Talk:Vaccine hesitancy

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Vaccine hesitancy article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find medical sources: Source guidelines · PubMed · Cochrane · DOAJ · Gale · OpenMD · ScienceDirect · Springer · Trip · Wiley · TWL

Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5: 5 months

The contentious topics procedure applies to this page. This page is related to pseudoscience and fringe science, which has been designated as a contentious topic.

Editors who repeatedly or seriously fail to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, any expected standards of behaviour, or any normal editorial process may be blocked or restricted by an administrator. Editors are advised to familiarise themselves with the contentious topics procedures before editing this page.

Skepticism Top‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Skepticism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of science, pseudoscience, pseudohistory and skepticism related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SkepticismWikipedia:WikiProject SkepticismTemplate:WikiProject SkepticismSkepticism articles
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.

Medicine High‑importance

	Medicine portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Medicine, which recommends that medicine-related articles follow the Manual of Style for medicine-related articles and that biomedical information in any article use high-quality medical sources. Please visit the project page for details or ask questions at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine.MedicineWikipedia:WikiProject MedicineTemplate:WikiProject Medicinemedicine articles
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Chiropractic Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Chiropractic, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Chiropractic on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ChiropracticWikipedia:WikiProject ChiropracticTemplate:WikiProject ChiropracticChiropractic articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Autism High‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Autism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of all aspects of autism and autistic culture on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.AutismWikipedia:WikiProject AutismTemplate:WikiProject AutismAutism articles
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Microbiology High‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Microbiology, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Microbiology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.MicrobiologyWikipedia:WikiProject MicrobiologyTemplate:WikiProject MicrobiologyMicrobiology articles
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Viruses High‑importance

	Viruses portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Viruses, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of viruses on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.VirusesWikipedia:WikiProject VirusesTemplate:WikiProject Virusesvirus articles
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Alternative views High‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Alternative views, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's coverage of significant alternative views in every field, from the sciences to the humanities. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion.Alternative viewsWikipedia:WikiProject Alternative viewsTemplate:WikiProject Alternative viewsAlternative views articles
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Alternative medicine

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Alternative medicine, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Alternative medicine related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Alternative medicineWikipedia:WikiProject Alternative medicineTemplate:WikiProject Alternative medicineAlternative medicine articles

Page notices and readership

Do not feed the trolls!
This article or its talk page has experienced trolling. The subject may be controversial or otherwise objectionable, but it is important to keep discussion on a high level. Do not get bogged down in endless debates that don't lead anywhere. Know when to deny recognition and refer to WP:PSCI, WP:FALSEBALANCE, WP:WIKIVOICE, or relevant notice-boards. Legal threats and trolling are never allowed!

This article has been mentioned by a media organization:

Caroline O'Donovan (23 February 2019). "YouTube Just Demonetized Anti-Vax Channels". BuzzFeed News. Retrieved 23 February 2019.

Tip: Anchors are case-sensitive in most browsers.

This article links to one or more target anchors that no longer exist.

[[Fear of needles#Treatment|treatments for fear of needles]] The anchor (#Treatment) has been deleted.

Please help fix the broken anchors. You can remove this template after fixing the problems. | Reporting errors

Split Anti-vaccine activism from Vaccine hesitancy

These should be two different articles, as there is a distinct culture of anti-vaccine activism that goes above and beyond mere hesitancy. BD2412 T 18:18, 5 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: I have started Draft:Anti-vaccine activism to this end. BD2412 T 23:23, 5 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support proposal to split. -Location (talk) 22:28, 5 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Anti-vaccine activism has now been moved to mainspace. BD2412 T 17:39, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Non-neutral language

The leading photograph shows an anti-vaccination activist wearing a poster that says, "Kids have a 99.99% Survival rate with natural immunity." The label says, "An anti-vaccination person wearing a false claim that children can be effectively protected from disease solely by natural immunity"

