Endless Thread - Infectious, Pt. 5: Talk To Me

Episode Date: May 30, 2019

At the end of the day, our species only survives if we can communicate. In our fifth and final episode of "Infectious," we hear from those whose lives have been irrevocably altered by vaccines and learn about a radically simple solution to the current controversy – one which has already started to pay dividends.

Support for endless thread comes from Mathworks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? And, of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. Produced by the I-Lab at WBUR, Boston. This is part five of Infectious, our special series on vaccines. If you haven't already heard parts one through four, you should go listen to those first.

Okay, enjoy. Ben, Amory, how's it going? My name is Rob Chekkel. I am 32 and I live in New York City. And I definitely have a vaccine story for you. So here we go. Hi, I'm with Thread. My name's Claire Kaiser and I was just listening to your podcast.

Hi, my name's Dan Orleman from Cleveland, Ohio. Michaela Harris, and I'm from South Central Virginia. Hey, my name is Giovanni. I'm from Atlanta, Georgia. Karen Morton. I'm from Thousand Oaks, California. And we have a daughter-in-law and son who have not inoculated their children. We are totally against what they have done.

My name is Phil Curtis. We're up in Minneapolis, and you're hitting a vein right with our family right now. My name is Betsy Larrabee. I live in Boulder, Colorado. I'm actually part of the non-vaccinating community. East later from Maui, Hawaii, I think it's a little early to be starting to put in mandatory vaccines on things that aren't all that important. I think that this measles outbreak, trace it back to whoever spread it around or started it, they should be they're criminals. They have endangered other people's life.

That's it. Have a good day. Amory, apparently vaccination is a hot issue in 2019. Who knew? I mean, we did. We knew. We did. There's a lot we didn't know, too, and we've learned a lot, but there's still a problem.

I'm not sure we've done this story about vaccines and anti-vaxxers justice. We haven't solved it yet. Well, solving it isn't the mission, right? I mean, the mission is giving people the best information we can so that they can make informed decisions about vaccines. We don't solve things. We're just a couple of podcast dwebes. I salute your use of dweeps.

Thank you. But the majority of people who need to come to a decision on this, they are dwebes too. Or at least, they're regular people. And a lot of these regular people are still struggling. Like Merritt Dempsky from Illinois. My wife is much more not wanting to deal with vaccines at all. I have hesitancies.

But it's always difficult dealing with the vaccine stuff because anytime someone says any problem or a concern or a side effect of vaccines, it's like, oh, no, no, that could never happen, even though there's so much, like other medicines can have side effects. Merritt says he and his wife did actually vaccinate their daughter, in spite of their concerns, but that those concerns were never addressed. And so they have this. these nagging questions.

And so it seems like there would have to be some people that have adverse reactions, not that vaccines in the whole are evil or anything like that. And it's just frustrating that it feels like anything that gives a concern is automatically wrong. And anyone that expresses concern is automatically scary and dangerous. And so it's tough to have that discussion. So there have been times where the podcast touched on people that had a child who seemed to have an adverse reaction, but then it's never actually dealt with.

So let's deal with it. Merit does have a fair point. All right, we have one more shot. Oh, one more shot. Oh, yeah. One more shot to wrap this baby up. To address Merit's concerns and learn how to have this discussion.

And we really need to do it in the right way because this whole debate is part of a pattern that is pervasive in our modern lives. The vaccine debate is a perfect example of everything that feels wrong about right now. Like so many other current debates, there's a line in the sand on vaccines and both sides are backing away from that line. The debate is polarized.

