They are just not aware that they have this fear and can't therefore understand and work on it effectively. Some people just seem to be stuck in emotional toddlerhood.

I'm sure there are some people who fall into the rabbit hole because of this, but the antivax movement goes a lot further than being afraid of needles. Antivaxxers with tattoos and the like.

Fear of doctors in general.

Elizabeth Holmes made billions being afraid of needles.

Antivaxxers fear the establishment and also overinflate their intelligence. I don't think needles have much to do with it.

Fear of problems by looking for them.

A severe mistrust of scientific authority. To be fair, scientific authorities have been really wrong and actively harmful sometimes.

Ink is easy to understand, while drugs and vaccines are not at all intuitive from the vulgar perspective of appearance.

I can't blame them for fearing the establishment when I think about who sits atop the world, the US specifically. Needles have a lot to do with it. It's just that the establishment, i.e. Trump and co., makes use of people's propensities to distort reality.

People also don't deal well with opt in probability, if you know that a vaccination will have a 1/100,000 chance of a side effect and actually getting the virus has a 1/100 chance of a side effect people will hesitate. It's easier to live with taking no action and suffering ill effect then to bring the ill effect on you by choice.

im a needlephobe and I get vaxxed. I hate it but I have had decade to find ways to deal with it. Still can't stand seeing someone else get one or such. Curiously you would think I would want to get them all at once but like. I have to really get myself together for each one and it is just better for it to happen and be over asap.

Way to rationalize their fear of fear.

I would phrase it as “advertising ignorance.”

Huh? How do they fear a fear.

Guess the second fear wasn't necessary. It's their way to ratonalize fear.

To be fair does anyone trust the CDC or FDA right now?

It's mainly narcissism. They want to be right and they want to be the ones in the know. That need takes over their entire personality and they fall for crap like antivaxx grift easily.

Hopefully as COVID fades in the collective memory, so will antivaxxing. I never even heard of it before COVID, and it seems to be mainly an American problem (although they did achieve a cultural victory a little after WW2 so the rest of the world gets infected as well) so maybe it'll go away soon?

They started out with good intentions, like maga started out with rage about corruption. Then both movements spiraled into insanity with Russian help.

It absolutely didn't start with good intentions. Antivaxxers are like kids who believe in Santa. Immaturity after a specific age is not tolerable and it didn't spiral into insanity with Russian help. You're placing undue emphasis here. The American brain, as well as whatever the fuck the Euros have is homemade. Any manipulation by Russians is abuse of the fact that people are extremely miseducated and frankly antagonised by their governments to begin with.

Antivaxers are like flat earthers, their problem is a distrust generalized to the entire human world. They can't accept that there are specialists they can rely on to communicate something else than lies fomented by the state, perhaps because their own country has indeed worked so hard for so long to isolate and dumb them down it has effectively destroyed any chance at a healthy relationship.
Being antivaxer or flat-earther becomes a revolutionary act, an insubmission to the man, a point of pride disenfranchized populations hold onto dearly.

I don't think it is going anywhere

It’s the exact same thing with flat earthers.

my friends didn't get vax because he is afraid of needles , says it hurts
it doesn't have to be more complicated than the truth

vaccines don't hurt at all lol

Covid isn't fading. Being hidden and denied isn't fading. It's still out there, killing people and causing brain damage and you barely get immunity anymore. 70 percent immunity, lasting up to 9 months. But Robert Koch says you're immune when you've had it, which is insane.

You know what else hurts? Fucking measles

Honestly, that's a pretty solid theory, I like it.

Well, some of them do. Shingles was the most painful shot I've ever had in my life. It hurt the rest of the day and then some. Measles was the second most painful, but only for the duration of the shot itself and a short time after.

But I imagine the shingles shot to still be far less painful than actual shingles, from what people have told me of it, so I'd still choose the shot every time.

I mean these are the exception and even then you just gotta bite the bullet, the pain is 100% worth it.

The anthrax made my whole arm hurt for a day for each of the six shots. Small pox also hurt but that involves getting jabbed a bunch of time in a little circle at the same time.

From what I remember a couple celebrities popularized the antivax theory that autism and vaccines are linked. Jenny McCarthy was going on talk shows spouting off about something she had no expertise in.

Nonsense. I'm a huge needle-weenie and I'm properly vaxed.

I had both shinrix about 3 years ago. I had shingles in '94.

1. Shingles Fucking hurts.
2. The shots were nothing after the actual injection.

How is it nonsense when you have self awareness? I wrote about people don't understand their fear.

not the vaccines , the needles
dude doesn't even hit the dentist

Vaccines and ink are distinct from the needles that deliver them. If you believe people avoid vaccines because of the needle, you can’t turn around and say that it’s actually because of what the needle is delivering.

If someone isn’t okay with a single jab, why would they be okay with a repeated series of jabs for minutes on end?

The COVID vaccine definitely did cause me some pain on the skin when I got it. That doesn't mean I shouldn't have gotten it, of course.

Antivax movements have literally been around for as long as mandatory vaccination has (I.e since the 1850s in the UK), but you should at least be aware of the whole "vaccines cause autism" panic that rose to prominence in the early 2000's.

