[ad_1]
I open the email from a Facebook friend who recently told me he was against the Covid-19 vaccination, and scan it instead of reading it. It’s long and filled with rabbit arguments and obscure connections. Towards the end, he offensively compares the vaccination cards with the yellow Holocaust stars.
I breathe and try to remember that perspective, that feeling of being so sure that I was right and that almost all of modern science was wrong. I am often angry with my friend and others like them who refuse to be vaccinated against Covid-19, but then I have to remember that I am no better than them: for several years I have systematically refused all childhood vaccines for my daughter, leaving her unprotected against a dozen highly contagious and potentially fatal diseases until grade two.
The difference between me and the Covid-19 anti-vaxxers is that I was lucky enough to be anti-vaxxers when there was no pandemic. If I keep that perspective in mind, then the silent advocacy I have done to push Covid anti-vaccines to get vaccinated may sound like a small form of penance.
advertising
I spend most of my days running a large Facebook forum that facilitates peer support for people with type 1 diabetes and their families. For the past two months, I have regularly posted nudges on the forum to encourage people – especially those who are hesitant – to get vaccinated against Covid-19. These messages have been seen by tens of thousands of people. I have also posted an open invitation to my Facebook friends to tell me if they have any concerns about the vaccine. My hope is to reach vaccine skeptics before their beliefs solidify, as it can be nearly impossible to reach them after this point, a lesson I know from hard experience.
I didn’t wake up one day and suddenly became wary of childhood vaccinations. It happened over time, step by step down a road paved with good intentions until I got to a point where I was so sure the vaccinations were dangerous that I was willing to lie. to the school officials and to say that I had a religious objection to them.
advertising
After graduating from college, I fell in love with natural life, both for my health and for the health of the planet. I went vegan, drove less, and tried to live simply. I also surrounded myself with friends and information sources who strengthened my belief system in natural life, essentially creating an echo chamber.
The trick with the quest to live naturally is that you can always find ways to live. even more naturally. I started reading sketchy books that took unrelated data points and created pseudo-scientific narratives to explain how “healthy living” was all that was needed to protect against disease. Every choice I made to live naturally was like a shield against all ailments, enough that I was shocked when a dentist told me I had cavities.
My daughter was born during the height of hysteria because of a now debunked theory linking vaccinations and an increase in autism. I convinced myself that the best thing for my daughter was to not get the vaccine, employing some weird sort of logic to “protect” her from the one thing that would really protect her from a potentially horrible disease.
Once I took such a drastic and dangerous step, I became relatively insensitive to doubt. I had the education to understand the scientific method, access to good medical research that proved vaccines to be very safe and effective, and a lot of pressure from doctors and family members to vaccinate. . Yet I still held on to my anti-vax beliefs. It was like a religion, and to doubt that vaccines were dangerous was to admit to myself that I had made a horrible mistake that put my daughter’s life in danger. The stakes were too high to be wrong.
I wish I could say I had a scientific revelation, which could be replicated with other anti-vaccines, but it was a slow, personal journey sparked by a divorce that caused me to re-evaluate all aspects of my life. life. During this process, I was fortunate to have the support of people who patiently pushed me to reassess my stance against vaccines. I have also been fortunate to find an editor position for several diabetes publications, which has taught me all aspects of the Food and Drug Administration process for approving new treatments.
My daughter finally received his vaccines, my son was vaccinated on time and when the Covid-19 vaccine received emergency clearance, I rushed to do it.
I am now trying to advocate online for vaccination, especially for the Covid-19 vaccine. It hasn’t always been pleasant. I have received messages telling me to keep my politics out of the diabetes forum, or to do things anatomically impossible to me.
The first few times I posted posts on Facebook asking people to get the Covid-19 vaccine, the comments section was filled with dozens of anti-vax rants riddled with misinformation. And because Facebook’s algorithm rewards interactions, whether good or bad, these posts have been shared by more and more people and inserted by Facebook’s algorithm into more and more feeds. It made me fear that I would do more harm than good.
I recently turned off comments for my vaccine posts, which limits people choosing emojis for these posts rather than writing their opinions about them. Doing this helped me see that the positive reactions to these posts about the pro-Covid-19 vaccine far outnumber the negative ones – they just hadn’t translated into comments before.
And as Delta’s outbreak worsens, I’m starting to get questions from unvaccinated people who are starting to consider getting vaccinated for the first time. They don’t say if they had been scared of the vaccine before or opposed it, but I suspect some are coming off their own anti-vaccine journey.
Hopefully, this kind of niche outreach could further increase official efforts to increase the Covid-19 vaccination rate in the United States, although I know it will only reach a relatively small group. And that probably won’t influence the hardened anti-vaccines, which will have to find their own way, like I did.
All I and others like me can do is reach out to those who can be reached, and I hope this helps us protect ourselves from those who cannot.
Craig Idlebrook is editor for Informa, administrator of Type 1 diabetes support and information on Facebook, and a freelance writer.
[ad_2]
Source link