How to talk to an anti-vaxxer
Not all vaccine resisters are alike, and I’ll concede that a good portion of them are likely beyond convincing.
You probably wouldn’t be able to talk these guys into getting vaccinated:
Nor these guys:
And something tells me this guy is too far gone:
That said, most vaccine-skeptical people aren’t out there harassing schoolchildren and literally killing health care professionals. They’re the ones who can be pulled back from the abyss.
This CBC story explains how relatives of one anti-vaxxer were able to change his mind:
Jason Lerato says he spent years as a self-proclaimed "anti-vaxxer," and it wasn't until recently that he had a change of perspective.
"For 20 years plus, you know I guess I could label myself … as a poster child or flag holder for all things anti-vaxx, maybe even as far as saying, 'Don't trust in the government' either," said Lerato. "That is definitely what I breathed and lived."
Lerato, 47, is a dispatcher for a trucking company and a married father of two who lives in Winnipeg. He got his second COVID-19 vaccine shot a few weeks ago thanks to a single, calm conversation with health-care professionals in his family.
He never attended anti-vaccine rallies or protests, though he still acted on his convictions when he identified as anti-vaccine.
Lerato said he shared anti-vaccine content on social media to thousands of followers on Twitter before he recently deleted his account.
One time he pulled his daughters, both in Grade 6 at the time, from class the day the school ran an in-house HPV vaccine clinic.
[…]
Lerato went to a wedding a month-and-a-half ago steadfast in his belief, but he left in a different state.
His wife's oldest son got married at an outdoor wedding. Lerato knew going into it he was likely to be the only unvaccinated person in attendance.
He also knew his wife's sister and brother-in-law were in the medical field and would be there. That had him bracing for a talk.
"Right to the very minute when it started even, I thought, nope, they're not going to change my mind," he said.
But they did change his mind.
"I, for three hours, just expressed my concerns, my fears, my thoughts and instead of a coercive conversation it was very much sincere from the heart, 'Jason here's the facts.'"
Those facts surrounded three primary questions from Lerato.
He asked them about the odds of him contracting COVID-19, or the delta variant in particular, were he not to get vaccinated. They explained his chances were very high; it was more a question of when, and they said he was likely to end up in hospital or worse if infected.
That prompted another question: if he were to get the shot, what were the chances of still getting COVID-19? At the time Lerato believed getting the shot would be worse for him than not having it.
"They said, 'Well, you might still carry COVID or delta, but it's not going to affect you the same way, and chances of you going to the hospital or death is extremely low,'" he said.
The brother-in-law then said he, being double-vaccinated, was more of a danger to Lerato than Lerato was to him.
"I said how? He said, 'Because I could be carrying delta or COVID but it won't affect me really because I'm vaccinated. So, if I give you a handshake or give you a hug and you're not vaccinated, you're going to get it.' It kind of woke me up."
The conversation was long and slow. What was once a firm conviction of 20 years gradually fell away. It was a combination of what they said and how they said it, according to Lerato.
"They were very sincere, instead of being pushy or making my thoughts seem ridiculous," he said.
It will take a combination of carrots and sticks to get people vaccinated against COVID-19, and my thing is that we have to use the sticks at the wholesale level and carrots at the retail level.
When speaking directly to the vaccine hesitant, berating and insulting them is unlikely to change their minds, and may in fact make them dig in even further.
From the top down, however, we will have to be more forceful. The Golden State Warriors’ Andrew Wiggins, for one, could only be convinced when faced with the prospect of losing 41 paycheques.
And if all else fails, we can sic Gus Fring on them:
“If you don’t want to vaccinate, go to a small island and sequester yourself,” the Mandalorian and Better Call Saul actor says. “[Otherwise] you’re saying ‘Fuck you’ to all you other human beings. We all have to do it if we want to live. I don’t understand how people don’t vaccinate. For me, I’ve lost dear friends, so I know it’s real. Not only in Europe but in America, friends who were completely healthy and uncompromised. The vaccine is the answer. I’m not downing anyone who doesn’t want to vaccinate. Don’t work. Go ride it out somewhere where you’re not going to compromise anyone else if you get it.”
You should be able to criticize the Chinese government without being accused of anti-Chinese racism, but Emerson College apparently doesn’t see it that way:
Emerson College suspended a campus chapter of conservative student group Turning Point USA on Oct. 1 after members passed out stickers critical of China’s government. Today, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education is demanding the private institution drop its investigation against the students and reaffirm its promises of free expression.
On Sept. 29, several TPUSA members passed out stickers featuring a hammer and sickle with the caption “CHINA KINDA SUS” — slang for “suspicious.”
The next day, Emerson’s International Student Affairs team sent out a statement to the college’s international students decrying the “stickers that expressed anti-China hate.” Emerson Interim President William Gilligan sent a separate email to the student body in which he promised that “the College will initiate an investigation.”
Under pressure from other student groups who accused TPUSA of anti-Asian bias and xenophobia, including the Emerson Chinese Student Association, the college launched an investigation into the group. In an Instagram video, the TPUSA chapter said the stickers are critical of the Chinese government, not the Chinese people.
On Oct. 1, the TPUSA chapter’s leaders received a letter from Julie Rothhaar-Sanders, Emerson’s director of community standards, stating that the college had launched a formal investigation of TPUSA under Emerson’s Bias-Related Behavior and Invasion of Privacy policies. While the investigation is active, TPUSA faces “interim action,” meaning the group is barred from normal activities, such as hosting events or reserving campus space for meetings.
“If anything is ‘kinda sus,’ it’s Emerson’s overblown response to the stickers,” said FIRE attorney Adam Steinbaugh, who wrote today’s letter to Emerson. “This investigation will cause students and faculty to suspect that their rights mean nothing to the college. Emerson must make this right by immediately dropping the investigation and affirming that criticism of a foreign government is not discriminatory harassment.”
Yeah, I know, it’s Turning Point USA. But their right to criticize a foreign government is every other Emerson student’s right to criticize a foreign government, or even their own.
I wonder how the college would have reacted if it was an “Israel kinda sus” sticker?