In the heyday of Heather Simpson’s anti-vaccine influencer days, she watched in amazement as her social media accounts blew up with every anti-vaccine post and piece of misinformation she shared.
But if you asked her then, she didn’t believe that she was spreading misinformation. She was convinced that if she vaccinated her child, the little girl would die. She also remembers pro-vaccine parents attacking her on social media, calling her a ‘baby killer’ and repeating over and over that vaccines were safe and effective without addressing any of her fears.
It wasn’t until the pandemic that she started wondering whether she might be wrong. She turned to websites like Vaxopedia, which led her to Dr. Vincent Iannelli, the Texas pediatrician who authors the site. During her interactions with Iannelli, he calmly addressed her concerns, provided solid science, and made her feel confident enough to vaccinate her daughter.
She has since started Back to the Vax, a support and information website for parents who have their own concerns about vaccinating.
8 questions with Heather Simpson and Dr. Vincent Iannelli
What led you to the anti-vaccine movement?
Heather Simpson: “There was a docuseries right before I became pregnant with my daughter. There were doctors that promised to be middle ground and different people spoke on it, including [Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] at the time.
“He definitely sounded reasonable, and I thought, you know, he’s not even saying he’s anti-vax. He’s just pro-safe vaccine. Well, I would say he influenced me more than the doctors to not vaccinate.”
You became fairly well-known on social media. Can you talk about talk being an influencer, how it started and what you felt you gained through it? You’ve said it all happened unexpectedly when one of your Facebook posts vent viral.
Simpson: “It was very weird. I woke up to having been shared hundreds of times, and a lot of the pro-vax groups took off and I became the girl to hate. And it was odd because I would get so many messages all of a sudden acting as if I was a medical expert. It was wild.
“I was very lonely in West Texas, and my husband at the time was working all the time. And so I really wanted a community. I didn’t have that. And that was kind of an answer to prayer at the time.
“My daughter had sleep apnea very seriously at the time, and I wasn’t being taken seriously by the medical world. I finally found a doctor to listen and he saved her life. And that was after I talked to so many doctors and begged them to listen.
“I was so flustered with the medical community, and then this group that I found online, they were listening to me, and I felt like they actually offered answers, you know, ‘Hey, maybe your daughter is going through this because of this vaccine,’ or, you know, the vitamin K shot. And it just felt like, ‘Oh, my gosh, people are hearing me and listening and maybe having an answer.’”
During the pandemic you started having doubts, thinking that maybe the vaccines did work. You’ve scrubbed your social media of those anti-vaccine posts. How do you feel when you did that?
Simpson: “I was so embarrassed [about the anti-vaccine posts], but I was so confident that if I saved just one kid from getting vaccinated, that I would save a life. You know, once a couple of doctors and scientists talked to me and instead of just saying vaccines are safe and effective over and over at my face, they answered my questions about polysorbate 80 and aluminum and the stuff circulating in that world, [I started to realize that I’d been wrong.]
“I truly believed that aluminum would cause inflammation in the brain and result in what we see as autism symptoms. And if it wasn’t aluminum, it was polysorbate 80, acting like a Trojan horse. We thought this was foolproof. I thought it was foolproof. It took doctors and scientists just breaking it down on exactly why that is physically impossible.
“I think he worded it that it would take 3,600 doses of, say, the hepatitis B vaccine injected straight into a baby’s neck to even have a chance of opening up the blood-brain barrier from that amount of Polysorbate 80. They put it in ways and words that I completely understood, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I was so wrong.”’ But I hadn’t had a lot of people tackle that directly.
“[Pro-vaccine advocates] would just mock me and say, ‘Well, you hate your child. You want to see babies die,’ and ‘vaccines are safe and effective, do it for the community.’ And all I was thinking at the time was, ‘OK, but if I vaccinate my baby, she’ll die tonight.’”
Was pediatrician Dr. Vincent Iannelli among the doctors who gave you the information you needed?
Simpson: “Yes. He runs Vaxopedia, and I would absorb so much information off his website. And I found out he was local. And so when we decided to get my daughter vaccinated, we went to him first, and I was freaking out the whole time.
“But he was very calm, and I think he told me, you know, ‘Reach out if she even hiccups weird,’ like, ‘We got you.’ I didn’t feel abandoned. I felt like, ‘Hey, this is not just to me. This is a community, you know, watching her,’ and I joked that she had more energy and more of an appetite after her vaccine than before.”
Dr. Iannelli, tell us a little about how you went about easing Heather Simpson’s concerns?
Dr. Vincent Iannelli: “I think the biggest problem right now is that a lot of people have classified parents who question vaccines as being anti-vax. And that’s not true. They’re just scared. People who are anti-vax or the people are like RFK Jr. and Del Bigtree who are pushing out all the misinformation and propaganda. The parents are just scared.
“So I just ask questions, like what they’re scared of. A lot of pediatricians now, they kick [parents] out of their practice, or they give them long lectures, or they argue with them. That’s what you don’t want to do.
“There’s a technique called ‘motivational interviewing,’ and that’s probably the best thing to do. You help them to find the reason and motivation to change because they want to change. They want to vaccinate their kids, and you help them overcome their anxiety.”
Heather, what did it feel like when someone finally asked you what you were scared of? Was that a turning point?
Simpson: “Yes. When I had people actually answer it, explaining away my fears and in a way that made sense, that they were tackling the science and not just shying away and just shaming me, that was huge to me, because it got to a point for me where I realized, ’OK, physically this cannot cause any of the fears that I thought.’
“I’ll go back and read the anti-vax posts now, and they sound like they make so much sense. They really do. Like the logic makes sense for them, and it just takes one little bit of truth to just destroy it all. And I just wish people would stand up to that fight and tackle it head on and realize they are just scared and they want an answer that makes them feel confident.”
You’ve teamed up with Lydia Greene to start the online group Back to the Vax. What happens there?
Simpson: “So a lot of parents decide to start vaccinating and find themselves kind of in no man’s land where they’re leaving this community. When I was kind of ‘exiled’ from the anti-vaccine world, I lost so many friends and real life friends, too. And my daughter lost friends because it was their kids. I saw rumors that I died and was replaced by, I don’t know, someone from the government. It was very extreme.
“So this is just a community for people to talk about what they’re going through and also be like, ‘Hey, my kid is going to get their first shot and I am completely freaked out. I know logically we’re going to do it, but it’s still shameful to be freaked out’ and other people can relate.”
Doctor, you’re in Texas where there’s one of the lowest vaccination rates for 2-year-olds in the U.S. On the other hand, we’re seeing that in Spartanburg County, S.C., there’s been a 162% jump in vaccinations in January. Do you think people like Heather are helping?
Iannelli: “I think it definitely helps to hear people who have changed their mind and just hearing people who combat the misinformation.
“When you really get to the bottom of it, when you’re talking to people on all sides, they want their child to live. Like, we both have the same goal. So asking, ‘What, are you actually scared of?’ actually kind of gets to the heart of it.”
This interview was edited for clarity.
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Karyn Miller-Medzon produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Todd Mundt. Miller-Medzon also produced it for the web.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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