Are There Doctors Who Don't Believe in the Vaccine: Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (original) (raw)
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Are There Doctors Who Don’t Believe in Vaccine: Context for Phenomenological Study
Academia Letters, 2021
The situation with COVID-19 is still a challenge for the world. It afflicts almost all areas of human wellbeing-political, social, psychological, etc. This makes it a problem far wider than a medical one. Yet, the role of medicine is crucial in the projective resolution of the crisis, especially when vaccination has become available. This article aims to present a preliminary analysis of the context of a more extensive study in progress now. The main objective of the bigger study is to shed some light on the problem with vaccination hesitancy in Russia. For now, we may call the vaccination campaign a failure-the official website dedicated to Sputnik V vaccine informs us that by July 7, 2021, only 12,58 % of the population of Russia has been vaccinated (Gam Kovid Vak, 2021). The Russian government tries to improve the situation by implementing an equivocal policy. On one hand, the vaccination is voluntary, on the other-one could be deprived of some of her rights if not vaccinated (Consultant, 2021). The causes of the above difficulties are diverse. We are interested in the contribution of the medical workers to the dissemination of reliable knowledge about the COVID-19 vaccines among the population. A profane view tells us that a doctor knows better. The patient's epistemological state is rather neglected due to the said patient's objectification through medical language (Foucault, 1963). Thus, doctors claim the right to judge; their responsibility should follow. We expect the most reliable knowledge to be provided by medical workers. We expect that they are able to tackle 'an infodemic due to rampant spread of misinformation and rumor about COVID-19 across various online media' (Subedi et al., 2020: 56). However, several quantitative studies show that this may not be the case. For example, Subedi et al. (2020) assumed that 'intern doctors as young medical trainees should have scientific knowledge of disease and not be mis
Voices in Bioethics
Photo by Hush Naidoo Jade Photography on Unsplash INTRODUCTION In this collection of narratives, the authors describe their own experiences with and reflections on healthcare worker vaccine hesitancy. The narratives explore each author’s engagement with different communities experiencing vaccine hesitancy, touching on reasons for hesitancy, proposed solutions, and legal aspects. Author’s names appear above their narratives. l. Johanna T. Crane Vaccine hesitancy, defined as “a delay of acceptance or refusal of vaccination despite the availability of vaccination services,”[1] is a worldwide but locally shaped phenomenon that pre-dates the COVID-19 pandemic.[2] Contrary to some portrayals, vaccine hesitancy is not the same as the more absolute antivaccination stance, or what some call “anti-vax.” Many people who are hesitant are not ideologically opposed to vaccines. Hesitancy is also sometimes framed as anti-science, yet reluctance to vaccinate is often about managing risk, trus...
Journal of South Asian Studies
Pakistani medics faced many hesitancy issues among general public from vaccination during the upsurge of Covid-19 which remained prevalent not only in Pakistan but across the world. This paper attempts to describe the challenges encountered by the Pakistani physicians regarding anti-vaccination approach of general public based on certain superstitions. To achieve the objective, this paper plans to obtain data from various medical journals and editorials. This research is qualitative and descriptive in nature. The study is guided by the Socio-cognitive Model by Van Dijk (2008) as it confiscated the ideological connection between discourse, society and apprehension into consideration. Language is viewed as social practice from the perspective of CDA which signifies the particular interest in the course of actions through which language expresses power relations and ideologies (Fairclough, 2015). This study intends highlighting the ideological perspective of medical discourses influenc...
Playing with Fire-Negative Perceptions against COVID-19 Vaccinations
XJENZA Online, 2023
Living during a pandemic has a great impact on a person's health and psychological functioning. While many took the vaccine, others were very sceptical about the intentions and motivations of political and health authorities and the safety of the vaccine. Vaccines may play a role in prevention of disease, however some are against vaccination. This paper will explore the reasons and arguments that people put forward to support their stance against vaccines and the COVID-19 vaccination. This will help in providing a deeper understanding of these participants' points of view, along with their experiences during this challenging period in time. A mixed methods approach was used. Study one was a quantitative study using online survey methodology to determine the degree of vaccine hesitancy and associated reasons. The most frequently cited reason given for not taking the vaccine were about safety issues. Study two was qualitative and involved interviewing six participants recruited through purposive sampling. The transcripts were analysed by using Thematic Analysis. The three main emerging themes were reasons related to health, others to the socio-political context and the third was the perceived lack of scientific information on COVID-19 vaccine. The results concluded that the participants' objections to take the COVID-19 vaccine emerged from personal health factors, and was manifested as a form of protest against authorities.
During the swine flu pandemic of 2009–2010, all Swedish citizens were recommended to be vaccinated with the influenza vaccine Pandemrix. However, a very serious and unexpected side effect emerged during the summer of 2010: more than 200 children and young adults were diagnosed with narcolepsy after vaccination. Besides the tragic outcome for these children and their families, this adverse side effect suggests future difficulties in obtaining trust in vaccination in cases of emerging pandemics, and thus there is a growing need to find ways to understand the complexities of vaccination decision processes. This article explores written responses to a questionnaire from a Swedish folk life archive as an unconventional source for analysing vaccine decisions. The aim is to investigate how laypersons responded to and re-interpreted the message about the recommended vaccination in their answers. The answers show the confusion and complex circumstances and influences in everyday life that people reflect on when making such important decisions. The issue of confusion is traced back to the initial communications about the vaccination intervention in which both autonomy and solidarity were expected from the population. Common narratives and stories about the media or ‘big pharma capitalism’ are entangled with private memories, accidental coincidences and serendipitous associations. It is obvious that vaccination interventions that require compliance from large groups of people need to take into account the kind of personal experience narratives that are produced by the complex interplay of the factors described by the informants.
