Thread by @EdConwaySky

You know the theory that the public is turning against vaccines, egged on by anti-vaccination conspiracy theorists on social media? What if that theory itself turned out to be a conspiracy theory?
A thread, based on my @thetimes column today: thetimes.co.uk/article/dd5181…

Lemme be clear: I'm not going to make a point abt the efficacy/safety of vaccines; I'll leave that to others. I'm questioning whether public opinion is indeed swinging towards vax scepticism. Plenty suspect it is (sorry @daaronovitch I know you don’t write the headlines but:)

Vaccine scepticism catastrophism (sorry for double -ism) has gone into overdrive since #COVID19 for understandable reasons. Epidemiologists reckon even a 100% effective vaccine (& the initial ones are likely be less than that) wld need 60-70% take-up for it to be truly effective)

Cue scary headlines in newspapers, based on surveys on both sides of the Atlantic. The majority of Americans wouldn’t take a vaccine! A third of Britons wouldn’t!
Now, I love surveys. I also like looking at the small print and if you do that the findings look a tad different...

Most of the surveys showing a majority of Americans are against a vaccine are on the specific basis that they’d have to take it in the next few weeks. Eg a rushed out vaccine. You don’t have to be an anti-vax campaigner or even a vaccine sceptic to think twice about that.

Some caution is perfectly rational when you consider the history. In 1976, as Ford battled Carter, a flu outbreak sparked fears of a pandemic. A vaccine was rushed out, millions took it. The pandemic didn't happen but the vaccine had terrible side-effects en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_swin…

But here’s the interesting thing. While some say this was the moment the anti-vax movement began to build up support, the popularity of flu vaccinations ROSE sharply in the following decades (following an understandable dip post-1976). Blue line is flu vaccination coverage:

How about in the UK where we are sometimes told vax popularity never really recovered from the Andrew Wakefield scandal? Again, data suggests precisely the opposite: sharp fall in MMR coverage post-Wakefield but then, just like the US, it bounced back to HIGHER than pre-Wakefield

Clearly these trends didn't happen in a vacuum. There were BIG public health campaigns. Point is: people DID listen to the campaigns. They DON'T seem to have been put off vaccines by anti-vax info. In stark contrast to the conventional wisdom spouted by some of the intelligentsia

If you don’t believe me, at least take it this recent paper which finds little evidence of rising anti-vax feeling, concluding “It is essential that we, the public health community, do not contribute to making the problem appear bigger than it actually is” sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

Worth saying: there has been a gradual decline in vax coverage over recent years but the authors of that report say it's hard to trace it to anti-vax campaigning. PLUS, just a few weeks ago (eg after the paper) new stats show vax coverage ROSE last year. digital.nhs.uk/data-and-infor…

That paper 👆 also finds that there's actually more PRO-than ANTI-vaccination activity on social media, and the volume of anti-vax stuff actually decreased since 2014. Hmm. Not v consistent with the narrative that Facebook & Twitter are undermining public health!

Why are some people so convinced, despite the evidence to the contrary, that we're heading for vaccine catastrophe? Is it because they rather suspect the great unwashed public are incapable of thinking for themselves, or deciding who to believe?

Reality is Britons are keen on vaccines but are, perfectly reasonably, sceptical abt anything rushed out. They're not being brainwashed. They're capable of filtering advice & making their own minds up. Why pretend the world is scarier than it already is? thetimes.co.uk/article/dd5181…