Vaccine Sentiments and Under-vaccination: New Paper

.@ANGLIhere and my paper "Vaccine sentiments and under-vaccination" is now out about in the world and online for everyone to see: https://t.co/bEn4HBE75w

— Mathew Toll (@MGHToll) November 18, 2020

New paper out co-authored with Ang Li on the issue of vaccine hesitancy and under-vaccination that looks at the factors associated with vaccine attitudes (very strongly agree with vaccines to very strongly disagree with vaccines) and vaccine behaviours around the MMR vaccine (full dosage, partial dosage, no dosage).  And the consistency between factors associated with attitudes and behaviours, showing when practical barriers impede the translation of positive vaccine attitudes into full uptake. 

Title: “Vaccinesentiments and under-vaccination: Attitudes and behaviour around Measles,Mumps, and Rubella vaccine (MMR) in an Australian cohort”

Abstract: 

Objective

The study aimed to examine the consistency in factors associated with attitudes towards vaccination and MMR vaccination status.

Methods

Using the nationally representative Longitudinal Study of Australian Children matched with the Australian Childhood Immunisation Register, 4,779 children were included from 2004-2005 to 2010–11. Different MMR vaccine dosages and general attitude towards vaccination were modelled individually with multinomial logit regressions, controlling for demographic, socioeconomic, and health related factors of the children and their primary carers.

Results

The group with non-vaccination and negative attitudes was characterised by more siblings and older parents; the group with under-vaccination but positive attitudes was characterised by younger parental age; and the group with under-vaccination and neutral attitudes was characterised by less socioeconomically advantaged areas. The presence of parental medical condition(s), being private or public renters, and higher parental education were associated with under-vaccination but not with attitudes towards vaccination, whilst parental religion was associated with attitudes towards vaccination but not reflected in the vaccine uptake.

Conclusions

Vaccine attitudes were largely consistent with MRR vaccine outcomes. However, there was variation in the associations of factors with vaccine attitudes and uptake. The results have implications for different policy designs that target subgroups with consistent or inconsistent vaccination attitudes and behaviour. Parents with intentional and unintentional under-vaccination are of policy concern and require different policy solutions.

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Here is a share link that allows free access for the first 50 days: https://t.co/XJlSK3Jcix?amp=1

Review: Sun and Steel

A short Goodreads Review of Sun and Steel by Yukio Mishima that I wrote a little while ago.

I have to say – I do not quite get the adoration that people have for this book on YouTube.

People talk about it as a kind of masculine self-help book about mastering the “discipline of the steel”, weightlifting and weapons, and embracing your physical being and physical experience.

The book does detail Mishima's journey to leave his room and transform himself through lifting steel, running, and fencing. Flirtations with the military, etc. Yet it isnt simply that, as the subtitle suggests "Art, Action and Ritual Death", it presents a worldview on relationship between word (spirit) and action (body) and their reconciliation in death.

One of the notions that I was sympathetic to is that there is a problem of overindulging in introspection and the idea that the ‘surface’ of things might contain its own kind of depths (of experience) and that the ‘depth’ within oneself are a series of eddies that lead nowhere. Mishima writes near the beginning of the book:

“Yet why must it be that men always seek out the depths, the abyss? Why must thought, like a plumb line, concern itself exclusively with vertical descent? Why was it not feasible for thought to change direction and climb vertically up, ever up, towards the surface? […] I could not understand the laws governing the motion of thought – the way it was liable to get stuck in unseen chams whenever it set out to go deep; or, whenever it aimed at the heights, to soar away into boundless and equally invisible heavens, leaving the corporeal form undeservedly neglected.”

That idea is somewhat appealing to me, which is probably why I read the book, that and as an insight into the author’s suicide. And there is a lot of insight into the latter – the book would seem in retrospect to be a manifesto for his eventual death by seppuku.

There is a long critique of the intellectualist’s neglect of bodily experience and embrace of ‘nocturnal thought’ – which seems to be why there is a focus on the ‘corrosive’ nature of thought and words.

