--- title: Why Conservatives Are Shifting Views on Childhood Vaccines description: It's not ignorance that's driving dramatic shifts in Republicans' views of childhood vaccines. canonical: https://time.com/6280666/conservatives-shifting-views-childhood-vaccines/ author: TIME article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-05-17T19:29:23.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:03:36.416Z article:section: Ideas og:title: The Real Reason Behind Conservatives' Shifting Views on Childhood Vaccines og:description: It's not ignorance that's driving dramatic shifts in Republicans' views of childhood vaccines og:url: https://time.com/6280666/conservatives-shifting-views-childhood-vaccines/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta767e1bbce32ee14/698a3d1216d88431e9c3bdbc/GettyImages-883467954.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: Measles Outbreak in Minnesota og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Real Reason Behind Conservatives' Shifting Views on Childhood Vaccines twitter:description: It's not ignorance that's driving dramatic shifts in Republicans' views of childhood vaccines twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta767e1bbce32ee14/698a3d1216d88431e9c3bdbc/GettyImages-883467954.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The Real Reason Behind Conservatives' Shifting Views on Childhood Vaccines > Sponsored content. 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A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-inside-2026q3/newsletters?i=c2d3c570-baee-4ad3-a418-61a46f84d8e3&cr=time-nl-inside-2026q3-v1) ## Video: The Miracle Workers: The Scientists Behind The COVID-19 Vaccine [Watch (HLS stream): The Miracle Workers: The Scientists Behind The COVID-19 Vaccine](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/BTNvQC2o.m3u8) (5:16)  _Published 2021-12-13. For those of us lucky enough to live in wealthy countries with access to these top-shelf vaccines, it has made all the difference. The miracle workers behind the COVID-19 vaccines are the TIME Heroes of the Year not only because they gave the world a defense against a pathogen, but also because the manner of that astonishing achievement guards more than our health: they channeled their ambitions to the common good, talked to one another and trusted in facts._ by [Samuel L. Perry](https://time.com/author/samuel-l-perry/) ## Samuel L. Perry May 17, 2023 7:29 PM UTC  Lydia Fulton, LPN, administers the MMR vaccine to a child at Children's Primary Care Clinic in Minneapolis, MN, Friday April 28, 2017\. Children's has set up a triage center at the clinic to pre-screen patients and ensure proper handling of suspect measles cases. Lydia Fulton, LPN, administers the MMR vaccine to a child at Children's Primary Care Clinic in Minneapolis, MN, Friday April 28, 2017\. Children's has set up a triage center at the clinic to pre-screen patients and ensure proper handling of suspect measles cases. Courtney Perry-The Washington Post by [Samuel L. Perry](https://time.com/author/samuel-l-perry/) ## Samuel L. Perry May 17, 2023 7:29 PM UTC In a [new study](https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2023/05/16/americans-largely-positive-views-of-childhood-vaccines-hold-steady/) released by Pew Research Center, the percentage of [Republicans](https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2023/05/16/americans-largely-positive-views-of-childhood-vaccines-hold-steady/ps%5F2023-05-16%5Fvaccines%5F00-02/) who said parents should be able to forego the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine for their public school children, even if it may create a health risk for others, more than doubled from 20% in 2019 to 42% in 2023\. White evangelical Protestants showed a nearly [identical pattern](https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2023/05/16/what-americans-think-about-the-mmr-vaccines/ps%5F2023-05-16%5Fvaccines%5F01-07/) with the percentage supporting parents’ decision not to vaccinate their children despite the health risk to others doubling from 20% to 40%. This is obviously concerning. Measles cases in the U.S. spiked in 2019 to levels we hadn’t seen in decades. Studies showed this was tied to growing vaccine hesitancy, much of which was due to (sometimes [deliberate](https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2018.304567)) [misinformation](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2333794X19862949) about the connection between childhood vaccines and autism. So why just after a decades-high measles spike would we see conservatives even more enthusiastic about normalizing reluctance to vaccinate children? Several reasonable explanations immediately jump out from the study. Pew shows there’s a [strong connection](https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2023/05/16/americans-largely-positive-views-of-childhood-vaccines-hold-steady/ps%5F2023-05-16%5Fvaccines%5F00-04/) between skepticism over the COVID-19 vaccines and childhood MMR vaccines. And America’s [siloed media](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2715795) landscape has played a demonstrable role in fomenting skepticism toward even those vaccines that have proven safe and effective for decades like the MMR shot. But what ties these factors together isn’t primarily scientific ignorance about the effectiveness or safety of such vaccines. Rather it’s a combination of partisan polarization and a growing populist identity that prioritizes parents’ rights over expert recommendations, state