i have struggled w sharing this for YEARS, but a few years ago i did extensive research for a school paper on anti-vaxxer movement. i was angry, and wanted to find out why people endanger others when the solution (vaccines) is right there. https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/1390245705432793089

almost EVERY source i read had one answer: the scientific community failed us. the current anti-vaxx movement was heavily influenced and even attributed largely to a doctor. his claims were published in a respected medical journal in 1998. the article wasn’t retracted until 2010.

this is on top of the many very good and valid reasons people have to mistrust doctors and the medical establishment in the first place. it isn’t irrational to not trust doctors or their advice because of a fear of the medical industrial complex.

the medical and scientific community has terrorized people of color, particularly Black and Indigenous people, for hundreds of years; and they continue to do so. the medical scientific community is racist, ableist, homophobic, and violent...to this day.

so they never had people’s trust to really begin with and then they took a morally superior stance to anti-vaxxers. this is easy for us regular people to do, but as a medical professional, you are expected to move with more empathy for those in your care

at every turn, the majority of the scientific community takes a morally superior stance. they act as if science is value-free, and they ignore the history of violence that led to this point of huge mistrust in them.

especially when it comes to public health initiatives like vaccinations; this is extremely harmful. it reinforces the fears and validates of the conspiratorial aspects of the anti-vaxxers.