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Vaccine skeptics are my people. Here's how to reach at least some of us.

Vaccine skeptics are my people. Here's how to reach at least some of us.

Let me start by saying I will absolutely be getting the COVID-19 vaccine. No question. I'm pretty excited about it.

I can't say that I always would have felt that way.

When I started my family 20 years ago, I dove into the natural birth/parenting/health world pretty quickly. I gave birth to one of my kids at home (with a doctor who did homebirths) and had another at a birth center with a midwife. I treated my kids' earaches with garlic-steeped olive oil and their conjunctivitis with breastmilk. We keep elderberry syrup on hand for colds and flus and use ginger and turmeric tea as an anti-inflammatory. My husband has successfully used hibiscus tea to lower his blood pressure and acupuncture for prostatitis.

That's not to say we ever shunned Western medicine. We use antibiotics for strep throat, Tylenol if a fever gets really bad, etc. There's a huge spectrum of approaches to health and wellness, and tossing any of them out completely is pretty silly.

There's a lot of good stuff in the natural health world, including a lot that is backed up by traditional science. (See the links above.) There's also a lot of unsupported-by-science woo and misinformation, and that's only gotten worse in the age of social media.

As for vaccines, I started out unsure of what to think about them. I had concerns about injecting my children with what I understood to be toxic ingredients in vaccines, such as thimerosal (a mercury-containing compound that was removed from vaccines in 2001) and aluminum. We had a family doctor who wasn't anti-vaccine but had some hesitancy about certain ones, so we took each vaccine on an individual basis with his input.

We did immunize our kids, but we did it on a different schedule based on perceived risk. For example, we didn't do the Hep B vaccine at birth because the risk of our newborn baby being exposed to Hep B was incredibly tiny, so we figured that one could wait. We felt that our kids were healthy enough to get natural chickenpox immunity through infection, so we skipped that vaccine altogether. (Since we homeschooled, we were able to expose our kids purposefully in our own home and keep them isolated while the infection process ran its course. Totally understand if you cringe at that. I probably would now too.)

If I could go back and do it again I'd likely make some different choices, but at the time we made informed decisions based on the information we had. I'm not sure where I would have ended up if I'd had the big, nutty world of social media at my fingertips.

I was a vaccine skeptic, not a full-on anti-vaxxer, but it's a slippery road from one to the other. In reality, I think there are a lot of people like me out there, and I'm concerned that they're being swayed more and more toward conspiracy theories. Healthy skepticism and scrutiny over what we put into our bodies is, well, healthy. People have questions and concerns, and that's a good thing. How those questions and concerns get addressed is key.

One thing not to do: Don't dismiss all vaccine skepticism as uninformed ignorance. There is some of that out there for sure, but there are also a lot of people who have solid reasons for their concerns, even if they aren't concerns for everyone. Most vaccine skeptics aren't ignorant conspiracy theorists just as not all people who work for pharmaceutical companies are greedy profiteers. If the people with the best scientific information roll their eyes at people for their questions, they will be lured down the rabbit hole of misinformation by those who welcome their skepticism.

There are two truths we need to internalize it comes to understanding people's vaccine decision-making. 1) No one except people who study this stuff for a living has the time to wade through ALL of the information, so humility goes a long way. 2) Even though we all think we're informed, we base our decisions far more on who we trust—and don't trust—than on any specific information we have.

That trust part is huge. It's The Big Key. Any conversation with a vaccine skeptic has to address trust first and foremost. If so simple to say, "Just trust the science!" but the people who say that don't understand how many scientists and doctors there are in the anti-vaccine world who share studies and analyses and whatnot that makes the science seem pretty fuzzy. Which scientists are we supposed to trust? Which doctors? Which studies?

The biggest source of distrust for most vaccine skeptics is "Big Pharma" and the gargantuan profits pharmaceutical companies make. It's a mistake to dismiss that concern out of hand. We've all seen the price gouging of medications—are we supposed to believe these pharmaceutical companies have our best interest at heart? We've all seen medications get recalled because they found out they did some kind of harm—is this the science we're supposed to put our faith in?

When people are starting from that place of distrust, it's a pretty short distance to the conspiracy theory rabbit hole. Once people go down that hole, it's virtually impossible to bring them back, so we have to find the off ramp before people get there.