There is a lot of ontological speculation about the relation or tension between words and action and the spirit and the body, which in the epilogue he suggests need to be balanced. This speculation is interesting at times, and sometimes rather vague.

A lot of the book is about embracing the discipline of the steel and the sense of power and efficacy that one gains from this. Yet, the aim is not a better quality of life, but a better quality of death. To attain a beautiful body required for a noble death.

The underlying fixation on self-annihilation in service of the group and attaining a beautiful death that clearly resonates with fascistic ideals that are deeply odious.

Review: The New Authoritarianism: Trump, Populism, and the Tyranny of Experts

This post is a review I wrote of Salvatore Babones's book 'The New Authoritarianism'  for Good reads a couple of years ago. I intended to write an extended post on the book for the blog but never did. So here is the original review:

Babones offers an account of a “new authoritarianism”: an illiberal transformation of liberalism from the classical philosophy of individual freedom to a rights-based discourse that ‘empowers’ people on their behalf and removes rights from the realm of democratic contestation.

This transformation of liberalism is underpinned by the authority (or rather tyranny) of a new liberal expert class of professionals and managers that control liberal institutions, nationally and globally, and filter the range of policy options presented to the voting population.

This is an intriguing thesis – elements of the argument ring true. Garrett Hardin suggested that human right frameworks that enshrined freedom to breed forbade policy action that could save the world from overpopulation and Malthusian crisis.

Not that many people would forgo that right and it seems that the demographic transformation will not render it a necessity. It is obvious that constructing a universal right is at least an attempt to put it beyond the realm of political contestation – or at least makes political challenge harder and less legitimate. And supernational institutions, when conceded too, explicitly shift the site of control.

Babones sees this as limiting the sovereignty of the demos and establishing a sovereignty of experts. And It is this that Babones sees as the relevant background for understanding nativist and populist discontent.

The rhetoric of global elites, liberal elites, EU apparatchiks concentrated in liberal enclaves that pervades political discourse would suggest that there is something to this account – at least as far as it reflects the populist imagination.

Babones provides a description of the sociological basis for the support of both new authoritarianism and populism. Socio-economic class, occupational order, and migration status are the axes that predispose groups towards the liberal consensus or an attempt to break this through populist strategies.

It is not hard to see, in the years following the breakdown of the ‘great moderation’ supposedly ensured by the management of neo-liberal economic experts and the financial crisis, that groups most hurt by these economic changes have a distrust of experts and mainstream institutions.

Babones’ account of the 2016 US election had an interesting discussion of the divergent class trajectories among American woman and the split between those who could imagine themselves running for office themselves one day and those more concerned with stagnate real wages and underemployment.

It was this latter group, among white women, that were more likely to side with Trump.

Elements of a political economy of the rise of populism and new authoritarianism thread throughout the book and I would have liked to read more about this. And the relationship between these political economic shifts and neoliberalism.

Another quibble is the lose use of the term 'liberalism' throughout the book. Babones talks about the linguistic confusion that arose when F.D.R. developed a more 'progressive' interpretation of classical liberalism without acknowledging that he was changing the meaning of the term. It isn't always clear what version of the term he is employing and therefore talking about a generic liberalism obscures the extent to which other political traditions have help establish modern political systems, including international human rights frameworks.

Babones' suggestion for dealing with these two political trends is to more fully engage with a democratic politics that puts real policy options in front of the voters -- trusting the demos to run the polis and moving beyond the consensus of the expert class.

This book, offering an account of populism, could be seen as a justification of Brexit and Trump. It isn't hard to see that an account of 'new authoritarianism' that identities liberal experts as limiting democratic processes could be seen to embolden right-populists.

Yet, understanding these concerns is extremely important. Why do people challenge experts and the elites of the global cities? How do we get people to invest in their democracy and keep it strong? - I think those who read this book, especially those of a certain occupational order, should remember this quote by Robert Louis Stevenson: "the truth that is suppressed by friends is the readiest weapon of the enemy".