The following is an edited excerpt from Unvaxxed: Trust, truth and the rise of vaccine outrage by award-winning science journalist Dyani Lewis. Unvaxxed is the second book in The Crikey Read series by Crikey and Hardie Grant Books. It is available to purchase from today.
On March 28, 2020, the Facebook Messenger app on my phone pinged with a message from mum. Forwarded from whoever had sent it to her, the message laid out some “important information about the new coronavirus”. It should have been the first Saturday of school holidays for my eldest daughter, who had just started her first year of school. Instead, the term had ended early and abruptly. International travel was banned, gatherings were curtailed, and two days earlier, my home state of Victoria had recorded its first death from COVID-19. The world was on edge. I was on edge.
“The virus hates heat,” the message from mum said, “therefore hot drinks such as infusions, broths or simply hot water should be consumed abundantly during the day. Avoid drinking ice water or drinks with ice cubes.” It went on: “For those who can, sunbathe. The sun’s UV rays kill the virus and the vitamin D is good for you.” According to the poorly punctuated, copy-pasted screed, the advice was originally sent as an internal email to staff at the Royal Brisbane Hospital. “Please share with family, friends and work colleagues,” it implored. My mother diligently forwarded a second, abridged version of the same message, a moment after the first. It claimed to be “SERIOUSLY EXCELLENT ADVICE by Japanese doctors treating COVID-19 patients”. It was obvious that neither claim was true and, to me at least, that the advice was nonsense.
“Unfortunately this is total BS,” I replied. “Happy to talk — have spent last few days talking to experts on transmission.” Hot water won’t stop the virus, I told her. Washing your hands is a good idea, I said. And facemasks make a difference, I added, even though not everyone was convinced of that at the time.
A couple of days later, mum sent links to sewing patterns for facemasks, no doubt discovered on the same platform she’d found the other dubious messages. But a month after that, she sent me a video on YouTube. “Have a look at this — really interesting!” she texted. The video was a webinar by Andrew Kaufman, a psychiatrist based in Syracuse, New York state. After reeling off his credentials, Kaufman laid out his thoughts on “What I think COVID-19 really is”. Instead of being caused by a novel virus, Kaufman speculated, COVID-19 was probably caused by some other form of cellular assault — stress, perhaps, or a toxin — which was causing microscopic vesicles with a virus-like appearance under the microscope to form inside a person’s lung tissue. Or maybe — though he couldn’t find anything in the literature to support his theory — electromagnetic radiation from 5G mobile phone towers was the culprit. And those first cases of COVID-19 in the Wuhan wet market? Probably just a case of bad seafood, he said.
I called mum straightaway. The doctor — who has since disavowed mainstream medicine — doesn’t know what he’s talking about, I said. I was terse as I invoked conspiracy theories and the stupidity of people to believe such garbage. Mum bristled and became defensive at my tone. “OK, well I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking,” she said. I wonder whether even then, she was deciding to be more careful about what she shared with me.
Despite reporting on little else, I barely spoke of the pandemic with my mum over the next year or more. My world contracted around me. Lockdowns, home-schooling, and interviews about contact tracing, facemasks and specks of contagion carried on air currents dominated my days. But my mum’s life away from Melbourne proceeded relatively untouched by COVID-19, which is not to say she wasn’t dealing with other upheavals. A few months before the pandemic arrived on Australia’s doorstep, she sold her house in the leafy hills of Melbourne’s outskirts and temporarily moved in with her sister in Adelaide. Then, at the end of 2020 — having spent all of five days in lockdown — she moved again, this time to Canberra, to be closer to my brother and his kids, and to start afresh. Two weeks before Christmas 2020, they signed a lease together.
