Anti-vaxxers deemed a main reason for under-vaccination among richer countries in recent UNICEF Conference

During the council’s debate on the first day of the conference regarding under-vaccination in more established countries, the delegates in the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) recognised that a main reason for this was due to ‘conspiracy theories’ regarding the safety of vaccines and general mistrust in the government. The conspiracy theories were believed to derive from ‘anti-vaxxers’ who doubt the necessity of vaccines, believing that vaccines are likely to cause adverse side effects.

As identified by the delegate of Japan, one prevalent problem is that many citizens are unable to tell fake news from real news, thus believing false rumours and stories about vaccines and doubting their safety. As such, one proposed way to mitigate this is for the government to work on educating the public and raising awareness about the safety of vaccines and their effectiveness through social media, television advertisements and websites offering accurate information about vaccinations.

Another solution raised by the council was to educate the children through their schools so that they could share this information with their parents. This enables them to convince their parents about the merits of vaccination and get themselves vaccinated. However, some members of the council believe that this solution may not work as many parents may not take their children seriously and thus would be unwilling to listen to them.

The council has also proposed for members of the public to be appealed to directly instead of through their children, as some deem this more effective. However, it has also been brought up that adults tend to be more headstrong and stubborn about their beliefs and, as already seen previously among anti-vaxxers, refuse to believe the government’s word.

As the members of the council could not come to a conclusion about how to work around these issues, the council instead proposed to mitigate the false information spread by these anti-vaxxers. As brought up by the delegate of the U.S., outright silencing them or banning them from posting on social media would be a violation of free speech. However, it is also argued by the delegate of Syria that using the cover of free speech to spread false information is incorrect and should be illegalized, and that there should still be regulations to how information is spread and assimilated into modern society.

The delegate of China also proposed to reach out and interact with the anti-vaxxers and find out the reasons they believe what they do and then use these responses to attempt to convince the anti-vaxxers in changing their minds about the merits of vaccines. However this idea was not widely favored as much of the council believed that it may be a waste of time to try convincing the anti-vaxxers, and focus should instead be placed on other areas.

The council has since not come to a conclusion on how to solve the problems posed by anti-vaxxers in raising the immunization rates among children in richer countries. Though, most seem to agree that educating the public, whether it be the adults or the children, seems to be the most viable option to solve or at least mitigate this problem.

The topic of anti-vaxxers has since not been brought up on day two of the conference as of writing this article, and the final solutions should be passed in the resolution paper later today.