hypocrisiesdouble-standards-of-the-anti-vaccine-movement/
Vaccine Ingredients and Safety: A Close-Up Look https://www.chemicalsafetyfacts.org/chemistry-context/vaccine-ingredients-and-safety-a-close-up-look/
Related Posts
The Amish & Autism: Latest Anti-Vax Lie http://www.mybestbuddymedia.com/2017/08/the-amish-autism-latest-anti-vax-lie.html
Kids & Autism: Peer-Reviewed Studies That Make Anti-Vaxxers Squirm http://www.mybestbuddymedia.com/2016/07/kids-autism-peer-reviewed-studies-that.html
Anti-Vaccine: Fraud, Paranoia & Vulnerable Children at Risk http://www.mybestbuddymedia.com/2014/12/anti-vaccine-fraud-paranoia-vulnerable.html
How To Avoid Bad Medical Advice: A Basic Guideline http://www.mybestbuddymedia.com/2016/05/how-to-avoid-bad-medical-advice-basic.html
Well-Meaning Parents Placing Their Children At Risk http://www.mybestbuddymedia.com/2017/01/well-meaning-parents-placing-their.html
It’s Complicated! How Apathy Leads To Risky Medical Decisions http://www.mybestbuddymedia.com/2017/02/its-complicated-how-apathy-leads-to.html
Jerry De Luca is a Christian freelance writer who loves perusing dozens of interesting and informative publications. When he finds any useful info he summarizes it, taking the main points, and creates a (hopefully) helpful blog post.
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Good post. I learn something totally new and challenging on sites I stumbleupon on a
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