I can absolutely make this distinction. There is a gigantic qualitative difference between continuous small picks where you don't feel the injection and a jab. With a syringe you get upwards of 0.5 mL injected into your body. The syringe has a real size to it. It takes half a minute to get a vaccine and needle is in your arm for more than 3 seconds easily. The entire content of the syringe is injected at one.

My sister has a fear of needles but has tattoos; She does not fear the tattoo gun. This is the case for a lot of people. Your logic blasts past reality.

I also didn't say it was the case for every antivaxxer that they're rationalising a fear of needles. I am explaining one cause of something that knows an innumerable amount of causes.

i mean i have a fear of needles so i look the other way while it happens. i have never felt the need to be like "welp now i hate science".

I tried to get over my fear of needles by getting a tattoo. It only kinda worked. Tattoo artist said that my face went so white they thought I would pass out.

Fully vaxxed though.

If this were true, then we'd expect to see similar levels of antivax around the world, remaining at a constant rate. Let's look at some actual numbers.

A world survey of the question, "Do you agree that vaccines are important for children to have?" found 97% agreement in Somalia, where the effects of vaccination are more observable, and only 68% agreement in France, which has had them long enough to take them for granted. In Asia, we see 95% in China, 93% in Vietnam, 96% in the Philippines and Cambodia, compared to 62% in South Korea and only 48% in Japan (down from 82% in 2015). 92% in Mexico compared to 79% in the US (which was 87% in 2015)

What's going on here? Did 34% of Japanese people suddenly develop a fear of needles in the span of 10 years? In the Philippines, 100% of people agreed with that statement in 2015, which dipped all the way down to 68% in 2021, before recovering to 96% today! Weird that that phobia of needles spontaneously appeared out of nowhere, and everyone got over it just as suddenly.

Or, maybe it's not really about a fear of needles at all. Maybe that has more to do with the fact that the US actively spread vaccine misinformation in the Philippines to get people to distrust China's COVID vaccine. And if we can directly observe antivax attitudes generating in response to a targeted misinformation campaign, then maybe this whole thing has more to do with the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories, rather than some innate phobia.

Sure, I don't exclude this. This is not at odds with what I'm saying. As I've stated elsewhere, I'm trying to explain a part of the appeal not the entire thing.

Also fear of needles is in part culturally conditioned and varies country to country, region to region.

There's even an Oxford study that confirms what I was thinking, albeit weakly: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8220023/
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-06-16-treating-needle-fears-may-reduce-covid-19-vaccine-hesitancy-rates-10

Small number, though still significant.

The qualitative difference between a needle that jabs deep and a needle that jabs shallowly is actually very small because in both cases there is a needle slipping between skin.

I have a fear of needles; I just got my first flu vaccine this week because now Flu-mist is a thing and I still nearly had a panic attack just being around everyone getting the jab. I also have no tattoos because it involves a needle jabbing me and putting stuff in my body. “This is the case for a lot of people.” Not everyone afraid of needles is your sister. I’m not sorry if “my logic” is different than hers.

The title of your post sounds like a pretty sweeping statement about antivaxxers. Rereading it you didn’t say that it’s the only reason, but you sure didn’t include anything to indicate that there could be more.

The title of your post sounds like a pretty sweeping statement about antivaxxers

It sounds that way to you.

but you sure didn’t include anything to indicate that there could be more.

I don't have to. This is showerthoughts.

Not everyone afraid of needles is your sister

But it the case for a lot of people. I can apply your argument to you. Your personal experience, or your fear, doesn't mean all that much as an argument. I couldn't also cite two other people I know who both have tattoos and fear injections. I am sorry if I offended you in any way, I do not mean to suggest that people with a fear of needles are antivax, that that is the general case at least.

Across the adult population, blood-injection-injury fears may explain approximately 10% of cases of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy.

It's not the main driving factor, is what I'm saying. There's of course going to be some people who avoid vaccines because of a fear of needles, but those are generally ordinary people who are aware of the fear and may know it's irrational but still can't overcome it. The people who aren't just hesitant but full on antivax aren't generally driven by a fear of needles, they're driven by the same factors that drive other conspiracy theories.

Nope. We have aerosol mist flu vaccines and they won't take them either.

“It sounds that way to you.”

No shit, that’s why I’m the one saying it.

“This is showerthoughts.”

Yah, that’s why I reread the title in light of your clarification and moved on, because you probably didn’t give your original post too much thought, just like I didn’t give too much thought to thinking you were speaking broadly in my first response.

“But it is the case for a lot of people.”

No shit, that’s exactly the argument I made because it’s exactly the argument you made because it’s not a good argument. If I shouldn’t be saying it, neither should you.

I don’t know how to interpret you saying my logic “blasts past reality” as anything but offensive because it’s just an insult without anything more to it.

It’s not the main driving factor

Sure, that is trivially true.

I do think there is still merit to understanding those who are "not ordinary", who don't know they have a fear of needles and will just rationalise and rationalise until the world ends. While I'm sympathetic to your evocation of state sponsored misinfo, I don't think that's it either, at least not in a deep way since vaccine hesitancy has existed since the dawn of inoculations. In fact vaccine hesitancy might also be understood as a historical remnant from a time when vaccinations had much more common side effects. Variolation for example had a significant death rate. Seventy years ago, when the science of drug delivery wasn't really a thing, side effects were much more pronounced. Basically: medical procedures that everyone has to go through are an easy target to activate the "lizard brain" with, be it intentional or not.