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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC Good morning again, everyone. If you think of the anti-vaccine movement as led by the kind of people who most fervently support Donald Trump, that may be largely true, but it's not just them. Some others come from what in certain ways is more considered part of the alternative left, the wellness movement. The Washington Post has a story called, "How wellness influencers are fueling the anti-vaccine movement." With us now the co author of that article, Washington Post tech reporter, Gerrit De Vynck helps lead the Post's coverage of misinformation. Gerrit thanks so much for coming on. Welcome to WNYC.

Gerrit De Vynck: Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Your article opens with a description of the Instagram page for someone named Jessica Alex Hesser. You say it looks like a pamphlet for a meditation retreat? Who is Jessica Alex Hesser? What's generally on her Instagram feed?

Gerrit De Vynck: She's one of many influencers that can loosely be grouped into wellness community, I'm sure a lot of people-- it's a bit of an amorphous term, but I think we all know what that's referring to it's self care, it's getting out into nature, it's using alternative health practices, it's doing a lot of exercise, a lot of really good things that we see on social media all the time. She's not a huge influencer, she's got about 50,000 followers, more than I do for sure, but still not a mega influencer with a megaphone that goes out to millions of people. For those people who do follow these smaller followers, they can be really close to them, they can feel really connected to that community, and they can really listen, when they have something to say.

Brian Lehrer: Where does the anti-vaccine messaging come in?

Gerrit De Vynck: It comes in through the side a little bit. You see a lot of regular posts about just being out in nature, maybe something about a new product that one of these people is using, and then suddenly they'll be doing a video wearing t shirts saying vaccines are poison, and maybe not even directly referencing it. A lot of it also comes through saying, hey, everyone in the same way that we don't trust pharmaceutical companies when it comes to other kinds of medicine, or that we ask tough questions or that we criticize them.

Maybe think twice before taking some other more mainstream medical product, in the same way, you should question the vaccines. You see quite quickly a lot of the same either conspiracy theories or debunked ideas that you see in other people who are anti-vaccine. Things such as that the vaccine was rushed or that the trials were not big enough or not sufficient enough, or that people like Anthony Fauci have a financial interest in the vaccine. Things that all been factcheck shown to not be true, but they're quite virulent in these communities as well.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, do you consider yourself part of the wellness movement? Does it touch the anti-vax movement for you? 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280, or are you seeing this online and wondering about it? Are you seeing this and horrified that these two worlds are connected? One that you do identify with, one that you think is preventing us from getting out of the pandemic or anything related that you would like to say, or ask to our guest our Washington Post tech and information reporter Gerrit De Vynck? 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280, or tweet @BrianLehrer.

We were talking about one of these influencers who you named at the beginning of the article, but we should say you're not singling out this one Instagramer with only a moderate number of followers. You write that many social media influencers who focus on natural remedies, holistic health and New Age spirituality, have been sharing posts and videos questioning the wisdom of vaccinating against the corona virus. How influential do you think they are?

Gerrit De Vynck: I think they're a big part of it. I think a lot of us I mean, even in my own extended family, I think most of us probably have people that we know who haven't taken the vaccine yet they're still nervous about it. They feel like they have a lot of questions that they don't have enough information. When you ask, why not? What's pushing you to not want to have the vaccine? A lot of people will say, well, it's something I read on Facebook or something I read on Instagram. This is still a difficult topic to really get our hands around mostly because the social media platforms, including Facebook, they don't share their data, they don't allow independent researchers to really go in there and say, "Okay, how much vaccine misinformation is actually on the platform? How engaging is it?"

They give us these abstract numbers about how many posts they've taken down, but they don't really contextualize it so we can really understand what's going on. It's still really, really difficult to say, how big the role of social media has been, and this, of course, goes beyond wellness influencers, but it's clear that if you just look at the anecdotes, when you get on the phone and start talking to people, a lot of them are finding these ideas in these communities.

I just want to say, it's obviously very important to point out that the majority of what could be considered of the wellness community is not anti-vaccine, a lot of people say, "Look, you should look at other options but you should also consider medical science. It's not an either or proposition." A lot of people are supporting vaccines and saying to their followers, look, you should go get this and even engaging with some of these anti-vaccine influencers and having these conversations online. It is something that we do see, this is a big part of that community as well.

Brian Lehrer: Would you place these influencers and their followers anywhere on the political spectrum in general? Are there a lot of New Age spirituality Trump supporters? How would you characterize them politically, if there's any credible breakdown?

