Thread by @juliaoftoronto

THREAD: Some take-aways from a major global @wellcometrust survey about vaccines, science, and society:

1) higher-income countries (France!) are among the least confident in vaccines.

2) vaccine trust is highest where preventable diseases still spread (Bangladesh, Rwanda).

In other words, the further people are from the memory of vaccine-preventable diseases like whooping cough and measles, the more likely they are to doubt vaccines, says @GaviSeth:

3) in people who report a religious affiliation, more than half said they would side with their religious teachings in a disagreement between science and their religion. This can mean many things but it helps explain an uncomfortable truth about vaccines...

Religious beliefs unite many communities where outbreaks have been spreading lately. And it's not just in the US; it's global:

vox.com/2019/6/19/1868…

There are Christian concerns that the measles vaccine was originally derived from cells obtained from an elective abortion in the 1960s.
khn.org/morning-breako…

There are Muslim concerns the vaccine is not halal.
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/i…

In other cases, religious communities — Amish, Orthodox Jewish, etc. — have been targeted with vaccine misinformation.

vox.com/science-and-he…

The lobbying efforts of Christian Scientists — who have openly discouraged vaccination for being in conflict with religious belief — helped pass the religious vaccine exemptions that are now law in **45 states** across the US.

It's not easy to talk about this but we have to.

Public health needs to get religious communities on side.

We’re living in a moment where we have to fear measles again because enough people are opting out of the vaccine that the virus is spreading again.

If we don’t address every driver of vaccine refusal, this health crisis won’t improve.

END