There is no room for a middle. And Amory, I think I'm in the middle. What do you mean by a middle? Okay, here's what I'm talking about. So I vaccinated my kids because to me, vaccination represents the best scientific knowledge we have right now. In 10, 20, 50, 100 years, some of the things we know about vaccines could change. change. But vaccines have saved millions of lives, and that's good enough for me. Science is messy, though. It's work that is never truly finished. So it doesn't do anybody any good to call people

crazy for having concerns about vaccines, or to call other people Nazis for advocating for a fully vaccinated population. And also, if you tell me that protecting the greater good means my kid is going to be a casualty, sorry, I'm going to say, screw you. Okay, so this. This is a This is why we need to hear from Ginger. Ginger, the person we've put in every single one of our episodes and then removed. Because she didn't quite fit in right until today. Do you ever get tired? Oh, I'm exhausted and I cry a lot.

It's a horrible life to live. I'm told that I'm crazy and an anti-vaxxer and I'm uneducated. And, you know, there's a lot of gaslighting that goes on in this world. In our final installment of infectious, the strange past and surprising present of vaccines and anti-vaxxers, how to talk and how to listen to people on the other side. Because not talking, not listening is creating a modern health catastrophe. I'm Ben Brought Johnson. I'm Amory Sieverts.

And this is Endless Thread. The show featuring stories found in the vast ecosystem of online communities called Reddit. We're coming to you from WBUR. Boston's NPR station. Today's episode, talk to me. While we've tried in our series to give a fair view of the issues involving vaccines and vaccine resistance, we should say again that the overwhelming majority of scientists and the people who live in parts of the world where vaccines are readily available, they choose vaccines. But as we've said, there are more and more people who are going the other way.

They have different reasons and different backgrounds. and it was in looking for some of these people that we found Ginger Taylor. Ginger was hesitant to talk to us. She doesn't trust the media. But a few months back, she agreed. Ginger is a known voice in the vaccine hesitant world. And at the time, she was serving as the director of the main coalition for vaccine choice. It's a group of parents who have gotten together just to try to preserve our rights to make our own medical decisions for us and for our children.

Ginger's involvement in the effort against vaccine mandates has personal roots. She is two sons, the first son, who's 18 now, had a pretty healthy childhood. Her second son, Chandler, didn't. Soon after he was born, Ginger says Chandler experienced a neurological regression. What does that mean? Sure, he lost eye contact, and he stopped responding to us, and he would respond to loud shouting or music that he liked on the other side of the house, but not to respond to his name anymore.

Chandler was diagnosed with autism, and Ginger draws a straight line from this really noticeable change in his behavior back to this. You're saying that you believe he was hurt from a vaccine. Can you say more about that? Sure, he had two serious reactions. One, three weeks old. He was born about a month early.

From which vaccine? Hepatose-B vaccine. Okay. It resulted in three months of crying and fevers and constipation for him that lasted two years. When Chandler was getting vaccinated, Ginger says she remembered a new story she'd seen years before about how vaccines had, at one point, had mercury in them. So she asked Chandler's pediatrician about it. I thought I was doing my due diligence and I said, you know, I want to make sure that there's no mercury in these vaccines that I'm giving him.

I was scolded by my doctor and told, we do not make the same. those anymore. We do not give those anymore. And I apologized to him. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to be offensive. I just wanted to make sure that this wasn't one of the ones they were talking about on the news. And he left the room and had his nurse come in and give a full dose mercury hepatitis B vaccine to my baby on a heart lung monitor. Ginger thinks the mercury in this vaccine contributed to her son's condition. And as we've discussed, very few vaccines contain mercury anymore. But there's also never been evidence that mercury in vaccines is harmful in any way. Still, Ginger wasn't convinced. Parents are set up as the dummies and doctors as the experts. And that's flipped. Parents get

online and read stuff before they go into the doctor. If you've read the package insert, you probably know more than the doctor. And that has been the case with every pediatrician I've seen. As we've said before, internet research is not the same as a medical degree. But it's also true that what Ginger describes as her concerns falling on deaf or at least unsympathetic years at the doctor's office is a real issue in the system. We actually heard from an immunologist who thinks about this type of thing a lot. Globally, we kind of suck at explaining science to people that don't understand science. And a lot of times it's really hard for scientists to kind of simplify the way they talk, and that's something that we all need to get better at. So back to Ginger.

whose concerns weren't addressed, and then a bad thing happened. Ever since then, she's been drinking from an endless fountain of online information about vaccines. Ginger is armed to the teeth with that information. And that's when I was like, oh, wait a minute, I have a master's degree. I know how to read research. This theory was out there for 55 years before Andrew Wakefield ever published. I think it was only five years the HPV vaccine had been used in Japan before that we can look at a package insert and says encephalopathy on. And we can hear the government.