In August 2021, Canberra was on the precipice of its first lockdown when my brother texted me. “So I’m kind of worried about [mum]. She’s gone [off] the deep end with COVID conspiracies,” he wrote. “Anti lockdown, anti vaccine … all the right-wing loopy stuff from the states,” he wrote. His main concern was for his kids — aged 11 and nine at the time — who were being fed a diet of fearful warnings from their grandmother. Microsoft founder Bill Gates is bankrolling vaccine development, she told them, and they’re not really vaccines at all, because they alter your DNA.
Her messages at the start of the pandemic suggested she had already tapped into some questionable networks online. But I’d ignored those crimson-bright warning signs. YouTube and Facebook algorithms — combined with her own tendencies to mistrust Western medicine and government authorities — had taken her to the darker corners of pandemic denial and conspiracy.
A week later, my brother contacted me again. Mum had sent him a link to a YouTube video, “MASS PSYCHOSIS – How an Entire Population Becomes MENTALLY ILL”, which cunningly portrays the COVID-19 pandemic as an episode of propaganda-induced society-wide madness, à la the 17th-century Salem witch trials in Massachusetts, without ever mentioning the pandemic specifically. My brother tried to tell mum that the science about the pandemic was conclusive. “Bullshit,” she replied. “It’s not really about the science but what is being allowed to be reported.”
I shouldn’t have taken it personally, but this hit a nerve.
I called her, told her we were concerned. But there was little concern in my voice as I berated her for getting all her information from Facebook and YouTube. She started telling me about how fear-mongering propaganda can cause mass, population-wide psychosis. Then she turned to defending herself against my attack. Eventually, she just hung up.
In the weeks that followed, she launched a campaign to convince me that truth was on her side, that I was the one who was mistaken. With the vaccine rollout now in full swing around the country, she was determined to persuade me that the vaccines were dangerous. She’d send a video link. I’d reply with another link to debunk the video’s content or expose the liars in the video who were peddling mistruths. “If you believe in smear campaigns without knowing both sides that’s fine. Can’t believe you are so gullible,” she wrote. “This is a repeat of the things that happened in Nazi Germany. The propaganda is unreal. But then telling you that is pointless so just forget it. No need to reply.”
* * *
I’m far from alone in having a significant personal relationship catastrophically rupture over questions of how the pandemic has been managed, and over the COVID-19 vaccines in particular. Ask anyone, and they will tell you of a person in their orbit — a family friend, a brother-in-law, a colleague at work — who has chosen not to be vaccinated, lost their job because of vaccine mandates, or joined one of the many “freedom” rallies to decry restrictions that have been placed on the unvaxxed.
When I spoke to Julie Leask, a social scientist who is the go-to expert on vaccine refusal, I asked her about the best way to combat anti-vaccine activists. Her advice: don’t give them oxygen. “Our perception of what others are doing affects what we think is a norm, and social norms affect vaccination,” she told me.
There are good reasons not to shy away from what is a complex and thorny issue. Vaccine coverage — though high — is far from uniform. For some, disadvantage and lack of access to vaccination services remain barriers. As a society — a wealthy one at that — we should all be concerned that this is the case. But we also need to take an unflinching look at why people who could access vaccines if they wanted to are instead refusing them, despite overwhelming support for vaccines from all corners of the scientific community and regulatory machinery.
My generation, close to your mother’s age, rolled up its sleeves and got vaccinated against polio, TB and tetanus, among other problems. What a shame they couldn’t be vaccinated against gullibility and bulls**t.
To my mind, the best vaccination would be a combination of…
Not foolproof but perhaps a good-enough filter to reduce the risk of conspiracy theories gaining critical mass and becoming what defines their believers.
Conspiracy theories seem to thrive on the disenfranchised and you can’t really ask someone who lives in constant fear of losing their job or has been left to deal with their (or their parents’) depression alone – picking just a couple of examples – to reason calmly and clearly.
I put in #3 because healthy institutions and our trust in them take generations to build.
