After growing up with a mother who staunchly opposes vaccinations, Ethan Lindenberger, a senior at Norwalk High School in Norwalk, Ohio, got himself vaccinated in 2018.
“As I approached high school and began to critically think for myself, I saw that information in defense of vaccines outweigh the concerns heavily,” Lindenberger said to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions during a hearing on the vaccination debate Tuesday. “And I realized one certain quality of debates: There seem to always be two sides to a discussion. But that is not true for the vaccine debate.”
Lindenberger’s mother has dismissed vaccines since Lindenberger was an infant. As he got older, he repeatedly showed his mother Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data and studies by the Pew Research Center in the hopes that the evidence would speak louder than the information his mother received online about vaccines.
“In one such instance when I approached my mother with information from the CDC that claimed vaccines won’t cause autism, she responded with, ‘that’s what they want you to think’. Skepticism and worry were taking the forefront,” Lindenberger said.
Lindenberger’s mother, like many concerned parents, turned to social media platforms frequently for information about immunizations.
“For certain individuals and organizations that spread this information, they instill fear into the public for their own gains selfishly and do so knowing that their information is incorrect,” Lindenberger continued.
In December 2018, Lindenberger took it upon himself to get vaccinated. He recognized that he was putting fellow students at risk, especially those who are already immunosuppressed, by not being vaccinated.
“My decision to get vaccinated was based on the health and safety of other people,” Lindenberger said. “I saw the threat that was being imposed on others.”
In Tuesday’s hearing, witnesses testified that vaccine proponents need to reach parents on a human level, not solely with statistics. Lindenberger insisted that, to convey facts about vaccine, the statistics need to reflect real lives.
“People do not resonate with information and data numbers. They resonate better with stories,” Lindenberger said. “With a lot of the anti-vaccination community, a large portion of the foundation that they build to communicate with parents is on a very anecdotal level, sharing stories and experiences. When we convince parents not that information is incorrect but that their children are at risk, that’s a much more substantial way to cause people to change their minds.”
[Also read: Facebook considers burying anti-vaccine posts after pressure from Congress]