One step toward the off-ramp, which should come early in the discussion, is to help people establish just how rotten they think humanity really is. I know that sounds odd, but that one thing forms the foundation for everything that comes next. If you're talking to a vaccine skeptic, ask them these questions: Do you think most people generally do the right thing? Do you think most people go into their careers for the right reasons? Do you think most people want the world to be a place where everyone is happy and healthy?

If they seem unsure, ask them to think about all of the people they know personally. Nearly everyone will answer yes to these questions when they think about the hundreds of people they know.

The reason that's important is because our brains tend to generalize and dehumanize processes and industries that involve a lot of people. And the less we actually know about how a process or industry works, the more monolithic we make our generalizations. I see people do this all the time with "the media." As if "the media" is one thing and not a bunch of competing companies that each have their own mission and culture and commitment to certain standards of reporting. Such monolithic ideas remove the individual, dedicated editors and journalists who really try to do their jobs to the best of their ability—the people who actually make up "the media."

We do the same things with "politicians" when we assume all elected officials are corrupt and power-hungry. We do the same thing with "corporate America" when we assume that all corporations are 100% motivated by greed. Monoliths take humans out of the equation and replace them with a nefarious blob of malintent that isn't truly reflective of reality.

When you make "the vaccine industry" a monolith, it seems like this big, powerful machine that exists only to line the pockets of the people who run it. And yes, pharmaceutical companies make buttloads of money, because they can. Yay, capitalism. But break it down. The people in those companies who are responsible for profit-mongering are specific people in the marketing and financial executive departments—it's not the entire company. It's certainly not the individual researchers who spend their days studying virology and epidemiology and immunology. It's not the scientists who dedicate months and years to figuring out how to treat a disease or save humanity from an infectious pathogen. It's not the vaccine development teams or the teams running the trials or the teams analyzing the data. Generally speaking, those people don't have anything to do with the money-making side of the pharmaceutical business in any meaningful way.

That doesn't mean every individual person is trustworthy, of course. Most of us would agree that there are some bad apples everywhere, but that's why we have professional organizations and review boards and standards, so that we minimize the likelihood of a bad apple ruining the bunch. And if you believe that most people do their best work for the right reasons, you have to believe that the vast majority of scientists around the globe who work on vaccines do everything in their power to make sure whatever they're developing is as safe and effective as possible.

Breaking down these big industries into how they actually function and understanding that the scientists making the vaccine are not synonymous with the company selling it can go a long way toward building trust in the science, without actually having to go as far as trusting the companies themselves.

Explaining that people pushing anti-vaccine information are also making money can also help. If people believe Big Pharma is bad, then everyone against Big Pharma seems good, even though there are a lot of quackos and grifters out there who profit big time off of people's skepticism and fear. Being anti-corporate-profiteering doesn't automatically make someone trustworthy.

And though it may sometimes feel like too many people are too far down the rabbit hole to make a difference, helpful explanations of the science from scientists actually does help. For instance, this Twitter thread explains how the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine works in layman's terms. And the questions and answers that follow the main thread are helpful as well for minimizing fear.

Acknowledging that people's questions and concerns are legitimate (even if you know their conclusions are not), is a good first step. Setting a baseline foundation for trust is the second. When you actually delve into those questions and concerns, do so in a way that doesn't just throw data or statistics at them, but actually addresses the underlying fear and distrust that can lead to conspiratorial thinking.

Not everyone will be convinced, but we have to be as diligent as those pushing misinformation and keep putting out facts with calm confidence. So many of us are actually swayable by good information, especially when it comes from people we feel like we can trust.

Pop Culture

'Wicked' author says one line in 'The Wizard of Oz' inspired Elphaba and Glinda's backstory

Gregory Maguire says he "fell down to the ground" laughing when the idea hit him.

Public domain

The two witches in "The Wizard of Oz" clearly had a history together.

Have you ever watched a movie or read a book or listened to a piece of music and wondered, "How did they come up with that idea?" The creative process is so enigmatic even artists themselves don't always know where their ideas come from, so It's a treat when we get to hear the genesis of a brilliant idea straight from the horse's mouth. If you've watched "Wicked" and wondered where the idea for the friendship between Elphaba (the Wicked Witch) and Glinda (the Good Witch) came from, the author of the book has shared the precise moment it came to him.

