Medical Xpress January 19, 2025
A fringe anti-vaccine movement took advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to bring conspiracy theories to a much wider audience, propelling dangerous misinformation about life-saving jabs that still endures five years later, experts warn.
Vaccine skepticism was around long before COVID but the pandemic “served as an accelerant, helping to turn a niche movement into a more powerful force,” according to a 2023 paper in The Lancet journal.
The pandemic also marked a change in strategy by anti-vaxxers, who previously targeted parents because children routinely received the most jabs.
But when next-generation vaccines were developed in record time to help bring COVID under control, mandatory vaccination was introduced for adults in many countries.
Vaccine skepticism suddenly had a much larger audience,...
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