This is the voice of a mother who has made up her mind. And you know what? It's pretty hard to argue with a parent who's been through the ringer. How do you feel about climate change? We, here, it's a frustrating question. We are a population of parents that are so concerned with toxicity and environmental issues and keeping our kids healthy. To have you honestly ask me that question.

But I guess what I, would you hear you? Here's why I'm asking, right? There is a scientific consensus that says climate change is real and it is caused by humans, full stop. And clearly you have a lot of facts at your fingertips and clearly you're engaged on this and you have a lot of data, right? But my understanding of this issue is that there is a clear consensus that in general, vaccinating the population is actually. really good for the population and keeps people alive. Well, it's interesting that you say this because the way you phrased it, you phrased it correctly. What you said is giving it to the population seems to be good for the population.

Let's go with that premise. How many people in the population, how many individuals are being harmed? We're still going to call it good for the population. But what if my son, what if your son, what if your mother? What if they're the people that are being injured, and when they're injured, aren't helped, aren't given medical care? We lost our house, paying for our own child's medical care, to dig him out of the hole he was put in. It's not good for him. This is why it's been hard for us to talk about Ginger.

Someone who, by the way, believes in climate change, but doesn't believe vaccines are safe. Ginger's not a science denier across the board. It's just that in this instance, her personal experience, is taking precedence. She has this deep wound, but she might be wrong about how she got it. We've said many times in this series that despite more than a hundred studies on the subject, there's no proven link between vaccines and autism. Still, Ginger's point here brings us to an uncomfortable truth, that vaccines are safe and effective for the vast majority of people, but not all people. So what happens if you're one of those people who does have a bad

reaction to a vaccine. We have $4 billion paid out of the vaccine injury compensation program. Who are those people? Where were they compensated for? The vaccine injury compensation program is mentioned a lot in conversations with people who are resisting vaccines. It's a federal program that started in 1986, and that figure Ginger cited is true. It has paid out at least $4 billion to families who claim to have been harmed by vaccines. And those claims were reviewed because they met the requirements of something called the vaccine injury compensation table, which basically says if you had this particular reaction after receiving this particular vaccine within this particular window of time, your claim might

qualify for compensation. But claim really is the key word here. Because the Department of Health and Human Services says that 70% of the compensation the program pays out, goes to settling cases that have, quote, not concluded based upon review of the evidence that the alleged vaccine caused the alleged injury. 70%. So why were they paid out? Because while it's really hard to prove that an injury or a change in behavior was caused specifically by a vaccine, it's also hard to say definitively that it wasn't.

So the thinking is, if the leading government health organizations are going to encourage the population to vaccinate, they also need to deal with the consequences. Something you won't find in the vaccine injury compensation table is any mention of autism. But Ginger says her son Chandler fits the description of something else on the table, pertussis vaccine-induced encephalopathy. She didn't receive compensation through the program, though, because she didn't know about the program. And there's a statute of limitations. So she says her family just had to move on. And now, Ginger's focusing her efforts on other families.

My concern is for the two of you. Do you have kids? Are you going to have babies? Do you really trust these people? I know that they're not trustworthy. Pay attention to what's really going on. Read the literature and then ask them questions and see how quickly their claims fall apart.