Gerrit De Vynck: That's a great question. I think people that we spoke to, or people that we wrote about in the story would definitely fall all along that spectrum. Some of them who would maybe not even engage that much in these mainstream core political questions Republican versus Democrat, they might see themselves as they don't think it's important, or they might see themselves as outside of it. Some of them are very much on that libertarian, the government shouldn't tell me what to do worldview and they might identify more with Trump or some of those other right-wing political figures. Others are also on Democrats and say they don't like Trump, they don't like what he stands for, and they don't like his political successors, but they still don't trust the administration that is, in their mind forcing a vaccine on them before they really want it.

Brian Lehrer: Here's somebody who might identify with that camp, Carmen in Astoria. You're on WNYC. Hi, Carmen.

Carmen: Hi, Brian so nice to be part of your show again. One question, just to clarify this, if we're already healthy-- I'm vaccinated, just wanted to say from the beginning, but if we're already healthy, and we take care of our bodies, and we're in a really good health state, why do we still have to go through all the hassle of getting vaccinated and all of this vaccine gets pushed on us?

Brian Lehrer: Because being healthy doesn't protect you from getting seriously ill or dying from COVID if you're unvaccinated.

Carmen: No, let me put it this way. If you want to take that risk of not getting vaccinated and going through with COVID, going through it and face whatever risks you want to face, that's your choice, that has to be your choice, not the government mandating it, not the government imposing it on you. That has to be your choice, your free will, what happened to that?

Brian Lehrer: Well, there's that libertarian argument by the same token, society has to make decisions to protect groups of people, what about all the people in these hospitals who are being overwhelmed? What about the people who can't even get hospital beds in some parts of the country right now, that tend to be antivax because there are so many unvaccinated people filling up all the ICU beds. It can't just be about the individual it has to be about the common good as well, right?

Carmen: I'm not an anti-vaxxer. Again, on the contrary, I am pro-vaccine and I did get the COVID vaccine because it was my own decision.

Brian Lehrer: I hear you.

Carmen: If people don't want to do it, why does the government has to step in, that's something that's not okay.

Brian Lehrer: Carmen, thank you very much for your call. We could go round and round Gerrit on her saying why does the government have to step in. I would come back with the government has to step in because there's a public interest, not just an individual interest element to this. When a lot of people don't get vaccinated under the present conditions, it winds up making other people sick or dying through the chain of events, but Gerrit how much is that what you're seeing on Instagram with these influencers, as the distinction? People saying they're not anti-vaccine, and Carmen even said she got the vaccine herself that it was her choice but it's just anti-mandate. Is there really a lot of anti-vaccine per se misinformation on Instagram?

Gerrit De Vynck: I think that it's both. It's interesting, because, we would find me and my colleague Ashley Fetters, who actually helped me write the story. We would find accounts on Instagram, where I would say they were quite directly saying, "Don't get the vaccine," or at least saying, "Don't give your children the vaccine." That's one that we saw that was very common, "Don't let your child be part of an unlicensed experiment," that kind of thing. Then when you reach out to these people and say, "Hey, we saw your post, we're thinking of including in story for The Washington Post, and we'd love to give you a chance to respond or have a deeper conversation with you directly."

They very quickly say, "Oh, well, I didn't say that, all I was saying is that I'm pro-choice, and I'm not anti-anything." It devolves into a bit of a conversation about semantics. I do think it's interesting. A lot of this language is borrowed from the pro-choice movement, and they say, "Well, it's my body, it's my choice." You see a spectrum, I would say that, in terms of wellness, specifically, it is very much about not wanting to put something in your body, not wanting to have what they would see as a foreign object. There's a lot of misinformation about how the vaccines work.

The Pfizer and Moderna vaccine, use mRNA technology and these developments and that, and they will push ideas that, oh, it's changing your DNA and it's not something that's true. It's changing things about your body, and you don't know what it's going to do in 10 years, and just focusing on that concept of not wanting to have something that is, in their mind unnatural, put into their body. I think you definitely do see when they go to make their argument, then they will draw on these ideas of, this is about freedom, I don't want the government telling me what to do. Of course, the government is not forcing anybody to get the vaccine. They're just saying you need the vaccine to participate in certain group activities in society. I think at the core of it is it is more about not wanting to have something that they see as foreign or unnatural come into their body.

