I can't say I've ever felt the need to investigate the claim of 'anti-vaxxers' before, but with the potential of a mandatory or coerced vaccine being something that may occur in the near future, I've taken a look.
Firstly I think it is fair to say that after the last few months, it is a rather good idea in general to be somewhat sceptical about anything where the government, media, and the subset of experts that have access to the government and media, are all in lockstep. On any issue going forwards. Certainly that's the attitude I'm taking.
As for the 'anti-vaxxers', some of what they say is clearly rather silly or downright wrong. However, three things struck me as worth consideration:
- The fact that in a minority of people vaccines have nasty, even life-changing side-effects. I was already aware of the issues with the rushed 'swine flu' vaccine, eg.
https://www.narcolepsy.org.uk/resources/pandemrix-narcolepsy
The UK Health Protection Agency (now Public Health England) undertook a major study of 4- to 18-year-olds and found that around one in every 55,000 jabs led to narcolepsy.
but was less aware that there are also issues with the more established vaccines. This is why the UK has a
'Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme' and the USA has a federal
'National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program', the latter having paid out over *$4 billion* to date to people who had life-altering responses to routine vaccinations.
- The list of ingredients in vaccines is rather interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_vaccine_ingredients
It appears there are good, or at least fairly good, arguments for including things like formaldehyde, aluminium compounds and mercury compounds in various vaccines, eg. here is what the CDC say about it
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/additives.htm
but it doesn't seem entirely unreasonable to at least consider if injecting such things into the body has the potential to cause problems.
- I appreciate this won't be a concern for many, and it opens up quite an elephant trap of moral debate, but some people have moral concerns over the fact that many vaccines, including many of the leading candidates for a Covid vaccine (eg. the 'Oxford' vaccine), are manufactured using human cells that originated from aborted human fetuses. I have to say this makes *me* somewhat uncomfortable.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/abortion-opponents-protest-covid-19-vaccines-use-fetal-cells
I think these are legitimate concerns. They may well be outweighed by the positive effects of vaccination, but I don't think it is reasonable to dismiss all people who have such concerns as monsters or fools.