Ginger says she wants to have a real debate with the mainstream medical community. And part of the reason why she's so frustrated is because she feels like that community is dodging the debate. You're not allowing yourself to be challenged at all. You can challenge me all day long. We want to have the fight. They're running from the fight. We reached out to the CDC for this series. We were going back and forth.

We thought they were going to talk to us. And then they opted not to. No real explanation. They just took a pass. The person they suggested we reached out to instead. Spoiler, we already had, was Dr. Paul Offutt, head of the Vaccine Education Center. And something he told us might give a hint as to why the CDC wouldn't talk.

He said? It certainly is a cultural controversy. And for that reason, I think it needs to be confronted as a cultural controversy, but it's not a scientific controversy. So it may be that the CDC and Offit are saying, we're not running from the fight. The fight's over. We won the fight with science. But we are in the middle of a measles outbreak caused in large part by anti-vaccine messaging. So clearly the fight is not over.

And right now, the pro-science crowd seems to be losing the culture fight. which means that the conversation is not over. So how the hell do we have the conversation? When we come back, someone who's ready to have the conversation, someone who has a surprising story about vaccines. I'm the exception, so I can't say I have any special insight into why it was me and other people. There were other people in the intensive care unit who did not come out of it.

So I think I'm going to put that one down to look. Be right back. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But, but we do also like to get into other kinds of stories, stories about policing, or politics, country music, hockey, sex, of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers. And hopefully make you see the world anew. Radio Lab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know. wherever you get your podcast.

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Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org. Creative Studio. You know, the word crisis is getting thrown around on the podcast a little bit. And I don't know if it's a crisis, right? Because if I get the measles vaccine and somebody doesn't get a measles vaccine, aren't I fine? Hi, my name's Lisa, and I'm from Queens, New York. And it's kind of weird how timely your podcast is. Four weeks ago, my daughter, who is now 10 weeks old, got exposed to the measles of the pediatrician

and because she's way too tiny to have gotten the vaccine. It really, really suck to watch my very tiny baby get prodded with a whole bunch of needles because somebody else did not vaccinate. Darrell Martin, I'm from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. We vaccinated our first four children. Our fourth child got a really high fever, and we decide to back off and not do the mandatory. We do some vaccinations,

but we waited to our children were a little bit older. Hi, my name's Jenny from Maryland, and a lot of my rage at anti-vaxxers comes from them spreading misinformation about autism, which my son has, and honestly I would take autism over measles any day because my son is fantastic. It doesn't do anything good for the neurodivergent community, for folks to be fear bond grade. Clearly, we have oodles of voicemails about vaccines,

and Reddit has uddles of posts about vaccines. Back in January, a Redditor posted to the subreddit Vax happened, about his wife falling for, quote, anti-vax nonsense. He was looking for advice, which he got in spades. A bunch of people also commented with their personal stories. One of those people was Ian McCall. On Reddit, I have to be able to be. no imagination. So my handle is you McCauley. Kind of just my name made up.

He said he'd be willing to tell this other Redditor's wife his story in order to try to change her mind. They never got back to Ian, but we did. And his story starts way back at the beginning, aka his birth. The year is 1972, location Sheffield, England. I was not the smallest baby the world's ever seen. I was pretty healthy. And I have a photo from one week before it happened. And I just looked like your perfect, happy baby picture that most people would take and put up on the wall somewhere. All of that changed when Ian was almost one year old, when he was finally old enough to get the polio vaccine. By this point in the early 70s, the polio vaccine had already been hugely successful. Before the vaccine,

the UK had seen 8,000 new cases a year. In the 70s, the rate of annual polio cases had slowed to just a handful. The polio vaccine most people get today is actually different than the one Ian received. Today the vaccine is injected, but Ian, he ate the vaccine in the form of a sweet treat. They give you a sugar cube. There's supposed to be three doses of it spread over, I think, two or three visits back. So I had that when I was about 10 months old, something like that. And I threw up the first dosage.