Mainstream medical sources will tell you that a deficiency in Vitamin D has an adverse effect on the immune system. So,as usual there was a kernel of truth that got ignored amongst all the crap that her mum circulated. Australia has one of the highest vitamin D deficiencies in the world (probably due to the slip slop slap avoid cancer message being taken as a blanket one
to avoid the sun). For god’s sake don’t let the timing of this book coming out refuel all the “death to everyone with a point of view different to me” stuff that we’ve been putting up with for the last two and a half years. it’s an abominable way to treat people and completely lacking in compassion and even common sense sometimes.
I said at the start of the pandemic (and of course I wasn’t the only one) “This is the practice one. We have a chance to get properly prepared and ready for the one that’s more virulent and more deadly. I wonder if we’re smart enough”, Sadly, I don’t think we are, everyone seems to want to “put it behind us” and “move forward” without consolidating and institutionalising the lessons we’ve learned.
If the next one is more ferocious and is targeting healthy young children instead of the aged and infirm, I think there’ll be a lot more of the “death to the unbelievers” mindset.
Not sure where you got the idea that ‘Australia has one of the highest vitamin D deficiencies in the world’. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41430-021-00880-y
The whole purpose of these conspiracy theories is to get people to untrust the democratic system of government where freedom of thought and politics and religion is allowed as part of that system and then as we saw on Jan 6th 2021, revolt against it, in order to have a 1 party state with a single authoritarian voice replace it because that way lies certainty. (so they claim) Of course though, that means you then place your trust wholeheartedly in someone who constantly lies to you and rarely or ever tells the truth. It’s not as though this has not been done before, it’s just long enough ago for the vast majority to have never seen it before or in such small minority, they are ignored. Once that untrust has been established it is virtually impossible to eradicate.
Not that long ago! Have you forgotten Trump?
Had he been a less ignorant ego and as easily manipulated as mum/grandma here
This is a good article/interview on the subject. Apparently there are a whole group of (mostly American) people who have got it into their head that democracy is a bad idea, and what we need is a dictatorship: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/05/the-strange-and-terrifying-ideas-of-neoreactionaries/ Apparently Peter Thiel is a fan, and funds at least some of the whackos.
I wish you hadn’t included that link – I just read the piece and it sounds uncannily like our late government, and probably a future one as well.
Well, that was interesting on several levels, not least that two well read people got Pascal’s wager so wrong. I can definitely see that stream of though on lots of posts and comments in all sorts of social media outlets. LinkedIn is full of people, mostly men, who are clearly devotees of this mode of thinking.
This is one of the reasons why I’m concerned about the growing American diaspora. There are comments and queries on lots of forums from Americans wanting to emigrate, and Australia is one of the countries they are very interested in. There are been comments from other Americans that it’s easy to get tech jobs here. I really, really don’t want Americans migrating here, and of the Americans I don’t want migrating here, tech people are at the top of the list. The article you post is a perfect example of why.
It’s scary. Especially when you consider the established connection to Russia and China around much of the misinformation and propaganda.
So often I hear this talking like conspiracy theories leap into crazy people and make them crazier, when conspiracy theories are the product of systemic distrust for bloody good reason – even if THAT particular thing being distrusted turns out to be perfectly true. And shutting down sensible conversations and sensible concerns as has been happening even here in Crikey during the pandemic, has made the whole distrust thing even worse and driven people down internet rabbit holes where they’re literally prey to unscrupulous people who seem to enjoy stirring up fear and trouble or maybe they have more sinister motives than that.
I’m not sure that it took conspiracy theories about Covid to cause distrust of government here in Australia though. A constantly lying Prime Minister could have something to do with it. The perception of so many politicians as being lying s.o.b.’s who’ll say anything, including “core and non-core promises” and say anything to get elected is another cause of general distrust. The Witness K thing is also a pertinent case in point, that I don’t need to expand on for anyone in this comment room. And oyu still want us to trust them?
