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You Might Be An Antivaxxer If…
Are you an antivaxxer or just vaccine-hesitant?
Lately, anti-vaccine people and the organizations they belong to have been complaining a lot that people and the media are labeling them as “antivaxxers.” They claim that “antivaxxer” is some sort of pejorative term, with some going as far as saying that calling someone an “antivaxxer” is the same as calling them the n-word. (It isn’t the same.) In 2021, with the advent of the COVID-19 vaccines, vaccine hesitancy is taking center stage in public health discussions because many communities will not reach the necessary level of vaccination to stop their local epidemics if they are not able to convince vaccine-hesitant people to get the vaccine.
So what is the difference between an antivaxxer and a vaccine-hesitant person? How can we in public health tailor our messages to either group? Is there more to vaccine hesitancy than just scientific illiteracy?
A few months ago, I was interviewed for a podcast, and one of the questions I got was about people who are vaccine-hesitant and where I draw the line between regular doubts about vaccines and hardcore anti-vaccine activism. So, with only a few moments to think about it, I classified those people into three groups that are not mutually exclusive nor collectively exhaustive: