Just Don't Call Them 'Anti-Vaxxers'?

Gary Finnegan (an Irish Health Journalist) makes some sensible points about vaccine hesitancy (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/25/anti-vaxxers-trust-diphtheria-polio-measles-jabs-covid-19). Finnegan points out that vaccine hesitancy is a spectrum. There are hardliners (who are never going to change, so don't waste your time) at one end and people, with remaining questions or concerns at the other. Lumping them as 'anti-vaxxers' can, he says, be counter-productive. Finnegan is a strong advocate of Julie Leask (Sydney University). She wrote an influential Nature paper in 2011, urging people to 'Target the fence-sitters'. There can be a 'cost', for people who change their minds about vaccination. It might simply include 'losing face' with one's 'tribe'. Finnegan also draws attention to the WHO's 3Cs for vaccination programmes. These are convenience, complacency and confidence. He suggests that there may have been too much concentration on confidence and not enough on convenience. Sometimes, people fail to get themselves or their children vaccinated, because they find it difficult to get to centres. The Covid-19 pandemic impressively resulted in millions of people being vaccinated across the globe. Finnegan notes, however, that, in this time, some 30 million children, missed out on basic vaccinations, against diptheria, measles, polio and tetanus. These diseases are actually history's biggest child killers. The child vaccination shortfall is worst in SE-Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean. Finnegan appears concerned, that vaccine hesitancy may not remain largely limited to Covid-19. The profile of anti-vaxxing has been raised in the Covid-19 pandemic. Some people may consequently need to be coaxed into vaccination programmes for other diseases.