As the world waits anxiously for a vaccine to protect the global population from COVID-19, Australia’s anti-vaxxers are ramping up their campaign.
With social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube under unprecedented pressure to pull down misinformation and conspiracy theories, the Australian Vaccination-risk Network (AVN) claims it has been unfairly targeted and is the victim of “blatant censorship”.
The group announced over the weekend it now plans to take its message out to Australian communities directly, with a state-of-the-art “Vaxxed” bus purchased through supporters’ donations.
The substantial Coachmen Mirada will take to the road in July, the group’s spokeswoman Meryl Dorey said, “to perform citizen-journalism that Aussie corporate media refuses to do”.
The road trip will not only spread awareness of the supposed “dangers of compulsory vaccination”, she said.
The entourage will also collect stories from “thousands of Aussie parents” whose children had suffered or died through immunisation.
“Families of those who have died or been permanently injured by vaccinations will finally have an opportunity to tell their stories to the world,” she said.
The announcement has prompted reaction from public health experts ranging from exasperation to anger.
Leading Sydney paediatrician Robert Booy, professor of paediatrics at the University of Sydney, said local councils must ban the group from using public venues and facilities as the bus makes its way across the country.
“It is totally inappropriate that local councils allow false scientific information (to be disseminated) in their communities, ” he told 7NEWS.com.au.
Herd immunity
Booy said although only two to three per cent of Australians believe the AVN’s message, there was a danger that misinformation could increase that group to five per cent, which he said could seriously compromise the country’s herd immunity.
Associate Professor Ken Harvey from Monash Universitys’ School of Public Health and Preventative Medicine agrees.
“The danger is that they will convince parents hesitant about immunisation to decide to forgo it,” he said.
“They’re not just putting themselves and their children at risk, they are putting other people’s children at risk too.”
Dr Sue Rodger-Withers is a veteran research virologist specialising in infectious diseases who has been an anti-vaxxer watcher for decades.
She says the AVN and its overseas affiliates are trying to beat algorithms used by social media platforms to weed out fake news, by using tags such as vaxscene or va((een to replace the word vaccine in their online material.
The groups’ rising profile was of particular concern, she said, in the age of coronavirus.
“There’s now an unholy alliance forming between the anti-vaxxers, anti-COVID and 5G conspiracy theorists,” she told 7NEWS.com.au.
Rodger-Withers said it was deeply concerning that anti-vaxxers appeared to be targeting vulnerable Indigenous communities.
Samoa crisis
In the US, the movement targeted the Samoan community, she said, with expatriates sending the message on the supposed dangers of immunisation back home to the islands.
In 2019, more than three per cent of Samoa’s population of less than 200,000 became infected with measles and 83 people died.
Sydney Health Ethics lecturer Dr Claire Hooker said the rise of anti-vaxxers and the Samoan crisis prompted the World Health Organisation to declare anti-vaccination sentiment an issue of global concern in 2020.
But the problem would not be resolved by health experts scolding or deriding people’s worries about vaccination side effects, she said.
‘If they are laughed at they could be inclined to move closer towards the anti-vaxxer position’.
“What’s really important is great understanding and kindness – it’s reasonable for parents to want to know about and understand something they’ve been told they must do.
”And if they are laughed at or mocked and their concerns put aside, they could be inclined to move closer towards the anti-vaxxer position.”
Hooker said the AVN bus could, if anything, help keep the lines of communication open
Originally Publish at: https://7news.com.au/