Vaccine fearmongers gain ground in US

Political leaders and health advocates are struggling to raise COVID-19 vaccination rates in the US, and a steady drum beat of opposition from anti-vaxxers is making their job a lot tougher. Some experts now say it's time for officials to tackle the fearmongers head on.

Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research, told The Washington Post that the administration of US President Joe Biden has done nothing to counter the spreaders of false information on the lifesaving vaccines, and that has left them to metastasize.

"They just get bigger and more toxic, and they hoodwink and bamboozle more people who might have been neutral," he said.

National surveys show about 1 in 5 adults remain unvaccinated in the United States. Among children aged 5 to 11, who became eligible for the shots in November, less than 20 percent are vaccinated. And a November poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation found majorities of unvaccinated adults saying they will "definitely not" get a vaccine and are not confident in the vaccines' safety.

The widespread lack of confidence in the vaccines was starkly displayed at a rally in Washington DC on Sunday.

Anti-vaccination activists gathered at the same site where Martin Luther King Jr gave his 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech in support of civil rights for African Americans. But the thousands who rallied at the Lincoln Memorial were demanding "medical freedom".

Some demonstrators said the march was billed as a protest of vaccine mandates rather than the medicines themselves.

Medical experts are fearful of the influence that the movement is having on ordinary people.

Jason Schwartz, a vaccine policy expert at Yale University, is troubled by the fact that an estimated 86 million people in the US eligible for a booster have not yet gotten one. He believes that confusion among people is one important factor.

'Lost message'

"I think the evidence is now overwhelming that the booster is not simply an optional supplement, but it is a foundational part of protection," he said. "But clearly that message has been lost."

As for the anti-vaccination protest on Sunday, health experts and others say that the movement to challenge vaccines' safety and reject vaccine mandates has never been stronger and has millions of followers.

The 153 most influential anti-vaccine social media accounts and groups have accumulated 2.9 million new followers since January 2020, according to the Center for Countering Digital Hate, an advocacy organization focused on fighting vaccine misinformation.

In December 2021, the nonprofit watchdog said that 59 million accounts across social platforms follow peddlers of anti-vax propaganda.

Agencies contributed to this story.