Being a baby and having it in no manners whatsoever. Vaccine rejected. Take that duck. Not to be deterred, Ian's doctor gave him another sugar cube with the vaccine, because he assumed Ian had just puked it all up the first time. But the doctor was wrong. Baby Ian had not puked it all up. So he basically got a double dose of the vaccine. Which is why the other difference between the polio vaccine Ian took and the one most commonly used today matters.

The vaccine today, dead polio virus. Ian's vaccine weakened polio virus. The end result, Ian contracted polio from the polio vaccine. How sure are you that the polio you contracted was from the vaccine that you took? Very sure because the chief medical officer of Sheffield, because I was quite an unusual case, obviously, then came over and explained what had happened. So we had an explanation for it, otherwise I would never have found out. We did some digging on this, and it turns out this is actually a known side effect of the oral polio vaccine, the one Ian took.

It's called vaccine-associated paralytic polio, or vap, and it is very rare. One in 2.7 million doses rare, according to the World Health Organization. But, you know, the 1 in 2.7 a million exists, and it was me that time. As a baby, Ian spent the next eight or nine months in a rehabilitation unit, fully paralyzed. Doctors had to give Ian a tracheotomy. They cut his whim pipe open because he couldn't even breathe on his own. But then, amazingly, he started to recover, which is surprising. But incredibly, Ian's story got even more rare.

He made a full recovery. No ill effects at all. So this is not common. I recovered completely. I am completely okay, so it's very lucky. Why did you recover completely? I suspect, but I don't know. It's because of the age.

I can't say I have any special insight into why it was me and other people. There were other people in the intensive care unit who did not come out of it. So I think I'm going to put that one down to luck. Have you tried your luck recently? I think I did a fair amount of look. early on. Do you buy any lottery tickets? I buy lots of lottery tickets and I'm still here.

Ian's story is unique. Not only was his vaccine dose the one in 2.7 million doses that induces polio, he also made a full recovery, and he's one of the last people in the UK to ever get polio in any form. That puts me in the last 70 to 75 people. I think it's the last 73 is the actual number of people ever to have full paralysis polio and not much past that for people who've ever had any form of polio.

This is all ancient history now. Ian's 47, works in finance, high-speed trading. He's also the parent of three teenagers. And in spite of his own history, all three are fully vaccinated, which, to be honest, he says, wasn't an easy decision. Actually, I was considerably worried. I knew the stats. I know that this is a beneficial thing.

But there's an irrational part of you that thinks, well, you know, one in 2.7 million happened. So it could happen again. It didn't help that after getting vaccinated, his oldest daughter was very upset, screaming, crying, the whole shebang. This is normal after a vaccination. You don't suddenly bounce up as if you eat spinach like Popeye. But seeing it is considerably more worrying. I'm looking at something that I'm told is entirely normal, but I'm thinking about my own history.

The only reminder these days of Ian's past is a long, slender scar that runs horizontally across his neck, a result of the tracheotomy. When he's having a bad day, he'll look at it. A reminder, he's been through worse. Ian thinks sharing his story is important, precisely because it sheds light on an aspect of vaccines that many doctors and health officials don't like to talk about.

Sometimes vaccines fail. It's just incredibly rare. But if you don't sort of give all the facts, if you try and hide facts, then, you know, that side will become more suspicious and probably rightly so. You should tell people about what happened. Even in today's world of social media information silos and memes and rage comments, there might just be a way forward. Ian's still looking for it.

Lee McIntyre says he's found it. I'm fascinated with how people form beliefs. Lee is a philosopher, seriously, and the author of The Scientific Attitude, Defending Science from Denial, Fraud, and Pseudoscience. Man, that sounds right up our alley. It's up our alley and around the corner and all the way home. Yep. And Lee isn't just focused on people who are resisting vaccination. He says he's found some common themes between a whole bunch of communities that are questioning

science. And also, he's found some of the same problems. In November 2018, I went to the Flat Earth. convention in Denver and really wanted to see science denial in its most elemental form. And they're growing as well. So there's really something in the air, something going on with people in general. I sometimes think of science deniers as cafeteria skeptics. They tend not to be skeptical about everything, but they're skeptical about the science that they don't like. So, for instance, at the Flat Earth Convention, you know, people have to be skeptical. had medical procedures, they seemed to trust their physicians.

