Surges in measles cases map tightly to countries where populism is on the march

Scepticism about the use of vaccines for children has risen across Europe in line with votes for populists, according to a study, which proposes that public health officials should track populist parties in opinion polls as a proxy signal for vaccine hesitancy.

Big surges in the number of measles cases and deaths map to countries where populist parties have become prominent – in particular, Greece, Italy and France.

Measles cases at highest for 20 years in Europe, as anti-vaccine movement grows Read more

The paper, in the European Journal of Public Health, says there is an underlying link between anti-establishment politics and vaccine hesitancy.

“It seems likely that scientific populism is driven by similar feelings to political populism – ie profound distrust of elites and experts by disenfranchised and marginalised parts of the population,” writes the author, Jonathan Kennedy from Queen Mary University of London.

As there is a lack of monitoring surveys of attitudes toward vaccines, the researchers argue the performance of populist parties could instead be used to alert public health bodies to rising levels of scepticism.

“Support for populist parties could be used as a proxy for vaccine hesitancy, at least in the western European context, with an increase in support being a signal for public health actors to be vigilant,” the paper says.

A Guardian investigation in December showed growing concern about the impact of populism on public confidence in vaccines, revealing that measles cases in Europe were at a 20-year high, with 60,000 cases and 72 deaths. The suspicions and rhetoric of anti-vaccination groups have been adopted by some populist politicians, for instance in Italy where the parliament last year passed a law to end compulsory vaccines for children in state schools. Shortly afterwards, the law was repealed because of the “emergency” caused by soaring measles cases.

The study mapped findings from the Vaccine Confidence Project, carried out for the European commission, with votes for populist parties in 14 western European countries.

It found a strong correlation between votes for populist parties and doubts that vaccines work.

“The higher the level of populist votes in a country, the greater the proportion of the population that believe vaccines are not effective,” says the paper. A correlation was also found between voting for populists and believing that vaccination was not important. The UK and Denmark had a higher proportion of people voting for populist parties (Ukip, the BNP and the Danish People’s party) compared with those who had doubts about vaccines than other countries.

The study focused on the 2014 European parliament election results, but looked also at the results of the previous national parliamentary election in each country and found the link between voting for populist parties and vaccine hesitancy was even more clear.

“We talk about populism and what happens in politics,” said Kennedy, citing Brexit and the difficulties in Greece, “but when you look at what is behind the rise of populism, it is the broad trend of lack of trust in elites and experts. That impacts on academia and public health and issues like climate change and vaccine scepticism.”

The study groups together populist parties on the right and the left of politics for their anti-establishment message, which, when it comes to vaccines, appears to translate into an anti-science, anti-public health institutions and anti-pharma message.

In the US, President Donald Trump has backed the anti-vaxxers, supporting the discredited theory that the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine can cause autism, and inviting the author of the hypothesis, Andrew Wakefield, to his inaugural ball. But not all the distrust of the establishment is from the right, says Kennedy.

“Greece has the highest per capita level of measles in western Europe,” he said. “There is a long history of why Greeks don’t trust the state. It goes back to the Ottoman occupation.

“The trouble is we do need to have some basic trust in experts to survive as a human society,” he said. To prevent measles outbreaks, it is necessary to have 95% of children vaccinated. “We need the state to protect those who cannot be vaccinated because of compromised immune systems.

“The WHO talks about vaccines preventing 2 to 3 million deaths every year. It is very clear that they have a benefit to human society.”