Front Burner - Anti-vax update as Canadian measles surges

Episode Date: November 25, 2024

Routine childhood vaccinations have been on the decline in recent years, with the anti-vax movement rising during the Covid-19 pandemic.
But the conversation has shifted.
What was once affiliated with left-leaning counterculture has now become increasingly right-wing, with male health influencers leading much of the conversation. How did the shift happen, and what implications could it have on public health? Timothy Caulfield is a professor at the University of Alberta, with the Faculty of Law and Public Health. He’ll go through how and why the anti-vax movement changed.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hey everybody, Jamie here. So in New Brunswick right now, there's a brutal measles outbreak. The province has confirmed 44 cases of the disease, and there are actually 100 confirmed cases nationwide. The biggest outbreak

in Canada since 2019. About two-thirds of these cases are in people who have not been vaccinated against the disease. Routine childhood vaccination rates have been falling in recent years. The anti-vax movement saw a surge during the pandemic, and now long-time anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is set to lead the U.S. Department of Health. To talk about all of this, my guest today is Timothy Caulfield. He's a professor at the University of Alberta and the Faculty of Law in the School of Public Health. He's an expert on health misinformation, and this is something that he's been watching very, very closely. Timothy, hi, thanks so much for coming on to the show. Thanks for having me on. But before we start talking about the state of the anti-vax movement, I just wonder if I could get your reaction to this measles outbreak. What goes

through the head of someone like you when you hear the news? I can't help but be really angry. And look, there's a whole bunch of factors at play here. Access to vaccines. There's vaccine fatigue because it's just been a topic for so long. But there's absolutely no doubt that this is largely a story of vaccination hesitancy. We know that hesitancy rates for not just the measles vaccine, right, are increasing. We're seeing it in the United States and in Canada. We're seeing it for HPV. We're seeing it for the flu vaccine. Of course, of course, we're seeing for the COVID vaccines. There's just this horribly destructive trend of, you know, an anti-science trend for this increasing hesitancy. So when you hear stories like this, it's maddening, right? Because as you

said off the top, we know the measles vaccine is incredibly effective and incredibly, incredibly safe. And by the way, by the way, around the world, 107,000 people died of measles last year, mostly kids, mostly kids, right? Those are deaths that could have been prevented if we had, you know, strong distribution of the measles vaccines. In the United States, in the United States, a recent study found that about 30% of people believe the vaccines cause autism lie. Now, 30% believe or open to, and that is an increase. So the belief in that lie, that hardcore lie, is increasing. And that is totally, totally the fault of anti-vaxxers. And for sure, RFK Jr. has played a huge role in that increase.

I wonder if you could help me put just maybe a few more numbers on this. So in terms of vaccination rates, do we have a good sense of how much they have been following and for which vaccines, particularly since the pandemic, since 2020? Well, it is difficult to put an exact number on this because, you know, depending on how you ask and what is the nature of the hesitancy. But the number I just gave is a really good example. of the hesitancy. But the number I just gave is a really good example. If you look at the numbers of for belief in misinformation about vaccines, that's another really good indication. So things like the COVID vaccine, you know, killed more people than it saved. The COVID vaccine will change my DNA. The ivermectin works. These things like are that are demonstrably false, right, from a scientific perspective, you know, not, you know, oh, we need to be open minded to

outside, you know, sort of scientific ideas. These things are demonstrably false. And studies have shown that belief in that those lies is increasing in both Canada and the United States. those lies is increasing in both Canada and the United States. If you ask people, why, you know, why do you have this hesitancy? Largely, it's not about some very nuanced perspective on distrust of institutions or this nuanced belief in what the science says about who should be getting the booster. The distrust, the hesitancy is justified using misinformation, like the ideas that I just rolled out. So we know that misinformation is playing

a big part in this increase in hesitancy. There's complexities here for sure, because what is the arrow of causation? In other words, do you have this hesitancy in your gut and because you're part of this political community, for example, and then you reach for misinformation to justify the hesitancy or or did the misinformation cause the hesitancy that I just described, it kind of doesn't matter because the hesitancy is still doing, or the misinformation is still playing a big part in that increase and the justification for that increase. The people who have these beliefs, do we sort of have any sense of who they are? You know, maybe in terms of demographics. We do. We do. And it's a fascinating question because it's shifted. It's definitely shifted over time. We know that hesitancy is

