Heidi J. Larson - Stuck (Oxford University Press, 2020) ***½

This book's subtitle is "How Vaccine Rumors Start - And Why They Don't Go Away", and it could not be a more appropriate one to read in these times of covid. Heidi Larson is the person who should know. She is Professor of Anthropology, Risk and Decision Science and Director of the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Her book is not on corona, but about vaccine hesitancy and organised anti-vaccine movements across the globe. 

Because vaccines will always have risks, there will always be rumours, benign or not. The key question is for the scientists and health policy makers to keep the dialogue open, to explain, and to listen to concerns. The old hierarchical structure of educated scientists, doctors and politicians telling people what to do no longer works (if it ever worked). People find their own evidence, meaning that the conversation, the debate should be organised differently. 

Larson gives a sweeping overview of vaccination over the centuries and across the globe, including the devastating impact of religious beliefs (evangelists, islamists, ...) to block vaccination in developing countries. The fact that you vaccinate people who are not ill, and that companies get money for this, and that this is organised by a government you do not really trust, is the perfect cocktail for rebellion. But she also gives examples closer to home, like the measles outbreak in the United States in 2015 among children who had visited Disneyland. Even if the measles vaccine is among the most used and tested around the world, it suffices that small groups of people do not vaccinate to give the virus a chance to regain power. 

Luckily, as we see now in many countries, people have common sense, and the majority of people are willing to be vaccinated voluntarily. It would be good to have her opinion now with the corona virus crisis still dominating our lives after two years of combatting it.