This Might Hurt a Little: Finding Common Ground in Vaccine Hesitancy

A common adage among people who study the concept of vaccine hesitancy is that vaccines are “a victim of their own success.” In other words, vaccines have been so successful at eliminating infectious diseases that people’s ability to assess the risk associated with these diseases has been muted. Lacking any access to a first-hand understanding of the devastation of diseases like measles and polio, people have effectively ceased to view them as a risk and in many cases have begun to view the vaccines as at best unnecessary and at worst too risky to accept.