Covid-19 and Vaccine Hesitancy
Below the the text of my keynote presented at the (Con)spirituality, Science and COVID-19 Colloquium 25-26 March 2021, hosted by Deakin University and Western Sydney University.
On 16th of March, 2021 there were a total 120M cases of covid-19 globally and 2.65M deaths. In the United States alone over half a million people have died. As we know, the virus has caused significant global disruption.
At the beginning of the pandemic, there was some speculation that it would spell the death of anti-vaccination sentiment. After all, what clearer example of vaccines' utility and efficacy could there be than a global pandemic?
In fact, the opposite seemed to happen. Not only were we now faced with a renewed wave of anti-vaccination sentiment, there were also denials that the virus itself exists, and if it did exist, it was nothing to be worried about, just the common cold.
For what follows, I want to explore the effect that anti-vaccination conspiracy thinking and the information environment of the internet has on vaccine hesitancy. I want to ask, why think conspiratorially? I also want to explore conspiratorial thinking as a continuum or an atmosphere, rather than a dichotomy; that is, one is either a conspiracy theory believer or not.
Part of this problem is due to the overwhelming speed and volume at which we encounter information which often makes it hard to distinguish between what is real and what is fake, what is factual and what is false, what is true and what is a lie. We can trace the origins of this problem back to the advent of the 24-hour news cycle, which appeared with the arrival of cable tv relying on an endless loop of continuous and incremental reporting. In this sense, the sensation of being overwhelmed by news is no longer new. However, I argue that social media, in particular, has made this problem more pronounced and the effects of the fast-moving avalanche of information that passes us every day are apparent in times of crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic, where consensus and collective action are particularly important.
Technologies like social media also represent an extension and intensification of the logic of speed. The intensification of speed is identified by Virilio as part of the process (and progression of) late modernity, but as speed brings things closer and (re)shapes social space, it also destabilises the social structures that previously demarcated it, including structures of knowledge. Thus, knowledge transmitted through social media begins to flatten and liquify, losing its relationship to formerly established hierarchies. Previously, the way information was stored and communicated was dominated by a clear hierarchy of trusted sources and trusted experts. Information was typically centralised, vetted and fact-checked, and distributed via regularly timed news bulletins and daily newspapers. The internet has fundamentally disrupted this process. One of the most powerful affordances of the internet is that it turns anyone into a publisher. Anyone can set up a webpage or post on social media. There is no requirement for what we publish or post to be real or true.
As a result, the internet has proved to be fertile ground for the mainstreaming of conspiracy theories. At first glance, the rise of conspiracy theories may seem like a quaint artefact of internet subculture, but they are symptomatic of how fast information online circulates and how easy it is to publish. They highlight the destabilising effects of these features on knowledge hierarchies that used to provide a steady frame through which we could interpret the world.
The change in the way we interpret the world is apparent in the way anti-vaccination sentiments spreads. Anti-vaccination communities rely heavily on personal testimony as a way of communicating the assumed dangers of vaccination. Anti-vaccination Facebook groups and pages regularly highlight apparent cases of vaccine injury including everything from newly emerging allergies, to disability and death. Videos and images appeal to one of the dominant verification practices in the flat online information environment ‘pics or it didn’t happen’. Videos and images are then demonstrations of truth, and guarantors of personal narratives.
This type of epistemological orientation emphasises personal experience and self-belief as the most important forms of knowledge building. In this way of understanding the world, my experiences are the most important way of gathering knowledge about the world; if I am unable to gather this knowledge myself, the next best thing is a first-hand account from someone who has. After Facebook’s recent clean up of anti-vaccination pages and groups, anti-vaccination news sites like NaturalNews.com claimed that big tech is suppressing information about how dangerous covid-19 vaccinations are. They claim that people are dying from vaccinations and experiencing a range of severe side effects, including, quote, “horrific convulsions, partial paralysis and other bizarre side effects”. The evidence presented relies either on first hand testimony such as personal videos or recollections, or those of grieving families. The videos show people having difficulty walking due to partial paralysis, or consistent spasms. Most often, the subject of the video outlines the history of their symptoms (always beginning after the vaccine dose) while demonstrating their physical effects.
However, the problems with conspiracism regarding covid-19 began well in advance of the vaccine rollout. Unsurprisingly, various conspiracy theories have emerged as a socially potent force in time of turmoil and confusion. In the United States, conspiracy theories attempted to undercut the seriousness of the covid-19 crisis.
