Why vaccine rumours stick—and getting them unstuck

Beyond their obvious benefits to health, vaccination programmes have indirect economic and societal benefits, including on cognitive development, educational attainment, labour productivity, income, savings, investment, and fertility. Because the full impact of vaccines requires widespread public acceptance to achieve population-level immunity, from their earliest days, vaccination policies have been subject to political and ideological debate, pitting individual rights against public health. Trust in the processes, practices, and policies of vaccine development, licensure, and manufacturing; in the policy makers who set vaccine recommendations; and in the health-care system—the doctors, nurses, and community immunisers who administer vaccines as part of routine care and during mass vaccination campaigns. The calculus of vaccination decision making is the balance of benefit and risk coupled with uncertainty and Larson argues that it is these same elements that breed rumours. Because no vaccine—and no medical product— is risk free there will always be fertile ground for rumours. [...]it is little surprise that the race to develop COVID-19 vaccines is running at full steam.