Vaccines really do work, and have saved millions of lives — indeed, it’s perhaps the biggest irony in medicine that one of the most effective and beneficial interventions known to humanity is the one that’s regarded with the most mistrust and suspicion. With the Prime Minister, we might ask: why can’t these recalcitrant anti-vaccine fools just trust the experts? [...]
It does feel somewhat ironic that The Lancet in particular is taking the lead in publicising the research on Covid-19 vaccines: besides being a super-prestigious medical journal, the main public claim to fame of that particular journal is in publishing one of the worst and most damaging vaccine studies of all time. That was, of course, Andrew Wakefield’s notorious Lancet article linking the MMR vaccine to autism. Its appearance in 1998 fanned the flames of the anti-vaccine movement, with crushing media suspicion falling on the MMR — and a resulting deadly surge in measles cases in the UK and worldwide. [...]
But more recent evidence seems to suggest a simpler reason is at play: if people think there’s a high chance they’ll regret vaccination, they’re less likely to do it. Evidence that we can change people’s beliefs about vaccines for the better is scarce; but changing them for the worse by providing more credible-sounding reasons for regret — like Wakefield’s MMR-autism connection — is much easier.
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