Brian Lehrer: Right. I guess we could see where it connects. We could see it as a good and progressive thing that the wellness movement exists because mainstream medicine and the pharmaceutical industry are so much about, waiting till you're sick, then prescribing Big Pharma medications. That when something comes along, that is, after all produced by Big Pharma, we've talked on the show before about how ironic it is that all these progressive people are saying, "Oh, I'm so excited to get the Pfizer, or the Moderna." Citing all these pharmaceutical companies that they would generally love to hate but that doesn't make it wrong. There's a well-intentioned movement that can go wacky, or where a fringe message can take hold in a larger way that turns out to be counterproductive in the individual case, maybe that's what's happening here.

Gerrit De Vynck: Yes, there's a lot of people who have every reason to be skeptical of medical authority of pharmaceutical companies. We're seeing these huge settlements with the Sackler's over fentanyl crisis. There's a lot of reasons to think that corporations don't have your best interests at heart. Of course, they only have their investors at heart. Also, it helps Pfizer investors that the vaccine works and that lots of people want to take it.

I do think one of the important things to point out though, is that some of these influencers and there's definitely a financial motive here and so you may have people coming with with real questions, people who've maybe had bad experiences with the professional medical system. They don't trust doctors, because maybe they weren't listened to by doctors, maybe they-- Black Americans, indigenous Americans, they are often ignored by medical authorities. Their real concerns are not taken into account.

A lot of people might be coming into these communities. Then some of these influencers are spreading these messages and saying, "Don't take the vaccine, but buy my juice that costs $40 a month," or "Take this supplement, which I conveniently sell on my website." There's definitely a lot of people who might be well-meaning, there's also people who are taking advantage of these dynamics.

Brian Lehrer: I'm so glad you pointed out the profit motive in some of these cases. Paul in Montclair you're on WNYC. Hi Paul.

Paul: Hi, thanks for taking the call. I think this is a very timely conversation. I'm looking forward to reading this article. I'm just offering up an anecdotal data point that supports the point that the journalist is making. I have a friend who is in the wellness industry, and is strongly anti-vaccine. In our conversations with her, she is quoting, strange sources, sounds a little bit like quackery. She says that she works with some doctors, I don't know where they come from what their point of view is, I know there's some out there who are anti-vaccine.

Unfortunately, it's having a toxic effect on the relationship. I think it's just another of the schisms that we're seeing in society here. It came out and we were experiencing it under Trump and now that we've had a change in administration, there were even more schisms appearing. This is a new one that's, unfortunately, a product of the pandemic.

Brian Lehrer: What's your friend like, politically?

Paul: She will be less left-leaning.

Brian Lehrer: Does have [crosstalk] Go ahead.

Paul: Go ahead. I was going to say, so she would not have voted for Trump, and would be probably, basically a Democrat.

Brian Lehrer: Have you had a conversation with her about that weird confluence of her and Trump-style vaccine skeptics?

Paul: We have not because I'm respectful of the relationship. I'm a little concerned that it might begin to [unintelligible 00:16:49] I want to focus on repairing the relationship. I think shining a spotlight on that, probably will expose something.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, you're not going to ask your friend every question that a journalist might ask. I get that.

Paul: Exactly.

Brian Lehrer: Paul, thank you very much. Lyle in Asbury Park, you're on WNYC. Hi, Lyle.

Lyle: Hi. I wanted to say I'm a second-time caller and I didn't say the last time that I have been listening to you for nearly 30 years and you're one of my great heroes.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you.

Lyle: Thank you for taking my call. I have friends from our homeschooling community. Our kids are now college-age, and they have another one, not their own child and another child from our community living in their house. They chose at 19 years old to be vaccinated. This couple made some concoction on presuming they learned something online, to unvaccinate these kids and gave it to them, with them not knowing what they said it was a health shake and it was allegedly something. I was curious if your journalist has heard about anything like that before?

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. By the way, listeners, if you're just tuning in, my guest is Gerrit De Vynck, who is the co-author of the article in The Washington Post called How Wellness Influencers are Fueling the Anti-vaccine Movement. He covers misinformation, and the tech industry for the paper. Well, that's quite a thing that Lyle just described.

Gerrit De Vynck: Yes, that sounds very concerning. No, I haven't heard anything about that. I think both Lyle and the previous caller, are talking about these intra-family dynamics that are very difficult, and that are really pushing things to the surface for a lot of Americans, whether people want to get vaccinated or not. I've heard stories about people who, they want to go see their grandchildren so they quickly got vaccinated as soon as they could, but then their kids are against the vaccine and are worried the vaccine could actually harm their own children through the grandparents who were vaccinated. This is, of course, a really distressing thing.