So they were fine with that. They just had this problem about whether the earth was round. Lee also identifies a concept that's really important. Remember how we keep saying that there's been no proven link between vaccines and autism? Well, that's because real science is a real process. It doesn't decide something definitively forever. It makes educated guesses based on everything we know so far. You know, the person who's the anti-vaxxer is saying, well, until you've proven that vaccines are safe, I'm not going to vaccinate my kid.

Or, you know, until you've got, you know, absolutely definitive evidence, you know, showing this. But the problem is that science can't do that. Science deniers tend to exploit that kind of uncertainty. And so it's a very, it can be a dangerous thing for scientists to admit uncertainty. but it's a fact of life in science. I mean, there's always uncertainty. It's what makes science science. The thing that I think really separates the scientists

from the science deniers and the pseudoscientists is that they're open. They're saying, if I want to believe X, but the evidence shows me that X isn't true, I'm going to change my mind. That's a rare and fragile and wonderful thing, I think. This is part of why it's so hard to have a conversation about vaccines with someone from the other side.

It's why people are calling to ask us for advice, like this one caller from New York, whose message we decided we had to play for Lee. My recently long-lost half-brother, we just became in touch. We had the same father's. And I found out that him and his wife are anti-vaxxers. And I was wondering if you had any advice

on whether or not I should bring that up or how I should handle that. The reason I'm asking is I have a family reunion coming up in June. We're just wondering if you have any advice on how to handle anti-vaxxers within the family and how to, I don't know, keep from just screaming at him, you're an idiot. So thanks. I think he should talk to his half-brother about it. I think that engagement is the way to go.

I think that he should listen for at first, you know, make sure that he hears what is half-brother has to say. You know, calling him an idiot, that won't work. I mean, they've shown that experimentally. The best way to change somebody's mind is to listen to what they have to say, build some trust, and then work in the facts and evidence as you go. This makes perfect sense to me. The build some trust and then work in the facts as you go thing.

And this is, I think, how you have a conversation with anyone you disagree with on any topic. You see them, you hear them, and then you ask them to show you the same respect. Too often I think that people who care about science think, well, they're just irrational. You can't talk to them. But imagine if you went to the doctor and you were talking about your pain and they didn't want to hear about it because they'd already made a diagnosis. Maybe it's the correct diagnosis, but you wouldn't feel heard. You wouldn't feel understood. And I think that that's really the way forward.

It's engagement, it's interaction. If you look at what happened in Clark County, Washington, which is kind of a hot spot for anti-vax and for measles outbreak, as the crisis got worse, the public health officials started to hold workshops, sometimes even talking to people one-on-one. We promise we did not pay Lee to say this. He just brought up the place where we had done our reporting. And this is the part we haven't actually talked about in our series yet. Ben, you saw this effort in Clark County firsthand. I did. I saw something like it. When producer Josh and I went to Washington State and Oregon to report, we met a woman named Nadine Gardner.

Her house was up high in the hills of a very nice Portland neighborhood. Nadine, also very nice. Do you guys want any water or coffee? I'm good. Yeah, I'm also. Yeah, thank you. A few years ago, Nadine started her parent journey having a lot in common with the vaccine-resistant community we found in the region.

Highly educated, new mom with new time and interest to invest in learning about issues that might impact her baby. I was pregnant with my first child and had no thoughts about immunizations other than I figured we would follow what the doctor tells us. But when I was pregnant, a lot of women in my social circles, smart, educated, really conscientious and loving parents, were hesitating to vaccinate their children. And so they asked me what my vaccine plan was, and I was taken aback. And I thought, if these smart, loving parents have questions, there must be something to it.