An example is a viral video of a quiet Brooklyn Hospital purporting to show that public health authorities have exaggerated the pandemic. This resulted in the #FilmYourHospital hashtag, where Twitter users were encouraged to go and film their local hospitals in an attempt to dismiss the idea that COVID-19 is a public health emergency. There were thousands of replies to the original tweets, including video and photos that appear to show empty hospitals. Prominent conservative pundits and have helped propel these videos to their followers. A video from the same Brooklyn hospital shows bodies being loaded onto an eighteen-wheeler truck for transport one day later.
Other conspiracy theories reflect anxiety about changing technologies. There are claims that radiation from 5G devices can spread the coronavirus. Alternatively, some fear that the vaccine for COVID-19 will be used to inject citizens with devices that allow them to be tracked by the new 5G network. None of these claims are true.
Modern life is complex and abstract in many ways, and requires us to trust in systems we don’t fully understand or control. At the same time, as per Beck, the risks associated with the complex systems have grown and produced new levels of human-made risks as a result of these processes. These risks cross national borders, such as the risk posed by climate change, or by a global pandemic and extend far beyond the individual’s capacity to act.
Finally, we have conspiracy theories that tread the lines between fact and fiction, most notably about the origins of the virus. You might read or hear claims that the virus is a biological weapon, that it was ‘set free’ from a lab in China. While the virus undoubtedly originated in China, it is most likely one of those human-made risks that occur when humans and animals live side by side. In spaces where humans and animals have close and repeated contact, it becomes very easy for viruses to jump the species barrier, an example of the human-made risks that can accelerate beyond our ability to control them.
But the answer ‘it was an accident’ is not as satisfying as the answers presented by many conspiracy theories that give us a clear outsider to blame. We know from Kai Erikson’s sociology classic Wayward Puritans that outsider groups are an important source for social cohesion. Providing a point of contrast, or a place to lay blame that is external to the community is a way of maintaining coherent social order.
Speed is not just about the tempo at which things happen but also about their scale and spread. As a consequence, issues like the moderation of content on social platforms become increasingly complex. This is true not just for clearly objective violations of policy, but for the grey areas of misinformation and what type of information is allowed to circulate. As anti-vaccination content has moved into mothering groups, wellness spaces and general influencer territory, it becomes harder to police and address. The volume of content is vast and continues to grow (quickly) on a daily basis. Speed is an important part of how information flows and circulates online, and part of what makes it almost impossible to govern.
So, we have an environment where a lot of information comes at us very fast, and we have no real way of sorting that information except on the basis of our own experience. In this environment, we retreat almost instinctively to highly personalised ways of understanding the world; we trust what we can see or what we know others have seen, we trust our own experience of the world, we trust how we feel, or how something makes us feel.
The contemporary digital neoliberal subject makes sense of the world through their own experience and affectivity. We retreat to our own logics of knowing when the world around us seems too fast, too loud and too slippery to grasp. It makes us hesitant. We trust the personal more than the abstract. Additionally, individual ways of knowing about the world are presented as just as valid as expert ways of knowing, or in some instances more valid; as accessing the ‘truth’ behind the coverup. The neoliberal state wants its citizens to take responsibility for their own health, but not too much, not like that. The topic of vaccination is one of many sites where ‘unruly’ neoliberal subjectivities break free from state-mandated behaviours.
Even if you don’t believe in conspiracy theories, they still muddle the water (or pollute the air) they delay vaccine take up, and induce panic about side effects. Vaccine hesitancy and anti-vaccination conspiracy thinking have made the immense project of quick global immunisation even more difficult than usual. The air is saturated with conspiracy and doubt, no longer lurking on the edges; 2020 was the year conspiracism pushed into the mainstream.
On the15th of March, Channel Nine in Australia aired an episode of their ‘Uncovered” program, which strongly suggested that Covid-19 was lab created, and subsequently covered up. Every time Pete Evans’ anti-vaccination views are reported as news, the water gets murkier. Vaccine hesitancy is an emergent property of several factors, the logic of speed embedded in social media, the amplification of conspiracy theorists by mainstream publications and an increasingly complex and globalised world in which risks often outpace our individual ability to understand and act.
The erosion of trust in expert knowledge, amplified by the many missteps in managing the pandemic response globally, further compounds this problem, fluid and fast information rushes past, changing day by day. Who do we trust? What do we trust? So we rely on our instincts, our affective responses and the power of a good story. Conspiracy theories also make things clear. They have a satisfying narrative arc that sits so much better than ‘we’re not sure yet’. In this framing, vaccine hesitancy can be understood as a rational response to unknown risks.