I haven't seen anti-vax being considered "scientific dissent."
Science is about evaluating theories; not being "for" or "against" anything.
Any group that is "pro-X" or "anti-Y" is not a scientific group—it's a political group. Anti-vax is a political group. Not a scientific dissent group. Scientific dissent is when people say "X is not true" or "Y is true."
Anti-vax isn't a term anti-vaxers came up with themselves, it's a term pro-vaxers came up with as a pejorative term for anyone who questions the safety of any vaccine. People who only questioned the covid vaccine and were fine with other vaccines were still smeared as anti-vax, even though the COVID vaccines were qualitatively different from all other vaccines in practically every way possible.
> it's a term pro-vaxers came up with as a pejorative term for anyone who questions the safety of any vaccine.
Anti-vax predates Covid and goes back at least to the fraud committed by Wakefield. It certainly was discussed back in the 2015 measles outbreak in Marin. I'm not letting you getting away with revisionism.
What you also selectively omit is "questioning the safety of the vaccine" at the same time as promulgating things like "taking of horse dewormer"--which is actually more dangerous than any side effects from any vaccine (kidney failure is one of the ivermectin side effects, for example). In addition, it wasn't "not take the vaccine but also take precautions" like the immunocompromised did; it was "ignore the vaccine and any and all precautions and restrictions."
The only difference with Covid anti-vax vs MMR anti-vax was that your own personal actions had a not small chance of coming home to roost directly rather than only on your children. Covid anti-vax eventually became a self-correcting problem. So it goes.
Science is about evaluating theories; not being "for" or "against" anything.
Any group that is "pro-X" or "anti-Y" is not a scientific group—it's a political group. Anti-vax is a political group. Not a scientific dissent group. Scientific dissent is when people say "X is not true" or "Y is true."