The spectrum of AntiVaxx & hesitancy in NZ vs 90% vaccination

ByMartyn Bradbury

My guess is that our true vaccine hesitancy rate is around 20% and I think you can break some of that down into substantial sub clusters.

Jesus is my vaccine evangelical happy clappers

If you think the earth is literally 7000 years old, that dinosaurs are a trick by Satan and that a virgin birthed the manifestation of God upon this dimension, then believing the vaccine has a microchip in it isn’t too much of a hop, skip and a jump. These are about 3% and they will never take the vaccine because it’s a matter of faith. These people are as rational as snake preachers wrangling poisonous serpents as proof of faith.

Under educated white poor people who source news from Facebook

The focus is on Maori and Pacifica without acknowledging a large chunk of the vaccine hesitant are just frightened white poor folk who don’t know what the fuck is going on and are clinging to some crazy shit they’ve seen on Facebook from someone they went to school with. These people are redeemable, they can be reached without patronizing them and they deserve the attempt. 5%

New Age Crystal Warriors

Maybe the oddest mutation of the vaccine hesitant is how the Facebook algorithms linked white supremacists with Qanon with people who believe crystals can heal them. Again, if you think energy waves from new age magic can heal your vibration illness you are going to believe the vaccine makes you magnetic. Surprisingly middle class and well educated. 4%

Qanon antiVaxxers conspiracy crowd + grumpy old goat nitpickers

The Qanon fantasists are the result of Facebook algorithms of insanity, these are cultists who will drink the kool aid. They can’t be reached but luckily I don’t think their numbers are very high – barely 1%, they are loud but tiny.

Likewise the grumpy old goat nitpickers who will hold up every chart on earth to prove their point the whole thing is needless blah blah blah. Sure, you’re an expert in pandemics now, great. These old goats will get the vaccine in the end, they are just resentful they are being told to do something. 1%

Gangs & Homeless & Prisoners
Despite all the attention, all up 1%.

Maori, Pacifica, disabled, poor
I believe a solid quarter of that 20% hesitancy are groups who have little say in the distribution of resources and who pay the highest price in a pandemic. Their disconnect is driven by poverty and the total lack of outreach into their communities. This entire segment of society are approachable and desperate for solutions and simply require political will to provide them.

Those who don’t vaccinate because of Anti-vaxx quack science are a reflection of where we are as a culture. In a post-knowledge world, people no longer learn critical thought and peer reviewed structures to ensure scientific rigour, they just google it and hey presto some emotive Youtube clip trumps actual facts and social media’s hysteria algorithms do the rest.  Watching the anti-vaxxers desperately trying to excuse their ignorance with nit picking nonsense to prove their ludicrous assertions of profit driven Pharmaceutical companies peddling death in a needle would be funny if the results weren’t so dangerous. The real twist is that many anti-vaxxers are middle class yoga mums who are the first to take the health high ground on any other issue. It is difficult not to feel anything other than contempt for this group, but we must remember they are the minority issue here.

The real issue is poverty. Most of those who don’t vaccinate come from poor communities and the ability to get immunisation is impacted by that poverty. It is the nature of this deep poverty and inequality that permeates throughout NZ that is the ultimate problem here, not hipster mummy bloggers & Qanon freaks. When you consider that we have 190 000 children living in poverty, the low rate of immunisation can’t be a surprise to anyone can it?

The antiVaxxers and Qanons and the religious and the nutty and the mommy blogger are all very vocal but tiny, the majority are people in poverty who find accessing health care difficult and who are frightened in frightening times.

Getting to 90% vaccination is the goal, getting there requires acknowledgment that battling poverty is the only way to win.

 

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39 Comments

  1. The young and poor are hopeless now though. We don’t give a fuck about anything anymore. Whats the point in working, we can never save enough for even a poxy little house. Why should we vaccinate if its just to save the very people who bought up all the rentals and who are forever shafting us? Whats the point in voting if the person you vote for lies to you and makes your life so much shittier than it was before. I fucking hate this country now and yet I love it so much. Why has this happened to us? Why did she do this?

    1. Who Jenny Shipley?,well she is paying for her Mainzeal sins now..

      “In February 2019, Mainzeal directors former prime minister Dame Jenny Shipley, Richard Yan, Peter Gomm and Clive Tilby were found liable for breaching director duties by trading recklessly, and ordered to pay a total of $36m in damages and $2.3m in costs to Mainzeal.”