I have two problems with this. The first is that the poster does not use the word solely. That was made up by a Wiki-editor. The second is the word false. Whether the poster is stupid or whether the wearer was trying to put across a false message is beside the point. If you are going to say a message is false you need to have reliable citation that the actual message is false. No such citation exists because the poster is not false. The mortality rate of the common cold, for example, when left to a child's natural immunity, is less than 0.01%. The same applies to most childhood medical problems. (These are actually cuts and other wounds that could be treated with an anti-tetanus jab.) The entire article states very clearly (and has reliable references) that an anti-vaccination stance is wrong on many levels. There is no need to add propaganda. OrewaTel (talk) 19:51, 13 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It's false. The data from just one disease proves it wrong CDC measles data without even considering everything else that vaccines have been produced for. Black Kite (talk) 20:02, 13 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Well maybe we should get rid of that picture. If you make any claim VAGUE enough, it can be true, like that one...who knows what disease that guy is referring to...rickets? ---Avatar317 ^(talk) 00:59, 14 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The photograph was taken at a protest in Leicester, England in October 2021 for the movement "Against Vaccine Passports UK". The man in the photo is wearing a T-shirt with the letters "AGAINST VACCINE PASSPORTS .COM". Though the domain name has been taken over, here is an archived version of the website.

The poster relates directly to Vaccine passports during the COVID-19 pandemic which has a section for "Arguments and controversy § Natural immunity".

What I'm saying is that the poster most definitely was about vaccine hesitancy (during Covid, in particular), and not simply about natural immunity of ALL childhood diseases (such as colds). I'm pretty sure the anti-vaxxers were using the 99.99% figure (compiled pre-Covid) to forward their message of "I don't want to get a Covid vaccine and damn sure don't want a vaccine passport to hinder my travelling". Grorp (talk) 02:35, 14 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

If you are going to take a single disease then make it smallpox that has a very high mortality rate. (Measles tends to be survivable.) But the point is that the vast majority of childhood illnesses are not fatal. I would like to replace the caption by, "An imbecile wearing a particularly stupid notice" but that would not be encyclopaedic language. I've replaced the word false by misleading as being more accurate. OrewaTel (talk) 22:56, 2 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Rfc - Richard D. Gill and Kate Shemirani

There's an ongoing RfC at Talk:Richard D. Gill#Rfc - Kate Shemirani radio show appearance of relevance to this subject. Structuralists (talk) 21:21, 2 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestions for expansion

I cannot edit the article at this time. I wanted to add a section to safety concerns about adverse effects in vaccines. I have several examples which are specifically linked to vaccine hesitancy. The Dengue Fever vaccine case in the Philipines which resulted in increased complications from infection: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/05/03/719037789/botched-vaccine-launch-has-deadly-repercussions

As well as Polio vaccine rollouts in Africa which caused Polio cases: https://www.science.org/content/article/first-polio-cases-linked-new-oral-vaccine-detected-africa Puerto de Nile (talk) 01:30, 15 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

These are interesting articles but they do not show that these vaccines are the cause of vaccine hesitancy. Whilst this information may be useful in the Vaccination article, it does not belong here. OrewaTel (talk) 06:59, 15 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Though in the latter Polio article, the reason why an improved vaccine caused an issue was ironically because not many of the population had taken up the vaccine. Black Kite (talk) 10:46, 15 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps we could add a section that points out that vaccine hesitancy leaves the unvaccinated vulnerable to disease through vaccine shedding. This, however, is an unusual situation. The normal Covid vaccine, for example, cannot shed viruses that have the ability to infect. Nevertheless if there are enough documented cases where vaccine hesitancy put people at risk because of an immunisation programme then we should note the fact.

OrewaTel (talk) 00:46, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Here is the quote in the NPR article relating to vaccine hesitancy:

Since the Dengvaxia controversy, the confidence in vaccines among Philippine parents has plummeted from 82% in 2015 to only 21% in 2018, a recent study found. Over that same time span, the proportion of parents who strongly believe vaccines are important has fallen from 93% to 32%.

As result, vaccine coverage for childhood diseases in the Philippines, such as the measles, has dropped, WHO says. And the Philippines is now facing a large measles outbreak, with more than 26,000 cases and more than 355 deaths during 2019.

More generally, for this article I don't understand why vaccine complications are not addressed more substantially as a source of vaccine hesitancy Puerto de Nile (talk) 03:31, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]