#Thread: Why are people #antivax? My mom's answer to "why?" has changed over time. When I was young, she told me that she was more worried about #vaccine side effects than she was about me catching a vax preventable disease (#VPD).
As I've asked her about the issue over time & pushed back against some of her beliefs, she's given me a lot of different answers:
false link to #autism;
"#toxins;"
fear that babies' immune systems aren't developed enough to handle so many shots at once;
"Big Pharma;"
VAERS;
etc
Overall, she had a gut feeling when she first became a #mom that #vaccines are scary & if anything happened to me because she vaccinated, she'd feel guilty.
By comparison, VPDs at the time were rare & IF I caught one, she thought it wouldn't be serious, or that she wouldn't feel responsible in the same way as a "#vaxinjury."
Think of the question of whether you pull the train track lever to save one person or do nothing and let the train hit 20 people. It's a moral dilemma & a question of how #responsibilty is perceived.
If you take action to pull the lever (#vaccinate) & it results in a bad outcome, then YOU did that. If you let the train go as it was (don't vaccinate), then the result (more fatalities or getting a VPD) is an act of God, or of nature, a horrible accident, but not your fault.
Over time as my mom felt judged & increasingly defensive about her #antivax stance, she dug in & started throwing out any plausible-sounding reason for her decision.
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.