You can imagine not being able to see your family for months and months and months during the pandemic, and then this sort of what you call a viewpoint or an ideological difference on whether vaccines work or not, is causing people to still not be able to see each other and so, yes, it's interesting. I do hear the deeper, the more you talk about this, it does seem, you hear more and more things like this, and of course, something that everyone is dealing with in their own lives.

Brian Lehrer: I'm sure it's not medically possible to unvaccinate yourself but Lyle, did you say the parents gave their child a concoction to un-vax the child? Do you know it was in it?

Lyle: I have no idea what was in it but allegedly, the kids told-- They found out that they had given them this thing. Yes, I don't know. I have no idea what was in it. I can't imagine if anything could possibly un-vaccinate somebody.

Brian Lehrer: Do you have any idea where the parents got their views?

Lyle: They're heavily on social media the a bit of the QAnon thing, they're very extreme. Our homeschool community is very divided now because they're part of the wellness community that went down the rabbit hole.

Brian Lehrer: That's so interesting and disturbing. Lyle, thank you very much. Please call us again. Gerrit, I see you also cover Google and other producers of influential algorithms for the Washington Post, do the social media companies or search engines police this realm of misinformation. We know they're trying to do that now with some overtly political fake news and other kinds of COVID disinformation. Are they doing it with this aggressively?

Gerrit De Vynck: I'm glad you asked because this is obviously a very important conversation. A lot of the time in this conversation people will blame those who are individually anti-vaccine when really I think the social media companies have played a massive and I would say integral role to the situation that we find ourselves in. The anti-vaccine movement definitely grew up in Facebook groups and prior to 2019 and this is all before COVID. Ideas that we would have seen as a friend's conspiracy theories had been debunked time and time again biomedical scientists that vaccines cause autism that kind of thing.

They were growing in parenting groups on Facebook and Facebook didn't really do a lot to moderate what was happening inside of those groups. It's like-minded people who want to talk about something, who are we to stop them but it really allowed these ideas to spread to new parents, people who hadn't thought about vaccines ever in their life because they were vaccinated as children then they didn't have to think about it. Now, that they have young children, the doctors are recommending they get vaccinated and they're going to their parenting groups online to ask questions and that's where a lot of these ideas came.

When the pandemic hit you already had these ready-made groups, you had these ready-made dynamics arguments and the algorithms and the social media platforms, they knew that these conversations got a lot of engagement. Over the last two years with all the scrutiny that's been happening on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook they have cracked down. It's now quite difficult to posts on one of these platforms a direct lie saying something like the vaccine kills people. If you're just asking questions and a lot of the misinformation is framed that way, it's quite easy to push these.

You will see these influencers, they won't necessarily say don't get the vaccine but they'll say I heard this or I heard that pregnant women we're having problems with the vaccine or I heard about someone through a friend who died after taking the vaccine and they're couching it in these more vague terms. The social media platforms which are very hesitant to go out there and ban things, take things down because it gets them a lot of flack from the political right. They're hesitant to go in and step in and really take those things down.

Another thing I do want to point out is a lot of social media influencers, they might not even have an opinion on vaccines themselves but they know that the topic gets a lot of engagement. Some of the popular Instagram accounts that I follow I'll see them post a video alleging that someone died from getting the vaccine completely not backed up by any proof or anything and just say, what do you guys think about this? Then you'll see 1000s of comments people arguing and debating.

When Instagram's algorithm sees that they say, "This account must be posting something interesting. Let's push this to more people." On the one hand, you have the moderation efforts saying we need to pull this down. We need to be careful. On the other hand you have the algorithm which is still trained to go for engagement to boost things that get people talking. In some ways some other people have characterize it as you have two different forces within these social media companies a little bit at odds with one another.

Brian Lehrer: Maybe we even buried the lead because it's obviously a great story that the quote progressive wellness community has an anti-vax element but it's a huge story and it applies to so many other things not just vaccines but that the algorithms from Instagram or other social media platforms might actually promote disinformation just because they get a lot of clicks.

Gerrit De Vynck: At the end of the day, the core thing driving how these companies work they have evolved a lot. It's not just a straight up if it bleeds it leads and we don't care what the content is anymore. They have various sophisticated algorithms to be able to parse what content is wide and to take things down that violate their rules but at the same time, across social media the point of the algorithms, the main goal of these companies is to push content to people and to push content that gets more clicks and that's more engaging.

Brian Lehrer: The algorithms are fighting with themselves. I think that's a good place to leave it with Gerrit De Vynck, author of the article in the Washington Post, How wellness influencers are fueling the anti-vaccine movement. Thank you so much for joining us.

Gerrit De Vynck: Thank you.

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