The hit movie "Wicked" is based on the 20-year-old hit stage musical, which is based on the novel "Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West" written by Gregory Maguire. While the musical is a simplified version of the 1995 book, the basic storyline—the origin story of the two witches from "The Wizard of Oz"—lies at the heart of both. In an interview with BBC, Maguire explained how Elphaba and Glinda's friendship popped into his head.

 

Maguire was visiting Beatrix Potter's farm in Cumbria, England, and thinking about "The Wizard of Oz," which he had loved as a child and thought could be an interesting basis for a story about evil.

"I thought 'alright, what do we know about 'The Wizard of Oz' from our memories,'" he said. "We have the house falling on the witch. What do we know about that witch? All we know about that witch is that she has feet. So I began to think about Glinda and the Wicked Witch of the West…

 glinda, elphaba, wicked,  In "Wicked," the two Oz witches met as students at Shiz University.  Giphy GIF by Wicked 

"There is one scene in the 1939 film where Billie Burke [Glinda the Good Witch] comes down looking all pink and fluffy, and Margaret Hamilton [the Wicked Witch of the West] is all crawed and crabbed and she says something like, 'I might have known you'd be behind this, Glinda!' This was my memory, and I thought, now why is she using Glinda's first name? They have known each other. Maybe they've known each other for a long time. Maybe they went to college together. And I fell down onto the ground in the Lake District laughing at the thought that they had gone to college together."

In "Wicked," Glinda and the Wicked Witch, Elphaba, meet as students at Shiz University, a school of wizardry. They get placed as roommates, loathe each other at first, but eventually become best friends. The story grows a lot more complicated from there (and the novel goes darker than the stage play), but it's the character development of the two witches and their relationship with one another that force us to examine our ideas about good and evil.

  - YouTube  youtu.be  

 

Maguire also shared with the Denver Center for Performing Arts what had inspired him to use the "Wizard of Oz" characters in the first place.

"I was living in London in the early 1990’s during the start of the Gulf War. I was interested to see how my own blood temperature chilled at reading a headline in the usually cautious British newspaper, the Times of London: 'Sadaam Hussein: The New Hitler?' I caught myself ready to have a fully formed political opinion about the Gulf War and the necessity of action against Sadaam Hussein on the basis of how that headline made me feel. The use of the word Hitler – what a word! What it evokes! When a few months later several young schoolboys kidnapped and killed a toddler, the British press paid much attention to the nature of the crime. I became interested in the nature of evil, and whether one really could be born bad. I considered briefly writing a novel about Hitler but discarded the notion due to my general discomfort with the reality of those times. But when I realized that nobody had ever written about the second most evil character in our collective American subconscious, the Wicked Witch of the West, I thought I had experienced a small moment of inspiration. Everybody in America knows who the Wicked Witch of the West is, but nobody really knows anything about her. There is more to her than meets the eye."

 wizard of oz, wicked witch of the west The Wicked Witch of the West has a story of her own.  Giphy  

Authors and artists—and their ideas—help hold a mirror up to humanity for us to see and reflect on who we are, and "Wicked" is one of those stories that makes us take a hard look at what we're seeing in that mirror. Thanks, Gregory Maguire, for launching us on a collective journey that not only entertains but has the potential to change how we see one another.

This story originally appeared last year.

via Josie Bowers / TikTok

Josie Bowers, a 19-year-old woman from Canada, shared the story of how she thwarted an intruder when she was 15. The viral TikTok video is a harrowing tale and a valuable lesson for everyone to learn. Josie was staying with her family at the Ocean City Hilton in Ocean City, Maryland, when the incident occurred.

She went to her hotel room alone to take a shower while her family was on the beach. After getting out of the shower, she was alarmed when she noticed a long wire with a hook at the end wiggling its way out of the crack at the bottom of the front door. The hook was waving around, trying to catch the handle to open the door. It's amazing that no one in the hallway noticed the incredibly suspicious activity.

The intruders eventually caught the handle with the wire and pulled it down to enter the room. Without hesitation, Josie slammed the door shut and put on the deadbolt. "My main thought was holy sh*t, I'm in a towel right now and someone is about to break in and get me," she said on TikTok. "So the door opens a crack, and I just slammed it back shut and put the deadbolt on."

After the door was shut on the intruders, they pretended to work for the hotel. "So they tell me your keycard is broken and we need to get into the room and fix your keypad for you," she continued. "And so I open the door a tad bit, to see if it was a worker. It clearly wasn't, they were in jeans and a T-shirt. Hilton keeps it pretty classy, not the attire."

