ABSTRACT:
In light of the increasing refusal of some parents to vaccinate children, public health strategies have focused on increasing knowledge and awareness based on a “knowledge-deficit” approach. However, decisions about vaccination are based on more than mere knowledge of risks, costs, and benefits. Individual decision making about vaccinating involves many other factors including those related to emotion, culture, religion, and socio-political context. In this paper, we use a nationally representative internet survey in the U.S. to investigate socio-political characteristics to assess attitudes about vaccination. In particular, we consider how political ideology and trust affect opinions about vaccinations for flu, pertussis, and measles. Our findings demonstrate that ideology has a direct effect on vaccine attitudes. In particular, conservative respondents are less likely to express pro-vaccination beliefs than other individuals. Furthermore, ideology also has an indirect effect on immunization propensity. The ideology variable predicts an indicator capturing trust in government medical experts, which in turn helps to explain individual-level variation with regards to attitudes about vaccine choice.
As we already know at DKos, where we used to have a regular contingent of anti-vaxxers before they all shut up or got bojo’d, this does NOT, repeat NOT, as in N-O-T, mean that anti-vaxxers are not also a significant fringe within the liberal community. The key is, I think, THIS finding from the study:
The ideology variable predicts an indicator capturing trust in government medical experts
So the rightwing antivaxxers distrust medical experts because “government is communistic !!!!”. The leftwing antivaxxers, on the other hand, distrust medical experts because “corporate conspiracy for profits !!!” They are both preaching the same distrust of government, but for different reasons.
They are both equally nutty and both equally anti-science, though. And their effect is the same.