Nadine ended up deciding that vaccinating her child was the right choice. And then she went further. She decided that if it was so hard for someone like her to be sure, something in the system wasn't working. So she started Boost Oregon. It's a nonprofit focused purely on education around vaccines. Boost does private workshops where anyone can come and learn. It's run by a pediatrician, no stupid questions.

This is the stuff our philosopher Lee was talking about, just opening up the conversation. Granted, even for Nadine, doing this had its own casualties in her friend group. One woman from that group stopped talking to me when I started Boost Oregon. I felt very hurt by it. And I never, like, all that happened was I started boost and posting things on Facebook about it. And then she unfriended me. And I heard through mutual friends that, you know, she was just not wanting to communicate with me.

Can you talk more about, like, how you imagine potentially repairing that relationship and how it relates to the bigger work that you're doing? Yeah, I mean, I think I could, you know, reach out to her with an email or a text and say, I missed you and it would be great to catch up and, you know, have coffee. And I think I would just want to say to her, I'm doing this work because it's important to me that people make decisions based on the best available information. But I hope that we can continue to be in each other's lives. Nadine isn't sure her friend group will ever be whole again. the way it was. But when it comes to boost organ, she's sticking to her guns. Immunizations have been associated with fear and suspicion for so long.

Parents are so anxious about them. And I really want to change the culture around immunizations. I want parents to see that immunizing your child is an act of love, that you are really making use of this wonderful science that we have. and you're able to prevent needless suffering for your child. We talked to Nadine on the last day of our reporting trip to Oregon and Washington State. But that night, we went to one of the Boost Oregon workshops. Nadine and the soft-spoken pediatrician who ran the workshop wouldn't let us record the workshop itself. They said they were worried that having a microphone out

would discourage the attendees from talking candidly about their feelings and asking whatever questions they wanted. But you and Josh stayed for the full two-hour workshop, right? We did, along with about 12 other people. It was in the back of a Portland toy store in the activity room. There were healthy snacks, a kind of janky projector and a screen for a slideshow that started with technical difficulties but eventually worked. And it was super comprehensive. Every single question posed was answered.

There was a whole half hour on exactly how vaccines work, what's in them. I actually learned a lot. So what was the reaction? Well, it was really interesting. So there were a lot of single parents. There was one mother who brought her toddler, daughter, and some couples. And after the thing was over, we talked to a few of the people who had shown up, like Autumn. I am from the Pacific Northwest.

I'm from Oregon. But I lived in Hawaii for about 12 years. And I'm recently back in the Northwest, almost two years now. It's interesting. Autumn is a mom. Her mom is a natural health advocate. Her dad is a doctor. And Autumn isn't vaccinated. Her eight-year-old daughter, unvaccinated. Her daughter's dad, also unvaccinated. Autumn had a lot of questions in the workshop about the vaccine schedule. Basically, why so many vaccines are given to such small children. And she says the workshop helped her understand the reasoning.

Is her mind made up in case another kid comes along or in case she wants to vaccinate her daughter who got really sick this year from the flu? No, but... I was totally nervous to come, especially not being vaccinated. My child not being vaccinated, I was really... you know, because there is a lot of strong feelings. I'm strong and I'm willing to stand my ground, but it doesn't mean that it would be comfortable.

So I was a little intimidated. But everyone was really welcoming and really kind, and that made it a much more convenient, comfortable environment. I felt like the information gathering was really well done overall. There was also a woman there named Albina. who was very pregnant. She was due in just a couple of weeks.

Her partner, Roy, was there too. Roy was pro-vaccination for their first baby. Albina wasn't so sure. Lots of people around them in their family are very anti-vaccine. So they had questions. In the workshop, you talked about some of the scarier conspiracies that you heard. You want me to mention them. Yeah.

