Prior to COVID-19, it generally felt like vaccines were widely accepted as miracles of modern medicine. At the beginning of COVID, worried people cheered for the scientists who developed COVID-19 vaccines in record time. Neighbours helped neighbours find appointments. Frontline workers rolled up their sleeves in hospital breakrooms, and for a little while, there was a sense of shared responsibility in the air. But soon after the vaccine rollout started, that unity unravelled. Vaccine hesitancy came back, and is growing.
The Roots of Mistrust
The seeds of vaccine hesitancy were always there, buried in a mixture of fear, politics, and stories of past harm. A study published by the Angus Reid Institute in late 2024 showed that trust in vaccines, including routine childhood vaccinations, has declined in Canada. Kindergarten vaccination rates have dropped in multiple provinces. Measles and whooping cough outbreaks are happening again in communities where they had once been eliminated. In parts of Alberta and Ontario, where vaccine coverage has slipped, public health officials are once again sounding alarms. Why?!
Why, after seeing the toll of a global pandemic, are people turning away from one of the most effective tools we have to prevent disease?
The easy answer is misinformation or disinformation. Social media platforms are riddled with conspiracy theorists and pseudo-experts. Some of the loudest anti-vax influencers are monetizing fear and ignorance and building large followings by feeding people curated rage. But that’s not the full story.
Mis/disinformation tends to stick when there is already a breakdown in trust. The deeper reasons behind the current wave of vaccine hesitancy are harder to confront because they point to systemic failures that simplistic government press releases cannot fix.
Commodification and the Grifters’ Playbook
Public health is increasingly a casualty of austerity and privatization. Over the past two decades, governments have chipped away at local health units, cut funding to school-based vaccine programs, and turned what should be community-led education into generic ad campaigns. Instead of investing in long-term, trust-building infrastructure, we’ve been left with quick fixes and PR bandaids. People don’t believe public health messaging because it often comes across as impersonal and out of touch with real lived experiences.
For some, especially in racialized or marginalized communities, there are also valid historical reasons for mistrust. Examples like unethical medical experiments conducted on Indigenous children in residential schools in Canada in the 40’s and 50’s and the Tuskegee syphilis study in the United States, where treatment was deliberately withheld from Black men without their informed consent, explain a mistrust of the system.
The situation is worse because of the way vaccines have been commodified. Pharmaceutical companies make enormous profits from their medications and it’s a significant reason some people feel uneasy.
It’s valid to question how pharmaceutical profits and lobbying shape public health. But these legitimate concerns have been twisted by grifters like Joseph Mercola, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and social media influencers. Instead of pushing for transparency or reform, they immediately exploit mistrust to spread disinformation, while making money from book sales, supplements, and paid subscriptions.
Potential conversations have devolved into labelling people as pro-vax or anti-vax, with no space for concerns, questions, or critiques of pharmaceutical practices. This reinforces the idea that one must choose a “side” instead of encouraging critical thinking. This is an oversimplification that creates fertile ground for vaccine hesitancy to grow.
False equivalency
When Covid vaccines were first introduced, several outlets recklessly amplified anti-vax talking points by giving extended coverage to vaccine skeptics and protestors, or by publishing opinion pieces questioning mRNA technology without adequately understanding the science. This gave false equivalency to fringe ideas and made it harder for the skeptical side to discern the credible.
The Consequences
This erosion of trust has alarming consequences. Uptake of newer vaccines remains low and when people skip routine vaccines, diseases we thought were long gone come back. Measles, a disease we declared eliminated in Canada in 1998, is seeing outbreaks again. Pertussis (whooping cough) is being reported in schools. RSV cases are rising among seniors and infants.
We are going backwards in public health, and if we don’t act, it will get worse. Future pandemics could hit harder if public uptake drops and herd immunity weakens. Pharmaceutical companies may start pulling back research into vaccines that aren’t seen as profitable. And all of this will disproportionately affect those with the least access to care.
What Needs to Be Done
We need to stop pretending that facts alone will change minds. People don’t respond to data when they feel dismissed or judged, and that means we need to rebuild trust through relationships. That means investing in community health by working with schools, churches, and grassroots organizations to meet people where they are.
We need to hold pharmaceutical companies accountable through greater government oversight, mandatory transparency around lobbying and pricing strategies, public audits, and penalties for misleading marketing or withholding data. Accountability should be visible, enforceable, and rooted in the public interest. If we want people to trust the system, the system must be visibly trustworthy.
We must build a sense of community. Public health works best when it’s rooted in shared responsibility and clear, accessible information. Instead of judging or shaming those who are hesitant, we should be asking: What are their concerns, and how can we address them honestly and respectfully? Health systems work best when they are built on transparency, fairness, and equal access for all.
Helping the Public Understand
We need to demand better from the media. Public broadcasters must prioritize clear, consistent messaging that counters falsehoods without being paternalistic. And platforms that profit from disinformation need to be regulated.
Finally, we must stop treating public health like a political tool. Every time a politician uses vaccine mandates to score points or refuses to correct false claims for fear of alienating voters, it sends a signal that public safety is negotiable. That kind of cowardice has consequences that are showing up in our clinics, our schools, and our hospitals.
Vaccine hesitancy is a warning sign telling us that people no longer feel protected or heard. One reason people remain skeptical is that they don’t fully understand technology and how much faster medical research has become. Advances in data modelling, global collaboration, and mRNA technology have accelerated vaccine development timelines dramatically compared to the past.
What once took decades can now be achieved in a year or two, but the public hasn’t been brought along in understanding how and why. This gap in public knowledge has created fertile ground for doubt. If we want to rebuild public trust, we need to do more than deliver breakthroughs; we need to explain them. That means listening not just to the science, but to the concerns and confusion of the people it’s meant to help.
