‘I’ve cut them out of my life’: When family and friends fall out over the Covid vaccine

Lawrence was 23 years old when he found out he’d never had a single vaccine. Sat in the office of his GP in Brighton, where he’d booked to have an encephalitis and rabies jab ahead of a planned trip to China, he discovered they weren’t the only shots he was missing. Looking at his medical record, the doctor was as surprised as him to learn he’d never had any of the standard preschool injections that cover everything from tetanus to measles.

He had the vaccines there and then and sent a picture to his mother. “She called me a sheep,” says the now 26-year-old over the phone from his home in Brixton, south London. “I remember laughing with her about it, it was kind of amusing, but at that point there was no danger”. Fast forward to 2020 and a global pandemic that has killed over 150,000 people in the UK alone, the risk posed by serious illness - and the choice to vaccinate against it - is no longer so abstract.

Despite the much-heightened stakes, most of Lawrence’s immediate family - including his mum and a number of elder brothers - have refused to take the Covid vaccine. Even following his mum being diagnosed, and hospitalised, with a condition earlier this year that increases her vulnerability. “They are very staunchly not going to take it,” he tells The Independent. “We often come to blows but there is a cognitive dissonance, no matter how much information you throw at them.”

By 30 August, 42.7 million people across the UK had been administered two doses of the Covid vaccine. That is 78 per cent of all over 16s with the number increasing daily. Despite the objective success of the rollout, there are still concerns about those not taking it. England’s chief medical officer Chris Whitty urged: “Four weeks working on a Covid ward makes stark the reality that the majority of our hospitalised Covid patients are unvaccinated and regret delaying. Some are very sick, including young adults. Please don’t delay your vaccine."

Vaccines are one of the greatest advances of modern medicine and - in a normal non-pandemic year - save an estimated two to three million lives annually, according to Unicef. But there remain a number of reasons why people are not booking an appointment. The spectrum ranges from some mild hesitancy caused by needle phobia or fears over fertility (there is no evidence the vaccine causes fertility problems), legacies of medical racism and distrust of the government, to committed attempts to discredit the programme by anti-vax theorists.

A King’s College Ipsos Mori survey in December found 40 per cent of those who get information on Whatsapp and Youtube believe the aim of the vaccine programme is to track and control the public. While a further 42 per cent cite links between the jab and autism in children - a throwback to historic theories about the MMR vaccine, which have been repeatedly disproved.

Lawrence, who is now double-jabbed, says his family have reservations borne of a homeopathic and holistic view of medicine. “They’re very smart and well educated [but] there is an unwillingness to ‘pollute’ their own bodies,” he says. “That belief that as long as you believe in getting better and are healthy anyway [you will be fine]. When you explain the vaccines help the immune system they think ‘my body will do it anyway’”. The British Medical Journal described this as the “mother-nature quality”. “It’s much more aesthetically pleasing to turn to the beige and pastel themed social media posts that claim viruses are natural, illness is natural, and one’s natural immune system (untouched by vaccines) is intrinsically good and even beautiful.”

Anti-vax beliefs are obviously not exclusive to the last 18 months but the pandemic has forced the conversation (at least in the privilege of the west) from dinner table debate fodder, that can be intellectualised or subject to conjecture, to becoming our passport to freedom and the best protection we have against a deadly threat. Grieving families have shared regrets of individuals who did not take the vaccine and high profile figures have detailed new rifts with formerly close allies. Jennifer Aniston told InStyle: “I’ve just lost a few people who have refused or did not disclose [whether they had been], and it was unfortunate...it’s tricky.”

Although Lawrence continues to be in contact with his family he says the spectre of the vaccine disagreement “upsets every conversation” they have. Others have had to cut ties altogether. Abid, 45, is from London but has been living with his elderly father, 83, in Manchester, since March 2020. Throughout he has struggled to see eye-to-eye on policies with many relatives. He even called the police on one occasion during the first lockdown when a family member insisted on trying to break the rules and visit Abid’s father. “I have cut them out of my life as a result and want nothing to do with them! Our family has split down the middle.”

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Now Abid, who has had both Pfizer vaccinations, has cut further family members who are not taking the vaccine. “My view is that if these people are going to be selfish, uncaring, and disregard the need to protect the public, then I don’t want anything to do with them... I have taken the same measure with  friends,” he explains. Abid has seen nine family and friends die from Covid since last year. “I have only been able to attend one funeral,” he says.

These ruptures aren’t just with distant acquaintances. Karl Rollison, Harley Street therapist and author of the Needle Phobia Handbook, says: “I’ve been regularly contacted by distraught family members desperately asking for help...one woman informed me that her husband was such an aggressive anti-vaxxer that it had drawn the close to a happy 30 year marriage.” Indeed Abid says: “I have lost faith in people. I have seen a horrible side of people I used to love and trust. As such, I don’t know what it would take for me to open the door [to them] again.”

But what if you don’t want to burn bridges (at least not yet) and are trying to communicate with the vaccine sceptics in your life? Particularly for anxious and tentative people versus those who are actively opposed. Professor Susan Michie, director of the centre for behaviour change at University College London, reminds us that the former camp is much larger than the latter: “Most of those who have not been vaccinated can be thought of as ‘hesitant’ as opposed to a small (but vocal) minority who are ‘resistant’. For [the] hesitant it is very important to keep channels of communication open and try to avoid boxing people into corners.”

Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), agrees: “In my experience, the vast majority of people who have chosen not to have the vaccine have been taken in by much more mundane forms of misinformation—including the false claims that Covid vaccines have not been subject to full safety testing, or that they pose a risk to female fertility.”

Ahmed highlights the impact of being gradually drip-fed misinformation via social media. “Getting your news and medical information from Facebook is like getting water from a stream that flows past your house; at the end of the day, you don’t know what’s in there or who has been polluting it,” he says. "But it’s worth remembering that people who have fallen for the flood of anti-vax propaganda they’ve seen on social media are also themselves victims.”

Michie says it is best to start by understanding people’s concerns. “It is important to acknowledge rather than dismiss and to discuss in a sensitive and interactive way, bringing in scientific evidence where appropriate but ensuring that this is described in ways that is understood by the person you are talking to.” She also recommends sharing positive reasons for getting vaccinated that people might not be aware of. The World Health Organisation, Red Cross and Unicef have each published guides on how to begin conversations (here, here and here).

Of course what makes this such a divisive and polarising topic is that it goes beyond scientific reasoning and taps into emotional questions about what we believe to be a moral decision. Lawrence cites the success of anecdotal stories of devastating vaccine consequences shared rapidly on social media having much more swaying power than cold hard statistics (even if the veracity of the story is shaky at best). “Not only are you telling someone they are wrong, you’re telling them to adopt a different way of life...it is stubbornness at a certain point as well - how do you come down from the mountain and say I’ve changed my mind?”

Rollison says: “Keep it calm and tackle the subject not the person, as soon as you question their intelligence or attack them personally you’ve lost the argument. People that buy into conspiracies already feel threatened so it’s important to remind them that you are doing this from a place of love because you care about their welfare.”

After 18 months of a pandemic that has killed millions around the world and inhibited our lives, it can feel incomprehensible that someone might reject a vaccine that is a gateway to the next chapter. But in a sea of misinformation, people can find themselves battling with those closest to them over the most personal of subjects: our health. For Abid and Lawrence - whose mother did end up contracting Covid and was hospitalised, but made a recovery - it is difficult to see how to dissolve this gaping chasm that now exists.