Anti-vaxxers another hindrance in the fight against coronavirus but expert believes they will come around
As the coronavirus pandemic worsens across the world, with a sharp surge in the number of deaths and infections in the past few weeks, scientists are scrambling to formulate an effective vaccine for the deadly COVID-19. However, if a vaccine does get approved soon, there is one particular section of society that might hinder any progress in the battle against the novel coronavirus: Anti-vaccination groups, infamously known as anti-vaxxers.
Vaccine hesitancy, deemed as one of the biggest health threats of 2019, right after Ebola, by the World Health Organization, is a distrust of available vaccinations against contagious diseases. Anti-vaxxers are often reluctant or blatantly refuse to get themselves or their children vaccinated against diseases like measles.
The anti-vaccination movement, over the past years, has been gathering pace — particularly in the United States — with prominent Republican politicians, far-right religious institutions, and even some Hollywood celebrities expressing their distrust in the life-saving shots. Populist political movements on the right and the left are generally associated with the vaccine hesitancy movement.
With coronavirus deaths nearing a daunting 15,000 in the United States, and over 430,000 people infected, many fear that misinformation and scaremongering from the anti-vaxxer community could pose a serious threat in successfully eradicating COVID-19 when the vaccine becomes available.
"Sadly, the spread of misinformation is at 'pandemic levels' these days, and I do not expect it to go away once vaccination campaigns start," Paulo H. Verardi, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Virology, University of Connecticut told MEA Worldwide (MEAWW). "People need to be reminded to look up information from reliable sources, such as the World Health Organization, and not from viral videos circulating in social media."
An Emerson Polling recently found out that at least 11 percent of Americans say they would refrain from taking a vaccine, while 23 percent said they were unsure. In the national poll conducted in February, the percentage of vaccine skeptics increased with 19 percent saying no while 28 being unsure of taking a potential COVID-19 vaccine.
There has also been a noted increase in the number of coronavirus linked conspiracy theories being propounded by the anti-vaccination community, with many claiming that the current crisis is a "fake pandemic." Verardi, however, has a positive outlook on the situation, stating that in times like this, when thousands across the world are dying, most from the notorious vaccine hesitancy group will "join the fight."
"My personal feeling is that most will join the fight and get vaccinated, helping build herd (population) immunity so that the pandemic can be significantly slowed, and eventually stopped," the expert said. "Anti-vaccine sentiments will not go away, but I expect that under the current situation, only diehard anti-vaxxers will avoid vaccination since there is just too much to lose."
When asked whether governments should make vaccinations mandatory, the expert said that although people generally are hardwired to oppose government mandates, in certain exceptional cases, like the current pandemic, "mandatory vaccination campaigns" could be the fastest way to build herd immunity in the population.
Vaccination rates in the world, particularly in the US and the UK, have been declining at an alarming rate, with the WHO, last year, noting a 30 percent increase in measles cases worldwide. The US, in 2019, experienced its worst measles outbreak in 1992, while the UK's "measles-free" status was recently removed by the United Nations public health agency which a noted increase of infections in the region.
The novel coronavirus has claimed nearly 90,000 lives across the world with over 1.5 million people affected because of COVID-19. There is no officially approved vaccine for the deadly infection available in the world market yet.