COVID-19, cults, and the anti-vax movement
Authors: Sophie Mylan, Charlotte Hardman
Journal: The Lancet (2021)

Rochelle Burgess and colleagues1Burgess RA Osborne RH Yongabi KA et al.The COVID-19 vaccine rush: participatory community engagement matters more than ever.Lancet. 2021; 397: 8-10Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (131) Google Scholar eloquently described participatory community engagement as essential for successful COVID-19 vaccination, which involves appreciating the heterogeneous public and working with communities and their leaders to enable bottom-up approaches. They suggested that COVID-19 has drawn attention to the structural violence that is embedded within society, with the pandemic furthering the marginalisation of historically oppressed and excluded groups. Burgess and colleagues1Burgess RA Osborne RH Yongabi KA et al.The COVID-19 vaccine rush: participatory community engagement matters more than ever.Lancet. 2021; 397: 8-10Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (131) Google Scholar drew attention to how people who might have suffered disproportionate economic and health consequences from COVID-19 are now being asked "to trust the same structures"1Burgess RA Osborne RH Yongabi KA et al.The COVID-19 vaccine rush: participatory community engagement matters more than ever.Lancet. 2021; 397: 8-10Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (131) Google Scholar that failed to provide adequate resources and social protection during the pandemic. Failure to address these contextual dimensions can worsen mistrust, damaging vaccine uptake. However, Burgess and colleagues make a distinction between "people wholly opposed to vaccinations (anti-vaxxers) and…vaccine hesitancy",1Burgess RA Osborne RH Yongabi KA et al.The COVID-19 vaccine rush: participatory community engagement matters more than ever.Lancet. 2021; 397: 8-10Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (131) Google Scholar and imply participatory community engagement as a means to engage only people with vaccine hesitancy. Lessons from studying cults (which are less pejoratively called new religious movements, describing movements that emerged in the late 20th century) can inform approaches to the anti-vax movement. A cult has come to mean a non-conforming ideology, or a religion that is disliked, with beliefs that are unacceptable to mainstream society. Just as cults are grouped together as sinister, bad, or wrong, the discourse surrounding anti-vaxxers in both academic and popular circles can be dismissive and derogatory. The pejorative label and negative attitudes towards cults promote an us-and-them viewpoint, creating martyrs2van Twist A van Eck D Newcombe S "Trust me, you can't trust them": stigmatised knowledge in cults and conspiracies.in: Dyrendal A Robertson DG Asprem E Handbook of conspiracy theory and contemporary religion. Brill Academic Publishers, Leiden2018: 152-179Google Scholar, 3Singler B Big, bad pharma: the indigo child concept and biomedical conspiracy theories.Nova Relig. 2015; 19: 17-29Crossref Scopus (9) Google Scholar and extending the length of time that members hold the new beliefs, thus encouraging further involvement in the movement and radicalisation.4Barker E New religious movements: a practical introduction. Her Majesty's Stationery Office, London1989Google Scholar Learning from these consequences, a more constructive perspective could view the anti-vax movement as a religious phenomenon, involving a whole spectrum of ideas, and focus on the essential need to understand the beliefs that are involved to avoid further marginalisation. Hence, implying that anti-vaxxers are beyond the reach of community engagement activities could result in increased anti-vax activities. We suggest a more inclusive approach, where the same inquisitive dialogue and contextual understanding that was suggested for vaccine hesitancy should be extended to members of the anti-vax movement. SM declares funding by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Parkes Foundation towards the cost of her doctoral study. CH declares no competing interests. The COVID-19 vaccines rush: participatory community engagement matters more than everThe announcement of effective and safe vaccines for COVID-19 has been greeted with enthusiasm. Discussions continue about the ethical challenges of ensuring fair access to COVID-19 vaccines within and across countries, and which groups should be prioritised.1,2 There are concerns about equity in access to COVID-19 vaccines. Estimates as of Dec 2, 2020, suggest direct purchase agreements have allowed high-income countries to secure nearly 4 billion confirmed COVID-19 vaccine doses, compared with 2·7 billion secured by upper and lower middle-income countries. Full-Text PDF