The Mark of The Beast and Genetic Mutations: The History of Anti-Vaxx and Why It Hasn’t Changed

By Caleb Stewart

On the 2nd of December 2020, the first covid-19 vaccine was approved in the UK. For nine months, the globe had been tussling with covid-19, desperately working towards a vaccine or effective treatment; and this was it. Good news! Or so you’d think.

There was a community which frothed into an anxious frenzy. They began spewing harmful, and in most cases fictitious, ‘facts’ about vaccines online and somehow slithered into the mainstream media and public consciousness. While the title “anti-vaxxer” may conjure images of greasy-haired basement dwelling incels or paranoid tinfoil-hat dawning conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers are not confined to outsider groups in our society. I discovered from a conversation with Dr. Jonathan Berman, author of Anti-Vaxxer, that: “there really isn't anything about an Anti-Vaxxer that would set them apart. You wouldn’t see them in the street and think, “They’re a crazy person”.

Edward Jenner administering a Smallpox vaccine

Attempting to understand the movement, I went down an anti-vaccination rabbit hole. Surprisingly, the movement hasn’t changed much since its debut in the 18th century. When Edward Jenner came up with the idea of smearing Cowpox pus into open wounds to prevent Smallpox, people thought he’d gone crazy.

But Jenner’s method was effective and vaccines became compulsory; this is when organised anti-vaccine movements were born.

The first parallel between early anti-vaxxers and the modern movement, is the role of religion. When Dr.Berman addressed religion, he told me that: “It tends to be one of those isolating factors that allow small communities and small groups of people to stay together. Then those isolated groups tend to be convinced by anti-vaccine rhetoric”. This can have serious consequences, as we’ve seen from the multiple outbreaks of measles across the US.

While no religion is outright anti-vaccine, some Evangelical preachers have made wild claims. In the words of Dr.Berman, “Evangelicals have taken on an anti-science stance overall, seeking advice from a scientist is a betrayal of faith almost”. But hey, who needs a vaccine when you can inoculate yourself with the word of god?

Unsurprisingly, a medical journal from 1866 made the same claims. Clergymen from the Church of England had deduced that because a vaccine came, in some part from an animal, it would stunt the “physical and spiritual health” of children.

Poster from 1834 depicting conditions in a Poor Law Workhouse

Then there’s the question of personal liberty. Mandatory vaccinations were introduced as part of Poor Law reform in 1840 and 1853. It was met with immediate resentment from the working class. Poor Law had ripped away all control ‘Paupers’ had. If they were suffering and didn’t have the means to improve their lives, they were forced to move into a parish workhouse to receive ‘relief’. Add compulsory vaccinations and you have a working class with no real control of their lives or bodies; this resulted in anti-vaccine sentiment.

J P Swan’s 1903 article: “Why I’m An Anti-Vaccinist” gives a pretty comprehensive summary of the 19th century take on vaccines: “The compulsory enforcement of such a grotesque, useless and dangerous superstition, whether by parliament or employers, is a tyrannical interference with the rightful liberty of the people”.

American Conservative protesting state Stay-at-home orders

This is essentially the argument from today’s libertarians and those on the political right. “The biggest predictive demographic factor for willingness to be vaccinated is party affiliation, 45% of white Republicans are unwilling to be vaccinated” expalined Dr.Berman. “If we don’t get those people vaccinated, we’ll have a much harder time quelling the spread of the pandemic''. These high numbers should be concerning for everyone as it could have a massive impact on public health.

The herd effect is a method used to extend the benefits of vaccines beyond vaccinated people. The idea is: vaccinated people stop the spread of a disease when they come into contact with someone who is infected, this indirectly protects unvaccinated or vulnerable people. But this needs a high uptake to be successful. So when it comes to public health, the group should trump the individual

1802 Cartoon depicting cow limbs sprouting from people recently vaccinated

While religious, political and philosophical beliefs account for a large number of anti-vaxxers, the behemoth of misinformation is the biggest recruiter. Spreading myths among the original anti-vaxxers was easy. Science was in its infancy. The idea that smearing, toxic, cow pus on an open wound could cause a bovine appendage to sprout from the vaccination site, wasn’t that mental. Theories like this were published in mainstream news papers and depicted in cartoons. The modern equivalent is a bit more complicated but just as subversive.

A study by King’s College London and Ipsos Mori found that 34% of people in the UK had been exposed to anti-vaccine propaganda and conspiracies on Social Media. It's something that I noticed in a conversation, Steven Lawrence, who is very vocal online about his anti-vaccine beliefs. He made some bold claims: “we’re talking about a computer generated vaccine for a computer generated disease”. My request for clarification was met with a barrage of links to videos from dubious sources on social media. This is a big problem.

Platforms like Facebook and Twitter have only recently attempted to tackle this issue by removing post spreading false information. But their system isn’t perfect as Dr.Berman found, “I had an article published in a medical journal and it got flagged for potential misinformation”.

Another issue instrumental in the spread of vaccine misinformation is the comodification of journalism. Some Journalists have sacrificed integrity for views. This results in simplistic and speculative reporting on complex issues. Also, Dr. Berman argues that “journalistic balance gives a false impression of equivalence” when publishing anti-vaccine views. “Science is the useful tool for discovering what’s true and what isn’t about the world, whereas the alternative is making things up or relying on cognitive biases”.

It's clear that there is a lot of work to be done to convince people that vaccines are safe and necessary. While we have been caught slacking the past 200 years, I hope that we can now effectively tackle these unchanging core beliefs.