On the insanity of anti-vaxxers

A response to Shadi Hamid

From Claire—Shadi Hamid has politely taken exception to my assertion that anti-vaxxers are nuts.

Claire Berlinski. @ClaireBerlinski

Shadi, this makes zero sense. Liberals made masks, expertise, and science a "cultural identity marker" because it is stark raving insane in a pandemic to adopt any other culture. You seem to be assuming it's normal, somehow, that half our country has entered a mass psychosis--

Shadi Hamid @shadihamid

It was a huge mistake for liberals to make masks, expertise, and "the science" a cultural identity marker, which then further politicized everything having to do with COVID. Anti-vaxx sentiment is fueled by distrust. And it's understandable that they wouldn't trust us

Claire Berlinski. @ClaireBerlinski

such that the afflicted *reject lifesaving modern medicine* in preference for voodoo formulas made of ivermectin and Vitamin D. They're at the level of *shaking rattles* at the ill, whereas the rest of the country lives in the 21st century.

He’s clearly been bothered by this exchange. He wrote an article about it titled, “What does it mean to be irrational?” “‘Rationality’ and ‘reasonableness’ are notoriously difficult words to define,” he begins,

because they rely on circular reasoning. Rationality requires, well, “being agreeable to reason” or “common sense.” Fair enough. But this only raises more questions. In a society as divided as ours, who exactly decides what is held in common or what is sensible? Reason itself cannot answer such a question; only power can—the power to decide and to impose a particular understanding on society through pressure or coercion.

These words aren’t difficult to define; nor is the reasoning circular. I point out that Shadi thinks circular reasoning a defective form of reasoning, indicating that he believes, first, that there is such a thing as reasoning; and second, that it may be done incorrectly.

It is true that rationality requires being agreeable to reason. But reason has a meaningful definition. The ability to reason is a specific human faculty; it is the ability to assess whether an argument is sound. When is an argument sound? It is sound if and only if it is valid and all of its premises are true. Nothing circular about that.

It is simply untrue that the truth value of a proposition, or the validity of an argument, cannot be assessed by reason and may only be determined by power. This is of course a fashionable postmodern claim, and the Cosmopolitan Globalists have discussed it. We asked ourselves whether Kellyanne Conway herself might be derived from arguments made by Frege, Gödel, Church, and the Slingshot. But as I said then: Surely the consistency of elementary arithmetic is very very exotic, no? And even if we accept the Slingshot, it does not compromise the concept of truth. That remains. Some things are true; others not. Nor does it compromise the notion of logic. An inference or an argument is a set of premises together with a conclusion. We use logic to decide whether the inferences or the argument are valid—whether the premises support the conclusion. Truth and logic are independent of what we think of them. Power has nothing to do with it. They are a part of reality itself.

You continue,

Take anti-vax sentiment. Should we tolerate it? What if anti-vaxxers are actually crazy or suffering under mass psychosis? Even if it were true—which I don’t believe—it would suggest a dead end. It would also suggest viewing 30 to 45 percent of our fellow Americans as beyond the pale. I just can’t get behind that, and, more importantly, I wouldn’t want to. It is unclear how a pluralistic society survives if we insist on seeing a particular current of society as dumb, deplorable, and dangerous, all at once. Our rationality—expressed through appeals to The Science—is wielded as a political cudgel, stifling debate in the process and enforcing something akin to clerical authority.

You’ve raised several different questions here. Let’s begin at the beginning. Are anti-vaxxers crazy? By Merriam Webster, crazy: “not mentally sound : marked by thought or action that lacks reason.” Yes, they are crazy. Their beliefs are predicated upon false assumptions and when they are not, they are characterized by failures of inference. Examples of false assumptions: The vaccines will change your DNA. The vaccines will cause magnets to stick to you. The vaccines have killed more people than the pandemic. Examples of failures of inference: Vaccines may cause myocarditis, therefore you can reduce your risk of myocarditis by not being vaccinated.¹

“Mass psychosis” is an informal term, not a formal diagnostic category, but it is incontrovertible that a vast swath of the American public (hence “mass”) believes things about vaccinations that are not only untrue but wildly implausible; that their belief system is conspiratorial and paranoid; and that the way they think about vaccination is irrational. They are, in short, delusional. A delusion is a fixed, false idiosyncratic belief that does not change even when presented with incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. That’s what we’ve got on our hands, here.

“Psychotic” has a more precise definition: It’s a condition of the mind that results in difficulties determining what’s real and what isn’t. To use the National Alliance of Mental Health’s description, these are the signs and symptoms of psychosis:

• Hearing, seeing, tasting or believing things that others don’t;

• Persistent, unusual thoughts or beliefs that can’t be set aside regardless of what others believe;

• Strong and inappropriate emotions or no emotions at all;

• Withdrawing from family or friends;

• A sudden decline in self-care;

• Trouble thinking clearly or concentrating.

Does it fit the bill? Yes and no. We now have so many anti-vaxxers among us that their views can’t be seen as unusual. But imagine that these weren’t widespread beliefs. Imagine it’s 1980, say. If you’d met someone who believed the things anti-vaxxers typically believe—for example, that vaccines cause more deaths than the disease they’re meant to cure; that they change your DNA; that they contain microchips so the government can track you; that a massive conspiracy involving not only the government but the entire medical profession is preventing you from knowing the real death toll from vaccines; that the pandemic isn’t real; that the government is the captive of a pharmaceutical industry so sinister that it’s suppressing evidence that Wonder Drug X or Y (depending on the quack) cures Covid; that the pandemic is a scheme to impose totalitarianism upon the public; that any government which mandates vaccination is relevantly like Nazi Germany—you would have described this as a highly disordered belief system, involving some but not all of the hallmarks of psychosis. There are no auditory or visual hallucinations associated with their beliefs (or only rarely, as far as I can tell), but there most certainly are persecutory delusions; there is grandiosity; there is a florid break from reality; there is an absence of any kind of internal logic within the belief system. The thoughts are not joined up.