Well, one of them was that apparently some vaccines have particles or part of aborted fetuses. And so I just saw like a post on it on Facebook. And I mean, it was just kind of crazy, you know. I'm like, there's aborted fetuses and these vaccines and I'm going to put it in my child. Like, what is this? Just a lot of things like that you hear and you don't know how to,

you don't know what to believe, I guess. So this is why I decided to, I need to take a class or something, you know, listen to some professional and get my questions answered. How do you feel? Much better. I feel like my questions are answered. So I definitely have way more confidence and peace. And I know that it's going to be good for our son.

So do you think it's fair to say that you made this decision tonight, that you are going to vaccinate your son? Yeah, during the workshop. So it sounds like this workshop was really doing what it was supposed to do. Present this information in a way that, while definitely coming from a pro-vaccine perspective overall, was designed around helping people make their own choices, like not too pushy.

Right. And in a way, it's all about finding people who actually are in this middle and appealing to them, saying, look, you've got concerns. That's valid. Let's talk about it. And this is kind of like what our philosopher Lee was talking about, that at least from his perspective,

the way you win is to engage the other side. Science denial is continuing to get worse and worse. And if we don't engage what's going to happen, how much worse is it going to get? And, you know, what are the consequences going to be? I mean, maybe the flat earthers aren't hurting anybody. But the climate change deniers certainly are. And the anti-vaxxers certainly are. You may never convince a hardcore science denier.

It may just ultimately be impossible to convince somebody against their will. But if we're just silent, if we don't. counter that. If we, if, you know, there are no debates, there's no pushback, I think that a lot more people will become science deniers. Every lie has an audience. And if the science deniers are just out there spreading their message unchecked, I think that they're going to end up being a lot more people who are confused and a lot more potential science deniers in the, in the future. But I think there is hope. Are we ending this bad boy on hope, Ben? I mean, Can we? From the beginning, reporting this series has felt like a no-win situation.

It has. Just one more example of how it feels like we value political and cultural dogma over open and honest dialogue and science. There are some valid concerns, and people have strong feelings about vaccination. But there is real danger facing everyone involved, like literally all of us. Yeah. And I would like for all of us to survive. So if we can, end with some hope and the idea that we should talk to each other offline and online and respect where each of us is coming from and listen without writing each other off from the get-go. I feel like, Amory, I'd be pretty into that.

Me too. Okay, that's a wrap on our vaccine series Infectious. See you on the internets. And with new episodes in your podcast feed as our season continues. Watch out for fake news. Yeah, like if you see an article about how cool Amory is, check your see. sources. Spoken like a true podcast dweeb.

Hi, my name is Penny from Wisconsin. I just wanted to call and say that I really like the series that you've been doing. Speaking of someone who, due to a childhood illness, never got fully vaccinated, nor could I, for measles specifically. It makes me pretty scared that the herd I rely on for my herd immunity is becoming less and less vaccinated. James Irvine from Costa Rica. I think to all these people that choose not to vaccinate,

if they just had gotten out into the world and had seen, you know, what yellow fever can do to you, they would really change their minds. I think exposure would be a good thing for them. Endless thread is a production of WBUR, Boston's NPR station, in partnership with Reddit. Josh Swartz is our producer who thought the vaccine workshop he attended was an example of humans being bros. Iris Adler is our executive producer,

and she thinks people would get through to each other better if they would just focus less on... Clever comebacks. Mix and sound design by Paul Vicus, who's so excited for our next episode. He keeps chanting, We want plates! Michael Pope is our advisor at Reddit,

and he thinks people should make medical decisions based on more than just... Fan theories. Our intern is Magdielamata. On Reddit, we are endless underscore thread. if you want to contribute art for an upcoming episode or give us a juicy story tip so we can tell it like we did today. Hit us up there.

My co-host and producer is Amory Sieverts. I'm senior producer and host Ben Brock Johnson. Bell, let myself out.