As for RECENT eye popping causes to distrust big pharma – we don’t have space enough to list their recent horrors in their corporate behavior, not the least of which in 2009 caused Pfizer to have to pay the US government $2.3 billion dollars for their fraudulent behavior and that’s no conspiracy theory, you can look it up for yourself in mainstream US media and it wasn’t even the first time. Gee I wonder how many times that fine they made up in Covid profits? And the more recent reporting in the New York times of Congress’s investigation into gobsmackingly serious and long standing and KNOWN quality control problems at Emergent who’ve been manufacturing Covid vaccines for Johnson and Johnson throughout the pandemic – THAT one beggared belief. But sure – trust them blindly if you want.
But I’m suggesting that demonising people who don’t want to blindly trust – is ADDING to the problem. A simple willingness to understand their fear would not only be a breath of fresh air, it would also create an opportunity for one less reason for them to distrust.
And to my lovely old bloke who could become a friend, it’s been a pleasure to put two comments up on vax articles without the wishing me dead thing. So let me double the hugs to keep up the good vibes!
And here we have it people. One of Crikey’s prime examples of being brainwashed and expecting everyone to be polite to her about it.
Because some governments lie about some things some of the time does not mean all governments lie about all things all of the time.
To trust some of what some government say about some things does not mean you “Trust them blindly”.
However to disbelieve what all government say about everything all the time certainly means you mistrust them blindly.
Are governments any more or less trustworthy than private corporations or individuals? Who would you trust more over Facebook, Labor, or Rupert Murdoch?
It’s easy to tear down governments. However, what do you replace them with? Whatever entity has the most power at the time? Whatever secures the most power by force? Private enterprise?
“I shouldn’t have taken it personally, but this hit a nerve.”
What a punchline! Crisp, and pregnant with dramatic irony. I totally love this new heroine! The last time I felt so instantly amused by a main protagonist was ‘Alex’ in Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Everything is Illuminated” (a character from Ukraine, incidentally – perhaps they could cross paths! – seems plausible).
For some reason I find it very endearing in a character to have this combination of a total lack of personal insight, and insufferable vanity about their intelligence and worldliness. There’s a touching naivete about someone so totally besotted with expertise, experts, inside knowledge, and orthodox doctrine that they don’t ever consider it necessary or preferable to formulate their own opinion.
The mockery of her mother was just scrumptious writing. The unreliable narrator portrays poor mum as an utter nincompoop just for asking the sort of sensible questions that our dear heroine must aggressively self-censor from her inner monologue to maintain sanity and composure, and continue her very important professional career.
The idea of writing this account from a perspective within the mass formation – this is sheer brilliance. It turns the entire culture and society into the unreliable narrator. I cannot wait to read the next instalment.
Um, sorry, I’ve just read the other comments and it seems that this is not a work of satirical fiction at all. Ouch. How embarrassing – for me, I mean. I struggle to understand this. How could the author be so saturated in the obviously manufactured ideology of the fraudulent consensus that she is able to wring a whole book out of it! Oh dear, this has left me feeling peculiar indeed.
On the other hand, the book could just be a disgraceful deception, another propagandistic melon. A mercenary’s musings to maintain the medico-media complex. Everybody’s gotta eat. It’s just such a pity to see fellow citizens glibly trashing our precious, fragile, democratic freedoms, not to mention disparaging their Mum to the entire nation.
That’s what makes me think it’s a work of fiction. No-one would do that to their Mum. Not even the spooky, crypto-fascist, blue-bleeding, heartless hacks from Crikey. But what do I know? I’m just another one of them, no-good, loathsome ‘anti-knackers’.
Get defenestrated.
What a brilliant assessment of Lewis’ condescending diatribe against her mother. How bad must the rest of the book be, I wonder…
Hat tip to you, my friend – comments of this quality are a rarity at Crikey.
All those words. So little meaning. She must have really hit a nerve.
Your astonishing inability to comprehend the written word continues to astound.
I’m sure there are a lot of things that astound you. The ignorant are so easily astounded.