      Or could it be Ruth Richardson?…

      “https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300312838/ruth-richardson-calls-jacinda-ardern-and-grant-robertsons-budget-attack-a-cheap-shot”

    2. You need to look further than that. It’s called neo liberalism. Labour have been poor, yes, but this doesn’t happen in isolation.

    3. Yep, Ex-Labour, bigger things are at play. Seen the doco ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century’, based on the 2013/2014 book of the same name by French economist Thomas Piketty? The doco is a much more recent release, 2019 I think. A kiwi director. Growing unequal distribution of wealth coming under the control of a tiny minority – not unprecedented in history – and the cause of growing inequality, social and economic instability – although your own words better capture the feeling of many.
      https://www.nzfilm.co.nz/films/capital-twenty-first-century

    5. Do what? Save NZ by swiftly managing COVID? In US there is no such thing as a ‘tracer app’. Was it the fact the govt has been simultaneously investigating measures to solve the housing crisis – so smoothly put in place by the savvy salesman, John Key, when rather than cool the heating market of the mid 00’s he greedily stoked it to a raging fire by opening up NZ’s housing market to offshore foreigners with no connection with NZ? Allowing people who just want to ‘landbank’ and ‘flip’ using our homes, our domestic dwellings as instrument of investment? By letting anyone into NZ with a bank account over $1,000,000 just because and then the Panama Affair ….. What would you have done?

      1. Prunella Promises: “…the housing crisis – so smoothly put in place by the savvy salesman, John Key…by opening up NZ’s housing market to offshore foreigners with no connection with NZ?”

        This is incorrect. While the Key government certainly didn’t help to slow down the housing market, it didn’t initiate the wholesale opening up of it to foreigners.

        That was done by the 1980s Labour government, as part of its introduction of neoliberalism. In 1988, we were living in a new subdivision in Auckland. We used to watch as real estate agents brought busloads of Chinese buyers to visit the new houses around us. In ChCh at that time, Chinese and Koreans were buying large numbers of houses.

        But none of that activity made prices rocket up as they’ve done since the current government was elected. Prior to the 2017 election, Labour in particular talked a big game about the then housing crisis. But it couldn’t translate words into action; the half-measures it did take made the situation worse, pushing up rents and prices. Then along came the coronavirus last year: the bucket loads of money poured into the economy had the unintended consequence of causing vaulting house prices.

        So here we are. NZers have invested in housing since the 1970s, mostly because there was bugger-all else in which to invest, and reasonable returns were assured in housing.

        The market is wrecked, possibly irreversibly. Our only hope now is for a large scale state house-building programme by government. Will the current lot do this? Lord: was that a pig that just went overhead?

  2. At last some acknowledgment that there is a reason for the ‘no vaccine’ view. Logical or otherwise.
    I don’t agree with your breakdown or insults but at least you’ve moved to a more reasonable position. And it does help move the conversation forward to a possibly solution. Kudos.
    Science has ONLY every been resolved by hearing both sides of an arguement/opinion and finally arriving at the 99+% probably correct answer. When power blocks anything it doesn’t like, they are invariably wrong, lying, cheating or all of the ‘above’.
    The otherside is NOT all from Facebook or a ‘guy down the pub’. A LOT of highly qualified ‘experts’ are ‘ghosted’ by the media of all types and the political science group (those who’s salary and promotion depend on them agreeing).
    Anyway, we agree you’ll hit the 80-90% without having to show all the facts to convince ‘us’. You just need to approach those that our society over the last 30+years have screwed over and justifyably they don’t trust Govt. That should be easy to do.
    ‘Kicking the can down the road’ eventually has its price to pay.

    1. I disagree. Disease has never caused a stock market crash or a recession in a hundred years, even the Spanish flu didn’t cause lasting damage.

      The fundamentals behind the economy is strong, Trade wars between the China and America is only good for consumers.

      Jacinda has positioned New Zealand beautifully.

      1. When you sit on the fence like Jacinda the country can get split down the middle which is what is happening now . The rich and poor divide has never been more apparent than now and this whole vaccination think is yet another split. If the government came out and said no jab no social welfare or waved a carrot and said get jabbed and we will extend the energy payment for both them and all those that can prove they have done the right thing already.

        1. The deserving poor is so 2020. Everyone shall have access to the jab and that’s that, nub.

      2. In the immortal words of dear leader, John Key, “there is no housing crises.” 🙂

        Welcome to reality, Frank the Tank.

        It’s been a long road for you with many delusional beliefs said by you. But now that you have arrived, I’m not mad.