mandates, or the safety of others. That’s actually a bigger problem than ignorance. --- ### More from TIME --- There’s an interesting paradox in Pew’s study. Despite the large change in Republican support for parents to avoid vaccinating their children with the MMR vaccine, [Republicans](https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2023/05/16/what-americans-think-about-the-mmr-vaccines/ps%5F2023-05-16%5Fvaccines%5F01-06/) _did not_ change much in their beliefs about the vaccines themselves. Between 2019 and 2023, the percentage of Republicans who thought the benefits of the MMR vaccines outweigh the risks only declined 3% from 89% to 86%. And the percentage who felt there was a high risk of side effects hardly changed at all. There’s a nearly identical pattern for [White evangelicals](https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2023/05/16/what-americans-think-about-the-mmr-vaccines/ps%5F2023-05-16%5Fvaccines%5F01-07/). In fact, the percentage of White evangelicals who say the benefits of childhood MMR vaccines outweigh the risks didn’t change at all from 2019 to 2023, staying right at 87%. And those who thought the vaccines posed a medium or high risk of side effects only increased 5% from 32 to 37%. It’s not primarily about fear of vaccines per se. If that were the case, Black Protestants would be the most supportive of leaving their children unvaccinated. Likely owing to a [long history](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40615-021-01025-4?wt%5Fmc=Internal.Event.1.SEM.ArticleAuthorOnlineFirst&utm%5Fsource=ArticleAuthorOnlineFirst&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcontent=AA%5Fen%5F06082018&ArticleAuthorOnlineFirst%5F20210331) of negative interactions with healthcare providers and lower education on the subject of vaccines, Pew shows Black Protestants are even more skeptical about MMR vaccines than White evangelicals. But they’re about half as likely (21% to 40%) to agree parents should be able to decide not to vaccinate their children. Rather than beginning with ignorance, the conservative shift seems to reflect an amplification of problems that precede the past four years: Political polarization and populist distrust in experts. This then drives political and religious conservatives to sources and relationships where vaccine hesitancy is more normalized. Political and religious conservatives were already more likely to be antivaxxers before COVID-19\. In fact, former president Donald Trump likely contributed to their skepticism. Before he became president in 2016, Trump [frequently tweeted](https://bylinetimes.com/2019/02/14/the-deadly-anti-vaxxer-movement-started-in-britain-co-opted-by-trump-boosted-by-putin/) claims that childhood vaccines cause autism. And a recent [experimental study](https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2020-23959-001) shows when Trump voters were shown his numerous tweets, they became even more skeptical about vaccines than they were before. How did COVID-19 response amplify this problem? Despite the COVID-19 vaccine owing its rapid development to [Trump’s administration](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-receive-covid-19-vaccine-harris-campaigning-georgia-n1251890), support for COVID vaccine mandates quickly became associated with the political left. Research shows “[motivated reasoning](https://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Denial-Self-Deception-Politics-ebook/dp/B07X59J711/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?crid=35M0P1LSJ4KM9&keywords=the+truth+about+denial&qid=1684335020&sprefix=the+truth+about+denial%2Caps%2C180&sr=8-1),” often driven by a natural bias toward promoting our group above others, consistently overrides any evaluation of facts. Following one of the most contentious elections in American history, ideological and partisan identities both direct Americans’ consumption of vaccine news and provide the lenses through which they read it. Consequently, no matter how [many](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0260733) [meta-analyses](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1201971221008572) [show](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-30052-w%3C) that [COVID-19 vaccines](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-02321-z) are [safe](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10787-021-00839-2) [and](https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12879-022-07418-y?%5F%5Fhstc=96200195.4b44870ec4a577029c49e44b73bd3bee.1662076800208.1662076800209.1662076800210.1&%5F%5Fhssc=96200195.1.1662076800211&%5F%5Fhsfp=3632212569&page=6?%5F%5Fhstc=96200195.4b44870ec4a577029c49e44b73bd3bee.1662076800208.1662076800209.1662076800210.1&%5F%5Fhssc=96200195.1.1662076800211&%5F%5Fhsfp=3632212569&page=5) [effective](https://www.mdpi.com/2076-393X/9/5/467), the narrative on the right _must_ be that they pose grave health risks and are ineffective. Indeed, this is exactly what [Pew found](https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2023/05/16/what-americans-think-about-covid-19-vaccines/) among both Republicans and White evangelicals. But there is also the growing populist skepticism toward experts and normalization of individualized vaccine choices. Pew found only 37% of Republicans said they had “A lot” of trust in their own doctors to give them accurate information about MMR vaccines, compared to 55% of Democrats. Again, this doesn’t point to a skepticism about vaccines per se, but about skepticism toward experts. And Pew shows in [other