playing a huge, increasingly big role right now. And we know that that hesitancy resides on a very particular side of the ideological spectrum. And let me just give you some numbers here. In the United States, your political identity is more predictive of whether you are vaccinated for COVID, and really, I think this goes for almost every vaccine now, then race, income, education, insurance coverage, age, it is the number one predictive variable. And that is true in Canada, too. We have less research on it in Canada against another topic that we're researching at our institute. But let me just give you this one survey that was done

by a colleague of mine, Frank Graves, a survey expert in Alberta. And he found that I believe the number, I'm going to be careful to get this right, I think it was 93% of the unvaccinated, those individuals who didn't get a vaccine, who didn't get the COVID vaccine, voted for the Conservative Party in Alberta. And I think it's three to five percent of the unvaccinated voted for the NDP. That is a huge split. This is very interesting to me because this actually wasn't always the case, right? Yeah, I think this is very, very important because, you know, as soon as you start rolling out these numbers and you can feel the anger in my voice, you think, oh, Caulfield's just being super partisan. You know, he's a he's a ideological hack.

It wasn't always like this. And you can say that more broadly about alternative medicine and the wellness industry. You know, for most of my career, this kind of resided on the left. You know, it was about, you know, new agey approaches to health. It was about different ways of knowing. It was about natural. It was about being counterculture. There's been studies that have shown that in the 70s, in the 70s, it was the Democrats in the United States that were anti-science and the Republicans that were strongly pro-science, right? So Vietnam War, Agent Orange, Watergate, and now we've seen a complete flip. I can give other examples on and on. So it's really important to recognize it's this cultural moment and it's

largely emanating from the right. And just take me through what you think caused the flip, right? Like what you think caused the flip. So again, you're going to hate my answer. It's complex. It's complex. We had a lot of those on this show. Yeah, I think I do think there are interesting threads, right? So, you know, I make it sound like there was this complete shift, but there are these threads

that were always there, like suspicion of institutions. You saw that on the left and on the right, certainly during the Vietnam War and Watergate. So you're seeing that thread continues. Also, this idea of empowerment, taking control of your life. I think you see those threads there. But in the past, when you're talking about health misinformation, which is, you know, the area that I study, it was never this political, right? You know, there were all, you know, politics was always there, it was kind of lurking in the background, but now it's central. So the other thing that I think has happened is there's this cycle where being anti-vax is being part of this

community and therefore it becomes more valuable for politicians to either explicitly or often implicitly kind of endorse the conspiracy theory or the idea, thereby making it more of an ideological flag for that community. And the cycle kind of accelerates, right? And we've seen that happen in the United States. So in other words, it becomes more politically advantageous for politicians and people within that political community to use these topics as an ideological flag, right? And we've seen that with topics on the left and on the right, you know, and we could talk about nuclear power and GMOs on the left. Right. And then on the right, you see it. It's becoming vaccines and and gender politics. These are wedge issues that that allow belief in the conspiracy theory to accelerate and and and the scientific data to kind of rescind in and relevance. It really all becomes about the ideological flag. And fair for me to say that the pandemic might have like supercharged this.

Oh, for sure. For sure that it did. And this has to do with distrust. And I think you start to see populist parties taking advantage of that distrust, like don't trust, you know, the elites, advantage of that distrust, like don't trust, you know, the elites, which is a common theme, as everyone knows, in populist politics. And that, you know, became the norm. And it's become the norm to such a degree, in one of the things I'm both fascinated with and infuriated with, that, you know, as I said at the outset, demonstrable lies for particular communities are held out as truisms, right? So if you don't believe this lie, you are the enemy, right? They become ideological tests. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem.

Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to,

50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. You just did this documentary for The Passionate Eye, which is great, by the way, all about the manosphere and the idea of wellness. The manosphere is something that we've talked a lot about on this podcast lately. Of course, it dovetails with all those right populist politics.

And just tell me more about the role that people like Joe Rogan and Theo Vaughn and other big manosphere influencer types have played in this movement. It's huge. It's absolutely huge. If you're like 21 years old and you say to me, should I get vaccinated? I go, no. Are you healthy? Are you a healthy person?

