It’s the whole “forced to take them by the government” that scares them. Ridiculous, since governments have always been trustworthy.

Neither the government nor the pharma industry has done much to maintain their credibility with the people. Drugs have side effects, literally every ad on any news channel will tell you so. Studies are fuzzed. Which is why its important to talk to multiple experts, and look at multiple studies. But for vaccines there have been plenty debunking the link between vaccines and autism.

Forced by the government should be pushed back but not by denying evidence.

Whereas snake oil salesman have traditionally been a beacon of credibility?

That's the biggest thing that gets me.

"I don't trust the authorities, so I'm going to base all my health choices on this random hustler from YouTube and eat horse dewormer."

It's kind of the essence of populism. "I'm too smart to fall for the lies of the authorities, so ... here let me throw my brain totally out the window and follow pure charisma instead."

Some skepticism of the authorities is rational because of course governments are sometimes corrupt and more often incompetent. (Never attribute to malice what can be explained by laziness or stupidity.) Doing some of your own research is good. But why does critical thinking go totally out the window for so many people at that point? And why do people assume that just because someone is "alternative" rather than "mainstream" they have no profit motive? Do people not realize that alt-med and self-help and certain kinds of religious zealotry are all massive industries with their own profit motives just like "big pharma"?

Governments have always been trustworthy?

That was sarcasm

Fear of the unknown pairs with magical thinking, like a norm-and-culture destroying iconoclastic cheese and wine.

Honestly, I think a big part of it is fear of needles. Sticking a sharp thing into your body hurts, leaves a bruise, and sometimes makes you feel sick. Those immediate negatives can be hard to weigh against the nebulous benefits of possibly not getting sick months or years from now.

There is no need to treat vaccine scepticism as something special.

Most of the denialism is rooted in the logic of "truth of the world is what you can see and observe". This worked fine for centuries but once there was rapid progress lot of things could no longer be explained through "see and observe". This mostly happened in late 1800s and early 1900s when there was a huge leap in scientific understanding. Lot of scepticism comes from this era. In the conspiracy theory lore - Before 5G was causing COVID, electricity was causing influenza outbreak in late 1800s.

"Natural" or faith healing are thought to be observable facts. You can see a plant growing but not the vaccine produced in a lab.

Couple this with general distrust of governments - monarchy or democracy you have people doubting vaccines.

> In the conspiracy theory lore - Before 5G was causing COVID, electricity was causing influenza outbreak in late 1800s.

Wow. Any book/paper recommendations ? Fascinating stuff.

Fear of needles

There are other mechanisms of delivery such as oral vaccines. This is a valid reason, phobias need addressing. But plenty of vaccines are available via oral delivery.

Ive had a bone marrow biopsy done. Those are done fully awake with no anesthetic except for the skin incision.

You literally feel the push of the sharp needle cutting through your bone. Slowly. methodically. Half a millimeter by half millimeter every time the practitioner puts her weight on the needle.

Then, as they aspirate the marrow, you feel as if your balls are being sucked into your hips.

Then, despite the pain, I volunteered to sign up as a bone marrow donor.

Please, call me an idiot if you must, but don't explain away my distrust of vaccines with cowardice.