reports](https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2022/10/25/americans-value-u-s-role-as-scientific-leader-but-38-say-country-is-losing-ground-globally/) that this partisan gap in trust toward experts is widening. Lastly, childhood vaccine hesitancy is becoming normalized. Here’s an indicator. [Pew asked](https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2023/05/16/what-americans-think-about-the-mmr-vaccines/ps%5F2023-05-16%5Fvaccines%5F01-011/) Americans whether they would feel uncomfortable or comfortable letting their child spend time with a child who had not received the MMR vaccine. Over two-thirds (67%) of Republicans said they would be comfortable compared to only 42% for Democrats. Part of this may be the polarization issue, but it also likely reflects that Republicans simply know more parents who have chosen to keep their children unvaccinated. Scientists can bridge information gaps. We can publicize findings. Ignorance is not an insurmountable barrier. But an identity built around distrust in experts, and particularly any experts who are suspected of serving the narrative of leftists and elites, is more problematic. It’s even more so if those communities are increasingly isolated. There may be little chance of depoliticizing COVID-19 vaccines at this point, and that will have consequences. But we should all be invested in depoliticizing narratives around childhood vaccines that have proven safe and effective for decades. The future of _all_ our children is at stake. ## Transcript Kind: captions Language: en I think vaccines are misunderstood, and maybe it's because it seems like magic. That simplicity and the mystery of it is something that ends up creating a lot of skepticism. People are fooled by the speed. Everything that we knew when it was time to design a vaccine for COVID-19, we knew for so long, but the public had just become aware of it. If this would happen two years ago, we would not be ready. Saying that it happened overnight, it took two, three decades, at least. 2021 was the year when so many praised the miracle of vaccine development. In science, there is hardly ever a simple, quick fix. But this was truly a moment of the right fix - a brand new kind of vaccine technology - at exactly the right time. I started out in math, and I moved to biology. And after medical school, I saw one of the first cases of HIV in Tennessee back in 1982. And so the first part of my career was trying to understand the immunology of vaccine-enhanced disease and trying to make vaccines safer. I got interested in science when I was 16 years old. I was hooked on the idea that you could go to work and discover something that no one else in the world knows on any given day. It seems at 16, I thought that maybe I will be a scientist. I was always working with mRNA, I mean for 30 years at least. And I never wanted to develop a vaccine. I wanted to develop it for therapy. When I first came to Penn from the NIH, pure luck hit where I met Kati Karikó over a Xerox machine. And she told me she worked on RNA, and she could help us with our vaccine. Every experiment doesn't work, every hypothesis isn't good. It was a continuous flow of negative feedback. But we saw the potential of the RNA and neither of us would give up. Although mRNA can teach our cells to fight infection, it took doctors Karikó and Weissman 16 years to figure out how to use it safely in a vaccine. First when I made this RNA, actually I did not tell Drew Weissman, my colleague, because I thought that maybe I mixed up something. So I repeated the experiment and we could see that there was no inflammation in human cells. We're both scientists. We're not baseball players who cheer when we hit a homerun. We knew that it had great potential. But what we thought about is what are we going to do with it? Meanwhile, doctors Corbett and Graham spent years unlocking the structural secrets of viruses. One of the really important problems in coronaviruses that had not been solved is really simple. What does the coronavirus really look like to the immune system? And to figure that out, you have to be able to take a really high definition picture of the proteins that are on the surface of the coronavirus. And then do some protein engineering to stabilize the structure. At that moment, you realize that you have almost what is a universal strategy for creating a vaccine for coronaviruses. A mysterious respiratory illness with similarities to SARS has healthcare workers around the world on alert. What we said to each other, all's we need is a sequence and we're ready to go. We can make a vaccine in weeks and get it into people very quickly. The fact that we made a vaccine in 10 months, and has the potential to end this pandemic, will certainly stand out. "Do it mama!" (laughter) Most scientists never get to see a product actually used. And to watch the evening news and see the relief on healthcare providers getting immunized, those were special moments. I also get emotional when I got a letter from an elderly home, and they reported that they received the vaccine. There were like 200 elderly in that home. And nobody died. On social media, when children were going back to visiting their grandparents again. Seeing people reunited in that way, it was a very surreal moment. A surreal moment, and definitely worth celebrating, if only briefly before a return to work. These scientists are now trying to apply their game-changing discoveries to other diseases. Influenza, even cancer. 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