Like, look, if you're a healthy person and you're exercising all the time and you're young and you're eating well, like, I don't think you need to worry about this. I grew up next to the primate center

in Covington, Louisiana. It's where they even created the polio vaccine. And the vaccine gave cervical cancer to millions of women. But they'd already made the vaccine. So they, the government... Let's just reflect on a relatively recent study about where individuals are getting their information. So this study came out, I'm going to say last week, and it found that for those under the age of 30, 40% of those individuals get their news, their facts about the world from an influencer, which is incredible, right?

Two thirds of those influencers are men and most of them lean right. So think Joe Rogan, right? That's the first individual that pops into your mind. So this is where individuals are right? That's the first individual that pops into your mind. So this is where individuals are getting their facts about the world. They're getting the facts about the world from these individuals, right? These aren't journalists. These aren't scientists. These aren't researchers. These aren't people who are aggregating the evidence in a responsible manner. These are influencers. And so they are playing a massive role. And the whole manosphere has been embraced. And we know this had an impact, and the numbers back this up, in the United States in American politics.

And you're starting to see it happen here. Yeah, and vaccines are a big part of that, for me to say. It is. I think it is fair to say that. And there's really interesting research about how the manosphere has influenced perspectives on other public health measures, right? Like wearing sunscreen. An interesting study that came out recently showed that, you know, real men don't wear sunscreen. You have a liver king, you cannot wear sunscreen. And, you know, if you eat a carnivore diet, in fact, you don't need sunscreen, apparently. Not true, obviously. Real men don't eat, you know, don't eat lots of fruits and vegetables and this kind of perspective. And

other studies have shown that those who adhere to traditional masculine norms just don't follow public health measures as much as others. And again, you have to be careful not to over over interpret this data because it is correlational. It's observational. Right. And there might be other variables, you know, baked into that data, socioeconomics, education. But but the definitely the trend is there. And it's also associated with, you know, traditional masculine norms are also associated with risky behavior that's bad for you. behavior that's bad for you, right? You know, so more drinking, smoking, you know, unprotected sex, you know, on and on and on. And it's also associated with domestic violence. And, you know, it's not a healthy trend that way. And I hope that comes across in the doc.

Having said all of this, you know, on the topic of vaccines, like, I'm just curious where women fit into this, right? Because it is often the case that in a lot of households, it's the women that are the ones taking the lead on making health care decisions for their children. And so what role are they playing in this dynamic? They play a huge role. And I think traditionally that women have played a huge role in the anti-vax narrative. And I, again, want to be careful not to overgeneralize. It's complex. Right. But if you look back, you know, big picture to people like Jenny McCarthy and the idea that vaccines cause autism. Without a doubt in my mind, I believe vaccinations triggered Evan's autism. Parent after parent after parent says, I vaccinated my baby.

They got a fever and then they stopped speaking and then became autistic. Oprah kind of emboldening that idea. I'm here with Jenny McCarthy, who has become one of the most vocal advocates for parents of children with autism. Yeah, I remember that so well. Yeah, yeah, that's absolutely, that's moms and they

were held up as heroes, right? That, you know, autism warrior, I think is what CNN called Jenny McCarthy, which is, you know, just horrible, just horrible, right? You know, we're talking about, you know, a vaccine that can save lives and, you know, how many deaths were caused by that completely false idea? Question mark. I want to talk to you about RFK Jr. specifically here. So this is a guy with a long public record of vaccine skepticism and other other dubious claims about health science. And maybe just talk to me a little bit about what he's said about vaccines,

but also what you think the implications of having someone like him in that sort of leadership position as the head of the U.S. Department of Health? Well, first of all, I think off the top, it's really important to emphasize he is not a vaccine skeptic, right? He doesn't have controversial views on vaccines. He is a hardcore anti-vaxxer. I see somebody somebody on a hiking trail with a caring little baby and I say to him, better not get him vaccinated. And he heard that from me. If he hears it from 10 other people,

maybe he will save that child. And I really worry about how we're seeing, you know, I'm sure you've heard this phrase, the same washing that is happening with RFK Jr. That's a really good point. Yeah. Yeah, he always says, his, his, you know, he always says, I'm not anti-vax. I just want, you know, safe and effective vaccines.

