WASHINGTON — For as long as there have been vaccines, there have been people like Winnie Harrison who shun them.
Harrison, 67, a former educator and mother of four, became an ardent disbeliever in immunizations after her first child had an adverse reaction to a measles, mumps, and rubella shot some three decades ago. But it wasn’t until recent years that she and other skeptics began to forge online connections, fostering fear about vaccines and what doctors call a growing ecosystem of health misinformation that has only ramped up amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The founder of the Connecticut Vaccine Rights League, Harrison administers her group’s Facebook page, one of hundreds, if not hundreds of thousands, nationwide that dole out testimonials from antivaccine activists and celebrities, memes of doctors sharing now discredited claims about vaccines — and, more recently, warnings about the forthcoming COVID-19 vaccines.
Read here.