The problem with anti-vaxxers is what to do about them

The problem with anti-vaxxers is what to do about them

Every anti-vaxxer is a symptom. For some it’s a symptom of institutional mistrust, built over years or even generations; for some it’s misinformation-fueled mania, and a loss of the connection to reality. There’s always a reason.

The problem is what to do about them. Canada’s anti-vaccine population isn’t big, but it’s big enough to cause problems. There have been local incidents across the country: the harassment of restaurants, health-care workers, public health officials, hospitals, and most recently, Chapman’s Ice Cream. It’s a list of things we should value, right? But it’s not funny.

“I’m worried about the increased violent rhetoric coming from the anti-vaxx crowd lately, and I don’t know if giving it oxygen is the right idea, but it’s also making me a little uneasy,” says Amarnath Amarasingam, an assistant professor at Queen’s University who specializes in the study of extremism. He referred specifically to the QAnon radical who has called for her followers to kill those who vaccinate children.

We haven’t seen escalation yet. But when I was in Brazil for the Olympics locals would say of street violence in Rio, things are OK until they’re not. That’s what this movement feels like.

“I mean, even farcical people, you know, they have fists and can carry baseball bats, right?” says Amarasingam. “It doesn’t matter that they’re morons. It’s a question of what’s their propensity for violence? And how do we secure the environment enough that they can be taken down if needed? This is where that whole notion of like stochastic terrorism comes into play, if you turn up the temperature enough for a large segment of the population, the odds go up that at least one of them will do something.”

The rhetoric has risen as vaccination has expanded, the widespread vaccination of five-to-11-year-olds is a big reason. For so many parents it is a relief; some still have questions, which is OK. They’re your kids.

But the truly anti-vaccine crowd is not just persistently and urgently misinformed; it has a feral element that is antithetical to a civil society. Storming the mall food court without a mask, or the Eaton Centre, or a Tim Hortons feels like a child playing D-Day, with a child’s imaginary heroic purpose, refusing to surrender. It can feel sad.

But the anger at the root is real, and whether it is mere propagandistic brain poisoning or merely the rage of someone in a world they can’t quite process, it’s there. In Windsor a young man allegedly put a homemade bomb in an assembly plant where he worked after he was suspended for not complying with a workplace vaccine mandate. The local failed People’s Party of Canada candidate, Victor Green — it is only mildly comforting that every PPC candidate was a failed People’s Party of Canada candidate — encouraged his followers to book children’s vaccine appointments and then not show up. Green claimed he had been hacked. Among other repellent ideas, the PPC is animated by anti-vaccine activism. It got 800,000 votes.

Public health had already faced threats and harassment throughout the pandemic. The city of Toronto created a specific and detailed security plan for each of its 500 clinics, and other public health units have, too: extraction plans, escalating scenarios, security. But you can’t put a cop at every clinic.

As with PPC voters, it’s like finding zombies in your midst. Public health officials wonder if there are COVID cases we’re not seeing because of how anti-vaccine citizens act.

“I think everyone has and that it is undercounted because of how hard they are to deal with,” said one Ontario public health official. “You have the garden variety unvaccinated person who is otherwise a normal member of society. They get COVID and the vaccine stops it from going everywhere. You get it in a ‘the vaccine is evil’ crowd, and their contacts are all unvaccinated. It’s similar but different to the religious communities, like Mennonites, where someone gets diagnosed on hospitalization, but then you hit a wall of silence.”

Anti-vaxxers they don’t answer the phone, or if they do, they won’t answer questions from contact tracers. They lie about onset dates, symptoms, or contacts, and some tracers look up the contacts while still on the call to see if they can determine if they’re real. Some anti-vaxxers deny having COVID, even as their breathing becomes laboured, even as the public health nurse on the other end calls 911 to send an ambulance.

“It’s cult thinking,” said one contact tracer, a public health nurse who works in the Hamilton region. “There’s no reasoning with some of them. They’re victims. It’s the only way to think of them if you want to have any empathy when you come out the other side. It’s sad. They’re scared and the emotion you see is anger.”

Symptoms. Meanwhile, again, the province keeps signaling sympathy to anti-vaxxers, starting with Premier Doug Ford. At some point, he should explain, in detail, why.

So what do we do? How do we live with people who are fundamentally anti-society, and don’t share the same reality? The United States is currently a handbook for what can happen if you can’t. Appropriate law enforcement, and more enforcement of public health regulations, should be a start.

“I think quietly vaccinating people who want to be vaccinated and moving on with our lives is kind of the best way to go about it,” says Amarasingam. “Changing minds ... I don’t think it happens on Twitter. I don’t think it happens by making fun of them. I don’t think it happens by counter protests. You know, nothing like that ever has worked and will never work here either. It has to happen interpersonally, with you and your doctor. It happens as they see people that they trust getting the vaccine and nothing happening to them, or their children getting the vaccine and nothing happening to them.”

Maybe, but unreality is a stubborn virus on its own. Every anti-vaxxer is a symptom: something broke and they were lost, but they are a part of our society, too. And it’s hard to know what to do about that.