  3. Kim dot Com posted this thread:
    https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/1443693489846317087
    Now I haven’t watched that 8 hour(!) FDA video yet, but assuming those expert quotes Kim gives are correct and not being taken out of context, I’d be surprised if the current “vax everyone” policy is still happening in the next 6 months. Kim is vaxxed BTW so not an “anti-vaxxer”.

      1. Assuming you’re correct. How about all the others? Plus this is an FDA’event’, so I’m guessing (?) they’ve choosen their experts.

      2. Oh okay. Like I said, I haven’t watched the FDA stream yet (but do plan to). That particular statement was of course the worst among them so good to know it wasn’t “real”. Still, it is strange the MSM didn’t really cover this FDA meeting and discuss why the 3rd booster shot was not recommended. People are not being served by a critical media whatsoever. I’m a “question everything” person, which often gets met with disgust here (for the record I was perma-banned on Whale Oil after just one post!).

        1. The coverage on the third shot recommendation was covered in the American Media – Washington Post and New York Times. I suspect that was because it was/is topical there as it might influence what they will chose to in real time current events.

          For now, Israel is doing the real life trial in booster shots (as it did with early mass vaccination – which exposed the fading effect 4-6 months and 6-8 months with the delta variant).

          For us and our ordered Novavax boosters (nuanced because one dose they maybe adding a flu vaccine to it) before our next winter – I suspect UK practice will inform our media coverage (which is clearly of a concerted encouragement to vaccinate for the purpose of opening up).

  4. It would be cheaper for us to offer the one million unvaccinated $1000-$10000 to get vaccinated. A billion dollars in the scheme of things is a weeks worth of lockdowns. A small price to pay for greater than 90% vaccination rates.

  5. When you sit on the fence like Jacinda the country can get split down the middle which is what is happening now . The rich and poor divide has never been more apparent than now and this whole vaccination think is yet another split. If the government came out and said no jab no social welfare or waved a carrot and said get jabbed and we will extend the energy payment for both them and all those that can prove they have done the right thing already.

  6. Thank Bill Clinton (he was an awful President for the 90%’ers). He removed the limitiation on how much of the USA media an individual can own, and so now something like five people control 80% of the USA media.
    So you get ‘paid for shills’ and con artists, like our own Mike arsehole-Hoskins and paid for politicains that the media can make ‘electable’ like TraitorKey and they’re trying to do IMHO with ‘Rimmer the hologram’.

  7. So if people decide on their own volition not to get vaxed they get stuck into some category that treats them as thick, stupid, lazy. What a sad commentary on our respect for others opinions.

    2. I respect the right of others to have opinions.
      I think there are “Jesus is my vaccine evangelical happy clapper” types. Good for them.
      I think they are sad idiots. I expect my opinion to be accepted.

  8. Unsurprisingly a lot of it, in fact the majority of it in western countries is ‘lack of trust in government’. All the ex communist countries of eastern europe are really struggling with vaccine hesitancy (some only have about 30% vaxxed) and it is all down to lack of trust. They were all screwed over by the Soviets so when the government says take this, its safe, they all think “Yeah right”.

    The figures for Pasifica younger people are clearly better than Maori so you do have to wonder how much anti colonialism/ historical subjugation sentiment prevalent at the moment is behind some of this ‘lack of trust’? A lot more than I think people understand. I suspect that for a proportion of our underprivileged whanau, nothing much will change until a few healthy younger Maori’s end up dying of Covid. Same goes for the grumpy old guys, when their peers start to drop like flies, the “I dont believe this stalinist government BS” crew will suddenly want to be vaccinated.

  9. One guy at work announced he wasn’t getting vaxed because it will turn him into a communist. Seriously.

  10. So pleased Air NZ is putting in place a ban on non vaxxed travellers. Other airlines will follow suit.

  11. A psychotherapist’s view on strong emotions around vaccination.

    “The increasingly popular r/HermanCainAward subreddit on Reddit.com is a distressingly predictable sign of America’s conflict-filled times. The subreddit, which now has upwards of 340,000 followers, “celebrates” those “who have made public declaration of their anti-mask, anti-vax, or Covid-hoax views,” only to die from Covid-19 or Covid-related complications. (It is named for Herman Cain, the former GOP presidential candidate and businessman who died from Covid-19 complications in 2020 after attending a Trump campaign rally in Oklahoma.)

    Ultimately, the Herman Cain Award fulfills a primal wish to say, “I told you so.”

    https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/reddit-s-herman-cain-covid-award-depressing-sign-our-times-ncna1280616

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