You Can Ignore Anti-Vaccine Arguments

The United States seems to have temporarily turned a corner on the COVID-19 pandemic. Cases have dropped consistently from their peak in September. Deaths have begun a steady decline as well, falling below 2,000 by the end of September and dropping to around 1,600 by October 15th according to the New York Times. Vaccinations also remain much higher than their lows from the summer. Approximately one million people are being vaccinated every day, more than double the average in mid-July. The combination of mitigation policies, vaccinations, and naturally acquired immunity may mean that future waves of the virus are curbed and American society can start contemplating a low COVID future.

These developments have, of course, not blunted the discourse surrounding vaccinations. Battles online and in the media rage every day between supporters and opponents of the vaccines. These debates sometimes spill over into the realm of policy and business, like when Republican governors restrict vaccine mandates or major companies punish the vaccine hesitant.

Vaccines should not be a forbidden or taboo topic for discussion. But many of these debates are ultimately circular and nonsensical. They involve little more than attention-seekers publishing inflammatory stories, opinions, and conspiracies about the vaccines which are then roundly mocked and dismissed by vaccine supporters. Then… the exact same process happens again, and again, and again, and has for the better part of a year. The debate goes nowhere at this point, and it needs to end.

The question of free speech permeates discussions about the validity of vaccines. Anti-vax activists argue that their right to free speech gives them the right to refuse the vaccine and tell others their reasoning for that refusal. Vaccine supporters sometimes believe that they are required to respond lest those ideas go unchecked. Their response usually comes in the form of erstwhile discussion of specific topics as well as a strong dose of mockery, especially if the anti-vaxxer in question is clearly a conservative. As CNNs Don Lemon argued back in September, “if behavior is idiotic and nonsensical, I think that you need to tell people that their behavior is idiotic and nonsensical.” The belief is that shouting these individuals down and shaming them will help convert them one day and blount the impact of their messaging towards others.

At many points, debate and discussion was certainly needed for the vaccine. Hesitancy made sense in the early months. It had been over fifty years since the last all-encompassing vaccine drive in the United States. Politicians on both the left and the right had sowed doubts about the vaccination process. Republicans questioned the general validity of the COVID-19 pandemic and were automatically weary about a substance designed to end it, while some elements on the left had challenged corporate medicine and traditional Western approaches to medicine for decades. The nation needed time to learn more about these vaccines, what doses should be taken, and how those doses should be administered. They also needed data to show that the vaccine could actually blunt the worst impacts of the virus. Therefore, there was a need to engage with opponents of vaccines, listen to their concerns, and challenge those assertions with established facts.

But this approach has long entered the realm of diminishing returns. Hundreds of millions of Americans have received COVID-19 vaccines without significant side effects. Many lives have been saved as well. The recent Delta variant peak saw a deaths per day peak 30% lower than last winter’s peak. Studies have shown the safety and efficacy of the vaccine for nearly every age group and a number of vulnerable populations such as the elderly and pregnant women. The evidence is so profound that many major companies and the federal government have introduced vaccine mandates in the past few months. Even in an era of labor shortages, they are firing thousands of employees who refuse to get vaccinated.

The question is settled. Nevertheless, the debate on vaccines rages on. Most opponents have resorted to bad-faith arguments. They repeat the same talking points, introduce baseless conspiracies, or make specious accusations about the deaths of prominent people or the strength of the Delta variant. These arguments seem to intensify even as vaccination numbers remain high and the spread of the virus slows.

The fear is that by fighting this endless battle over vaccinations, vaccine supporters risk alienating the people who have not already been won over to one side or the other. There is the chance that arguing with someone over a conspiracy will inadvertently amplify that conspiracy: the reader will notice the original text and not the correction. A third reader may also ignore the substance of the argument and simply see it as a partisan point. They may agree with vaccines but not like the prominent liberal making a particular argument about them. Engagement runs the risk of amplifying otherwise marginalized ideas and keeping vaccine hesitancy high.

Instead of engagement, one potential tactic would be to simply ignore anti-vax sentiment. Whenever anti-vaxxers respond to the latest news event, responsible people throughout the world can choose not to engage. They can use settings on Twitter and Facebook to block anti-vax posts. They can mute the terms and bad-faith actors who propagate these ideas for clicks like some websites such as YouTube have done. Instead of quote-tweeting, they can use the block feature. There is no requirement that sober-minded Americans engage with whatever topic led Tucker Carlson’s show last night. Thousands and thousands of topics on major and minor news networks are broadcast without being tweeted about once.

There are a number of precedents for this approach. Every day on social media and message boards, there are debates about topics entirely outside of the pale of 21st century discourse. Posters use recent news stories to back up their racist, sexist, or conspiratorial worldview. They organize the occasional public rally and hold both public and private meetings. The First Amendment allows them to meet and share their ideas, but they are not given any attention by the vast majority of news media members. American society has decided that their ideas do not need amplifying or discussion. Anti-vax activists need to be placed in this same area as the cesspools of men’s rights activists or successors to the Daily Stormer.

Anti-vax sentiment will not go away. It continues to serve as the underpinning to radical segments of the Republican Party. Pundits have made their careers on fighting the vaccine at every turn and have no incentive to give up their current livelihoods. And in some instances, it does still make sense to engage in discussions about vaccine policies. American society has still not fully decided on the validity of boosters or the true incidence of side effects. But the basic question of the safety and importance of vaccines has become an established fact that anti-vaxxers are fighting as trolls instead of serious skeptics. It is time to move past the anti-vax discussion and voluntarily, graciously say no to the culture war.