I have never been anti-vax. I have never told anybody, I have never told the public avoid vaccination. The only thing I've asked for, and my views are constantly misrepresented so that the truth of what I believe is not, we're not allowed right, that have definitely contributed to the increase in vaccination hesitancy. And people have presented him with, here's this mountain of data that counters the lie that you just push, and he ignores it. He ignores it, and he rolls out an anecdote or just makes this assertion. There is very, very strong science, really overwhelming science, linking those autism rates to the thimerosal that was in the vaccine. I bet that you've never met anybody

with full-blown autism your age, you know, headbanging, football or helmet on, non-toilet-trained, non-verbal. I mean, I've never met anybody like that my age, but in my kid's age, now one in every 34 kids has autism, half of those are full blown, meaning that description. He's claimed that HIV doesn't cause AIDS. There's a lot of people that said it's not a virus.

The virus is a passenger virus. And these people are dying mainly because of poppers. And these people are dying mainly because of poppers. 100% of the people who died in the first, of the first thousand who had AIDS were people who were addicted to poppers, which are known to cause carposy, sarcoma, and rats. He makes ridiculous comments about things like fluoride. I think fluoride is a poison.

But in the context of vaccines, he's probably done the most harm, right? When you just think of things like the autism is caused by vaccines lie that has been disproven over and over and over again, right? So he is a hardcore anti-vaxxer. The concern is that he is going to totally normalize this kind of rhetoric. And we're already starting to see this in the legacy media. Or they'll say, well, he has got interesting ideas about healthy lifestyles, which absolutely infuriates me. And I know it infuriates all of my public health researchers, you know, who have been studying this for decades and advocating for healthy lifestyles.

Can he, one question I have for you is, can he do damage beyond the way that we talk and think about vaccines? I'm thinking about like the FDA here, right? Which gives approvals for vaccines, for drugs. It's an administration that Canada basically follows. Yes, I think, and also just in the context of research, right? You know, one of the projects I'm working on, I'm working with the scientific community, biomedical researchers on mRNA vaccinations.

And the concern is that the research priorities in the United States are going to change, right? And that's going to have an impact on Canada. Because let's be honest, the NIH is the biggest funder of research on planet Earth. I think that statement is true. And so what they fund, you know, what their research priorities are, has an impact on Canada and really on the world. The other thing, of course,

is a lot of the biomedical companies reside in the United States, or at least at a minimum, the United States has a huge impact on the priority of industry in this space. That's going to have an impact. You know, we've been talking about how these beliefs are so entwined with people's personal and political identities. And I would imagine that that would make it so hard to change someone's mind about it, right? And so what do you see as like the way forward here for scientists, for public health experts like yourself, maybe for somebody listening who's trying to figure out how to talk to a friend or an aunt or something like that, right? How do you try and counter this or fight back against it? You're right.

Unfortunately, unfortunately, the data tells us that the more this becomes about personal identity, you know, about being part of a community. And I think we need to be sort of empathetic about that, right? You know, that it's easy to rage against people like RFK Jr. But for, you know, our friends and neighbors and colleagues and family members, you know, they're looking for answers and they're looking for communities and they want to feel safe. We have to remember that, right?

But once you become part of a community, once this becomes part of your identity, it can be much more difficult to change people's minds. So I do think we want to listen to what the concerns are that drew people to these conclusions. We want to recognize the role of the community in their belief system. We need to also recognize that it's going to take time. Studies have shown that once you take on these hardcore beliefs, it can be very difficult and you have to have patience and you have to give people a path towards credible information. The good news is we're getting more and more research on this. People like Gordon Pennycook and David Rand have done research on using things like AI chatbots to answer people's questions and sort of pull them out of the rabbit hole.

And they actually found that that could be quite effective. The other thing we want to do is we want to just invite people to remember that this information is often playing to politics, it's playing to rage, it's playing to grievance. So if you do that kind of pre-bunking, and you invite people to kind of pause and think about accuracy, before they sort of internalize the belief, they're less likely to believe misinformation, less likely to spread misinformation. This is often called an accuracy nudge. So if you combine pre-bunking, like we're doing today, with an accuracy nudge, again, research shows that we can, on a population level, right,

on a population level, move the needle. But we can't give up. We can't give up. You know, we can't let that that candle go, you know, in the darkness go out. We have to, you know, keep fighting for good science and reason as a path forward. Okay. Tim, thank you so much for this. I really appreciate it. Please come by and do this pre-bunking anytime that you, anytime you want. It's great to have you. Thank you so much for this. I really appreciate it. Please come by and do this pre-bunking anytime that you, anytime you want. It's great to have you. Thank you so much for the opportunity. All right, that is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you tomorrow.