In a NY Times article about the government's successful fight against swine flu--thanks to good decision making and a bit of good luck--there was this interesting assessment about it's potential impact on Denialists:
One real triumph, several experts said, was how little damage misinformation did. In 1976, many people refused shots after three elderly Pittsburgh residents died shortly after getting theirs; it took the C.D.C. five days to explain that it was just a coincidence.
This time, many rumors arose but were quickly debunked: That thousands had died in Mexico. That the virus had circulated in the Midwest for a decade, undetected. That it had escaped from a laboratory. That seasonal flu shots made catching swine flu more likely. That flu shots did not work or caused autism. That the administration would make them mandatory. That Tamiflu resistance was widespread in Northern California. That a flu shot had disabled a Washington Redskins cheerleader, or that she was cured by chelation therapy by a doctor associated with the antivaccine movement. That mutant killer flu strains were circulating in Argentina or Ukraine or North Carolina.
The debunking succeeded, Dr. Osterholm said, “despite the fact that there are many fewer reporters who understand medical issues than there used to be.”
This time, both the C.D.C. and the World Health Organization responded quickly to almost every rumor. At the epidemic’s height, they held several news conferences a week, taking questions by phone from all over the world.
They also invited dozens of reporters to daylong seminars on influenza at C.D.C. headquarters in Atlanta and to exercises around the country led by the former anchorman Forrest Sawyer, at which they debated, for example, whether a miscarriage by one woman after getting a flu shot was a big scoop or a nonstory.
Remaining to be seen is what effect the pandemic has had on Americans’ feelings about vaccines.
Dr. Frieden said he thought a victory over the antivaccine movement had been scored. Nearly 60 million people have been vaccinated, including many pregnant women and children, with no surge in side effects.
John P. Moore, an AIDS researcher at Weill Cornell Medical College, was less sure. Dr. Moore, who spent years fighting AIDS denialism, has called skepticism about flu vaccine “an unholy alliance of the left and right” because it joined the liberal natural-medicine proponents with anti-big-government conservatives.
“It’s hard to say if it hurt or helped,” Dr. Moore said, pointing out that polls still show a large minority of Americans rejecting the vaccine. “As with AIDS, people have to die before others understand the consequences of ignoring science-based medicine.”
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