Look at these comments as dispassionately as you can:

If this isn’t a mass psychosis, what would be? Can you even imagine, as an exercise, more delusional beliefs? If so, what would they involve? These are typical comments, by the way, not cherry-picked.

You write,

The problem is that we’re all irrational but in different ways. People are crazy—in the colloquial rather than medical sense—and they always have been.

Sure. We’re all irrational. I know commercial air travel is exceedingly safe, but I still feel uneasy every time I fly. I know it would be more healthful to eat spinach and quinoa for dinner than to eat two slices of pizza and a tarte framboise, but guess what I’m going to do anyway.

But there’s within-normal-boundaries irrational and there’s completely nuts. Are you seriously telling me that when you read those comments, you say to yourself, “I don’t feel capable of judging whether that’s rational. Only power can make that call?”

Really?

You liken this species of insanity to that of “someone who’s triple-vaxxed [who] descend[s] into panic and let[s] Omicron upend their life.” I don’t know many people who are triple vaxxed and descending into panic, but put it out there: Find me a few people who are exhibiting an equal and opposite insanity. Let me see what they have to say.

Because I sure don’t see it. I see people who are reasonably concerned that our hospital system is about to collapse, making it impossible for anyone, vaxxed or not, to receive emergency care. I don’t know about you, but I feel reasonably concerned about the cost of the pandemic—US$16 trillion and counting—and what this means for the future of the United States in a very hostile world. I feel concerned, too, that our doctors and nurses are going to up and quit—and who could blame them? So I’d like it if everyone in our society pitched in, got vaccinated, and did their best to bring the pandemic to an end. I think that’s a reasonable request.

Thus your next question: Should we tolerate anti-vax sentiment? I’m not sure what you mean by “tolerate,” but for the record, I don’t think we should kill the anti-vaxxers. (I do wish they exhibited the same solicitude about our lives.)

Should we approve of their views? Absolutely not. First, their views are insane and stupid. It is nothing but condescending to pretend otherwise, and we certainly shouldn’t legitimate their opinions by apologizing for them. It makes everyone more stupid if we pretend their opinions are just as good as those of the exhausted healthcare workers who are begging them to get vaccinated.

Second, their views are dangerous. Before mankind acquired the power to prevent epidemic disease through vaccination, human life expectancy was about forty years. I don’t want to live in a society where infectious disease rages uncontrolled, and I can’t imagine you do, either. That’s not an equally good way of life: It’s a life of grief, suffering, and misery. Pretending otherwise—legitimizing this nuttiness as somehow rational—is a vote for returning to the Dark Ages.

You write,

What if anti-vaxxers are actually crazy or suffering under mass psychosis? Even if it were true—which I don’t believe—it would suggest a dead end. It would also suggest viewing 30 to 45 percent of our fellow Americans as beyond the pale. I just can’t get behind that, and, more importantly, I wouldn’t want to. It is unclear how a pluralistic society survives if we insist on seeing a particular current of society as dumb, deplorable, and dangerous, all at once.

I don’t think any human being is “beyond the pale.” But these beliefs are, indeed, beyond the pale, dumb, dangerous, and deplorable.

From the advent of the polio vaccine to the very recent past, we all lined up for our mandated vaccines before going to school, and our pluralistic society survived just fine. A pluralistic society can survive many differences quite well. I can live happily with people of different faiths, skin colors, and creeds. I can live happily with people who believe that I’ll rot in hell. But ultimately, we must make laws. You may believe that I’m the reincarnation of Baphomet, but you aren’t allowed to murder me because of it. You may believe we’re governed by Satan-worshippers, but you aren’t allowed to infect me with Covid because of it. I have the right to demand that other members of my society take reasonable precautions to control the spread of infectious disease and stay the hell out of our emergency rooms so that we can all have access to them. This is a basic part of the social contract. Vaccination is a reasonable precaution against infectious disease. Imperfect, to be sure, but the best we have.

Some ideas are better than others. Some behaviors are better than others. If our anti-vaxxers find it unpleasant to be told their ideas are no good—and they’re endangering themselves, their families, and their communities—so be it. I’m not going to pretend to be stupid so that they can feel good about being crazy. I don’t think you’re under any obligation to do so, either.

I don’t know if our pluralistic society can survive this phenomenon. I’m quite worried, to be honest. People this crazy could really believe—and thus do—anything. I don’t know what we’re going to do about it.

But let’s see the problem for what it is. It’s not owed to our intolerance. It’s owed to their insanity.

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1. For the anti-vaxxers in the house: It is a failure of inference for the reasons I explain here; scroll down to “How to think about risk during a pandemic.” When you consider the risks of vaccines, or any other treatment, you can’t compare adverse effects to the baseline incidence of disease or other adverse medical events that you saw pre-pandemic in a demographically similar population. You must compare the risks to the new, pandemic baseline. Covid itself causes myocarditis—it is six times more likely to occur after a coronavirus infection than after vaccination—so you are more at risk of myocarditis if you don’t take the vaccine.