The Immunodenialists

Vaccine pessimism and inexcusable misinformation are doing real damage.

One of my Twitter hobbies is to try and name various phenomena I observe in online behavior. Social media makes the world move so quickly that you can see behavioral trends develop in real time as a reaction to unfolding events. I jokingly called the terms I coin for these “Neonlogisms,” hence the name of this Substack. A bunch of these posts will revolve around such terms.

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Im·mu·no·de·ni·al

/ˌimyəˈnädəˈnīəl/
noun

• Failure to acknowledge the effectiveness of vaccines and their ability to enable a return to normal life, used as a defense mechanism.
  

Noam Blum 🦉 @neontaster

I was right to call this Immunodenial. People are convincing themselves that their vaccines aren't going to help.

The CDC and FDA’s pause of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in response to an absurdly uncommon side effect that only seems to target a very specific demographic is the latest incident helping to foster a growing trend of vaccine pessimism, mostly on the left. Unfortunately, this pessimism synergizes well with vaccine skepticism, mostly on the right, to create a really dangerous situation where the general faith in vaccines and the desire to urgently get vaccinated are being depressed.

Public health officials continue to advise vaccinated people to largely maintain their pre-vaccine precautions; media figures who speak about their post-vaccine return to normal are chided (and worse) for being irresponsible; and major outlets continue to wildly understate the effectiveness of vaccines based on a fundamental misreading of percentages. All this is already causing both anecdotal and systemic damage.

People are expecting increasingly unreasonable assurances from officials who are maddeningly reluctant to provide almost any. Immunodenial is real and dangerous and not only extends this state of pandemic, but also adds fuel to the fires of the partisan, geographic, and class friction surrounding covid.

We need people of influence to project optimism and confidence in both the vaccines themselves, and the ability to go back to normal life after you are fully vaccinated.

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I’ve recently gotten back to streaming on Twitch and have been having a lot of fun with GeoGuessr. I announce them on Twitter but will try to establish some semblance of a regular schedule soon.