" The Science is Clear! " Media Uptake of Health Research into Vaccine Hesitancy
While the movement from research to practice in medicine and health policy is well studied in the philosophy of medicine, an underresearched component of this knowledge-to-action trajectory has been the influence of media reporting on newsworthy health research. Media analysis has characteristically been a focus of communications and not philosophical research. However the epistemic and rhetorical impact of science and health reporting warrants attention by philosophers as another facet of the complex science-values relationship in healthcare. Science journalism (of which health makes up roughly 50% of its content (Hargreaves 2012)) shapes public understanding and engagement, which in turn influences patient choice as well as organizational and policy decisions. All the while, science reporting is frequently criticized for sensationalizing new findings and omitting the uncertainty of novel research, thereby misleading the publics into thinking that new scientific ideas are fully established (see, for example, Abola and Prasad 2016). In this chapter, we highlight many of these issues in our presentation of an original case study of media uptake of scientific research addressing a politically charged issue: vaccine hesitancy.
A team ethnography on vaccine hesitancy in Europe DRAFT
Rassegna Italiana di Sociologia, 2023
This paper focuses on the methodological conundrum of doing quick Team ethnography in complex teams in a clinical setting studying childhood vaccine hesitancy. It describes how and to what extent a particular «thought style» (in Ludwik Fleck’s meaning) has developed through decisions, negotiations and disputes, producing a dialogical «local truth». It also shows how ethnographers can adapt their practice, considering day-to-day endogenous changes in fieldwork and public debate as well as exogenous ones, such as pandemics and wars. Following a compact exploration of a few sensitising concepts, referring in particular to Ludwik Fleck, Knorr-Cetina and Clifford Geertz, it explores how the complex team had worked in practice effectively while unpacking vaccine hesitancy. The paper describes three fundamental steps of this group endeavour: i) the genealogy of the birth of the team and the subsequent team-building process; ii) the illustration of how the group’s «thought collective» and interactions have produced in practice a «local truth»; iii) a reflexive stance on this particular empirical case of «method in process». The paper concludes with methodological remarks.
Journal of Digital Social Research
In this article, hesitancy towards COVID-19 vaccinations is investigated as a phenomenon touching upon existential questions. We argue that it encompasses ideas of illness and health, and also of dying and fear of suffering. Building on a specific strand within anti-vaccination studies, we conjecture that vaccine hesitancy is, to some extent, reasonable, and that this scepticism should be studied with compassion. Through a mixed methods approach, vaccine hesitancy, as it is being expressed in a Swedish digital open forum, is investigated and understood as, on the one hand, a perceived need of protecting one’s body from techno-scientific experiments, and thus the risk of becoming a victim of medicine itself. On the other hand, the community members express what we call a tacit belief in modern medicine by demonstrating their own “expert” pandemic knowledge. The analysis also shows how the COVID-19 pandemic triggers memories of another pandemic, namely the swine flu in 2009–2010, and ...
Frontiers in Public Health, 2022
Background: Vaccination is widespread in Western countries and, overall, there is a high vaccination rate. However, immunization is still an enduring challenge. In recent years, the number of parents who choose to delay or refuse vaccines has risen. Objectives: () to identify the perceptions and attitudes of hesitant and antivaccination parents regarding vaccination in general, and vaccinating their children in particular and; () to describe the responses of potential participants to the request to participate in academic research regarding their perceptions and attitudes on the subject of vaccines. Methods: The research employs the qualitative hermeneutic phenomenological method using two research tools: () in-depth interviews with hesitant and anti-vaccination Jewish parents in Israel; and () the researchers' field notes from this study process, which describe the responses of potential participants to the request to participate in this academic research. Results: The main findings indicate that while most of the interviewees admit to the e cacy of vaccines in preventing diseases, they oppose the way in which vaccines are promoted-based on providing partial information and disregarding parents' concerns and questions. Therefore, they demand transparency about the e cacy and safety of vaccines. The findings also point to a paradoxical finding. On the one hand, these groups claim that Frontiers in Public Health frontiersin.org Hijazi et al.. /fpubh.. health organizations do not understand their position, referring to them as "science-deniers", even though they are not. On the other hand, these parents choose to refrain from participating in scientific studies and voicing their opinions, thereby perpetuating the situation of being misunderstood. Conclusion: Hesitant and anti-vaccination groups express mistrust in academic institutions and health organizations. Therefore, an e ective dialogue that would include hesitant and anti-vaccination groups, the academy, and health organizations may contribute to a better understanding of the barriers that prevent these groups from getting vaccinated or vaccinating their children and promote public health.