@josiebowers10

Reply to @emmade1rey #part2

Josie then remembered a trick that her stepfather, who's a police officer, once told her: Never let people know you're alone.

"I yelled 'Hey dad, there's someone here to fix the door.' As soon as they thought that I wasn't alone – and potentially my dad was there – they ran, they were gone," she said. A lot of people freeze in such a stressful situation but Josie was able to remember her stepfather's advice and it made all the difference.

Given their reaction, it's pretty clear that the intruders must have followed her up from the beach or had some inside information to know that she was alone. They didn't want anything to do with her father. "So I think I'm very smart for this one, my stepdad is a police officer, he taught me never to let people know you're alone. I yelled 'Hey dad, there's someone here to fix the door.' As soon as they thought that I wasn't alone, and potentially my dad was there. They ran, they were gone," she said.

@josiebowers10

Reply to @lionacreates #part3 #oceancity

The TikTokker shared the video to show others what they should do in a similar situation and to remind them to never let anyone know they are alone.

"I'm glad I had this experience so I can teach people about it. Obviously, I'm safe but it could have ended up a lot worse," she said. "Be safe, you can get door stoppers, always put on the deadbolt."


This article originally appeared four years ago.

via James Breakwell/X

All parents have had similar convos with thier kiddos.

Raising kids is tough, but there's a lot of laughs along the way. Especially when actual conversations start, as kids begin trying to make sense out of the world around them, ask questions, and test mommy and daddy's resolve.

Back in 2018, comedy writer and children's book author James Breakwell, with four daughters who were all under the age of eight at the time, shared their hilarious conversations on X. From these tweets, it looks like comedy runs in the family. Here's a sampling of some Breakwell's funniest kid-inspired tweets.

 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 

While Breakwell's 7-year-old wasn't as heavily featured, when she was quoted, the sarcasm was palpable. Which makes sense, considering that kiddos begin understanding this mechanism around that age.

 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 

Kids really do say the darnedest things, and we love them for it. It one of the many, many ways then bring so much joy to the world. It almost makes up for the headaches and sleepless nights, doesn't it.

This article originally appeared seven years ago.

Remember things being built to last?

Americans are well aware of shrinkflation, where food companies reduce the sizes of their products while the price remains the same at the grocery store. You see this in fast food restaurants when you pick up a burger and feel like your hand has grown a few inches, and at the supermarket when you buy a box of cookies, it weighs less than it did a few weeks ago. Companies use this strategy when they think you’ll be less likely to notice a dip in quantity than a hike in the price.

We see something similar in the world of retail, particularly fast fashion. Fast fashion offers cheaper garments made from low-quality materials that last about as long as the trend does, so people can throw them away and buy the next hot thing. This can be a real problem because fast fashion harms the environment and leads to exploitative labor practices. And the tough part is—even for the most conscious of consumer, it's hard to escape from.

Here's a prime example of what this looks like in the real world. A few months ago, a TikTokker named Tom (@SideMoneyTom), popular for making videos about consumer products, went viral for a video where he called out shoe manufacturers for dropping their quality while keeping prices high. “So many of you guys want to shoot the messenger, but look, it's not my fault shoes are made out of Styrofoam and oil now,” Tom says in a TikTok with over 528,000 views. “It's literally every shoe you look at now. It's not even just the cheap ones. I can find hundred dollar plus pairs of shoes all day long with glue squeezing out of their Styrofoam cracks.”

 
 @sidemoneytom Replying to @Oscar Magaña shoes are done #fyp #shoes #foryou ♬ original sound - SideMoneyTom 
 
 

Tom notes that recently, shoes have been made with foam soles instead of rubber. Both have pros and cons. Foam is a little more comfortable, but rubber lasts a lot longer. Rubber shoes keep shape and support over time and are much more durable. Conversely, foam shoes compress over time, losing their support and comfort. When companies sell cheaper shoes that wear out more quickly, they make much more money because you must keep replacing them.

In the video, Tom adds that many companies that used to have shoes made with rubber heels, such as Carhartt and Timberland, have switched to foam. This is an interesting choice for brands that pride themselves on selling durable products.

Cora Harrington, a writer and lingerie expert, says that companies aren't entirely to blame. Americans don’t want to pay higher prices. “People don’t exactly want to pay more for all that stuff,” Harrington told Vox. "So what has to happen if everything is more expensive and the customers still want to pay the same price, something has to be cut and that’s often going to be the quality of the garment.”

