One thing I’ve noticed listening to some anti-vaxxers is that they’ll often talk about fertility concerns, sometimes going as far as claiming that the vaxxed are infertile or that being around vaccinated people can affect your mensuration cycle, etc.
To put my Freudian hat on: I think these false and bizarre claims are ways of confronting—and deflecting—a more general fertility angst. These claims might derive from a woman’s personal concerns over her biological clock, or worries about her children.
The American White population is not just growing at a slower pace than other races—it is in outright decline. I don’t think most anti-vaxxers know about this exact statistic, but I do think they feel it.
Similarly, life expectancy in the U.S. started declining in 2016—again, coinciding with the rise of Trump. Basically, politics got existential, as many of the confronting lies—the “American Dream,” the “New Economy,” the “liberation of Iraq—were revealed to be lies.
So, the anti-vax goofball are in touch with something—a feeling—even though they are objectively wrong and rather inconsistent in their opposition to vaccinations.
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