Rating: 3/5
I wanted to educate myself on this vaccine thing since it’s a pretty important issue right now as the covid vaccines are taking over the world! The book goes in-depth into the history of vaccines and also the history of the anti-vaccine movement which has been around since day one.
I don’t think it offers that much on how to actually deal with someone who believes in conspiracy theories. I suppose the author assumed the facts are enough. Thus I am supplementing this book with some other books that have been published in recent years on how to have such conversations so they don’t go sour. Not easy.
Nor is the book really written for someone who is convinced that vaccines are evil because for them you need to approach this differently and probably dumb it down quite a bit. Things get tricky when belief systems get involved and people’s epistemologies. Especially when most people don’t even know what that word means. Instead, the morally confused tend to bark at each other like mad dogs, hungry for war and drama.
This book is important and educational. It is well written and referenced. But for the reasons outlined above, I didn’t love it overall. Maybe some kind of parallel narrative would help make it more engaging and more aligned with its promising title.
Many people I know seem to be believing more and more in all kinds of crazy theories. It seems to give them a false sense of control and power. I have suggested this book to a few and they get offended that I would even suggest something like this. So much for further inquiry. Truth, facts and reason shall prevail. Otherwise we’re all fucked. Science is the best method we have currently. And even the anti-vax/conspiracy/religious crowd live in a world created by science/tech yet fail to see their own blind spots. Baffling.