“There is an entire generation of consumers at this point that doesn’t actually know what high-quality clothing feels like and looks like,” Harrington continues. “It gets easier, I think, for consumers to just not know any better.”

Many commenters have noticed the decline in shoe quality and praised Tom for pointing it out. "I am so happy I’m not the only one who is baffled by shoes being made of styrofoam and then being upcharged for them," one commenter wrote. "When shoes started being named some version of 'Air Light Cloud float,' my thought was it was because they went from quality rubber to cheap foam and less materials,” another commenter added.

Tom believes the decline in shoe quality is an example of a more significant trend affecting American consumers' products: quality is decreasing while prices remain the same. “The quality of everything is going to hell, and the prices are going up," Tom concludes his video. "The problem is, so many of us have just become used to it that we keep buying it, and we basically allow them to dumb down the quality of everything. Everything in our lives. These shoes are just the tip of the iceberg. Start thinking about it in your life. What are you gonna allow to be garbage quality?"

This article originally appeared in March.

Boomer panic is real.

In a video posted in September 2023, TikToker @myexistentialdread used the phrase “boomer panic” to explain how baby boomers (1946 to 1964) can quickly become unhinged when faced with the most minor problems. It all started when she visited a Lowe’s hardware store and encountered a boomer-aged woman working at the check-out stand.

“I had a dowel that didn’t have a price tag on it, whatever, so I ran back and took a photo of the price tag. And as I was walking back towards her, I was holding up my phone… because I had multiple dowels and that was the one that didn’t have the price tag on it,” she said in the video. “And she looks at me and she goes, ‘I don’t know which one that is,’ and she starts like, panicking.” The TikToker said that the woman was “screechy, panicking for no reason.”

 older woman upset, boomer reactions, boomer panic Older people can become frustrated over seemingly small things.Photo credit: Canva

Many people raised by boomers understood what she meant by "boomer panic." "Boomer panic is such a good phrase for this! Minor inconvenience straight to panic," the most popular commenter wrote. And while there was some unfortunate boomer-bashing in the comments, some younger people tried to explain why the older folks have such a hard time regulating their emotions: “From conversations with my mother, they weren’t allowed to make mistakes and were harshly punished if they did.” The TikToker responded, “A lot of people mentioned this, and it breaks my heart. I think you’re right,” Myexistentialdread responded.

A follow-up video by YourTango Editor Brian Sundholm tried to explain boomer panic in an empathetic way.

 

“Well, it's likely that there actually was a reason the woman started panicking about a seemingly meaningless problem,” Sundholm said. “Most of us nowadays know the importance of recognizing and feeling our emotions.” Sundholm then quoted therapist Mitzi Bachman, who says that when people bottle up their emotions and refuse to express them, it can result in an "unhinged" reaction.

TikToker Gabi Day shared a similar phenomenon she noticed with her boomer mom; she called the behavior “anxiety-at-you.”

Day’s boomer mother was “reactive,” “nervous,” and “anxious” throughout her childhood. Now, she is still on edge with Day’s children. “She's immediately like gasping and just really like exaggerated physical reactions, and then, of course, that kind of startles my kid,” Day said. “Again, I know that this comes from a place of care. It's just a lot,” she continued.

@itsgabiday

It comes from a place of love but it is exhausting 🫠😬 #millennialmomsoftiktok #boomergrandma #reparenting #gentleparenting

 

There is a significant difference in emotional intelligence and regulation between how boomers were raised and how younger generations, such as Gen X, millennials, and Gen Z, were brought up. Boomers grew up when they had to bottle up their feelings to show their resilience. This can lead to growing anger, frustration with situations and people, chronic stress, and anxiety—all conditions that can lead to panicky, unhinged behavior.

Ultimately, Sundholm says that we should sympathize with boomers who have difficulty regulating their emotions and see it as an example of the great strides subsequent generations have made in managing their mental health. “It may seem a little harsh to call something 'boomer panic,' but in the context of how many of them were raised, it makes a lot of sense,” Sundholm says. “It also underlines the importance of emotional regulation skills and teaching them to future generations. And maybe most important, having compassion for those who never had a chance to learn them.”

 older person's hands holding a younger person's hands, compassion for elderly Having compassion for older generations can go a long way.Photo credit: Canva

This article originally appeared in March.