How to Deal With an Anti-Vaxxer at Thanksgiving Dinner

I was recently on a national radio call-in show as a special guest to share strategies for coping with the anxiety that many people are experiencing as the pandemic carries on. I never got to focus on that issue as caller after caller talked instead about the way vaccines were ripping their families apart. One woman in her 70s was sobbing as she told us that she hadn’t seen her grandchildren in months because her son was refusing to vaccinate and insisting the vaccines were too risky for him and his adolescent children. The caller, despite being double-vaccinated herself, knew there was a risk to her health if her son and grandchildren visited, which meant that she was being cut off from both despite the vaccines being readily available. It was heartbreaking to hear.

There were other callers, too, that spoke about marriages that had broken up and relationships in the workplace becoming tense.

Since then, I’ve seen my own world become fraught with tension as one never quite knows whom to share your vaccination status with. When an evangelical pastor in my community held prayer meetings and defied public health orders to verify the vaccination status of those attending, three people, at least two with intellectual disabilities, died as a consequence of the community spread that followed. Talking with neighbors and even colleagues, though, is like walking through a landmine. You just don’t know who is going to explode in a tirade about "personal rights."

Sadly, this all reminds me of work I have been doing with colleagues like Michele Grossman at Deakin University in Australia, and others. We’ve been trying to understand the factors that build resilience to violent extremism. How do we prevent people from holding potentially dangerous views based on propaganda and religious zealotry that imperil the lives of others? How different is the anti-vaxxer from other “extremists”? Both are being fueled by misinformation and ideological manipulation by those who benefit from their sacrifice. I have to admit it baffles me that a church minister would refer to the deaths of his parishioners as "unfortunate" and "God’s plan" when the result is a smaller congregation and collective fear. But, then, recruiters for extremists tend to exalt sacrifice (as long as it is not their own) and chaos as a way to stimulate interest in their cause.

Look Who’s Coming to Dinner

All of this leaves me with the thorny issue of how we talk to a relative who comes to Thanksgiving dinner unvaccinated and then proudly tells others that they are the only smart one in the room.

Here’s what I know won’t work. A detailed discussion of the science, or examining the statistics that show that it is now largely the unvaccinated who are being hospitalized and dying from COVID-19. Such arguments will be swatted aside by the intentionally unvaccinated as they assert that others in their family are simply not getting their information from the right places, or they will focus all their attention on the one in a million who suffer complications or die vaccinated (rather than the more than 900,000 in the United States alone, or approximately 1 in 150 people, who have died after contracting the virus, almost all of whom were unvaccinated).

Push and Pull Strategies to Change Hardliner Points of View

We do better when we use either push or pull strategies that bring out the best in people. If one strategy doesn’t work, try the other. First, the "pull" approach to dealing with hardliners at the dinner table:

1. Maintain your relationship with the person refusing vaccination. Do whatever you can to show them they matter, and you want them in your life.
2. Empathize. Acknowledge that this has been a terrible time and that all of us are feeling stressed and anxious about how to deal with a life-threatening illness. Empathize with the emotions we can all agree on: frustration, loneliness, exhaustion, and feeling threatened by those who keep telling us what we have to do.
3. Ask the person about who else they are worried about, and what they hope to achieve by not vaccinating. Most people will say they are hoping to preserve their own life or expose an underlying social injustice or mistruth. At this point, listen, but you can also explain how hard it is to have them in your life because of the risk they pose to you or someone you love who is vulnerable to the virus and doesn’t want to be hospitalized. In other words, build on the person’s interest in saving others. If they are religious, one could invite them into a conversation about the wonder of being given the means to control a plague rather than die from it. If they would prefer to discuss science, some gentle sharing of more reputable websites like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention could at least offer another perspective of the truth.

All of this assumes the person has come to dinner, and that everyone at the table has agreed to take the risk of having their family member there despite their vaccination status. If the danger is too great, however, then a "push" strategy may be necessary before the unvaccinated family members enter the door. Push strategies involve separation or consequences. They create an uncomfortable situation for the hardliner who then has the option of choosing to act in a more socially desirable way that doesn’t harm everyone else. While it sounds heavy-handed, we would still be smoking indoors in public spaces and our children would still be routinely contracting polio if someone hadn’t stood up and said the individual’s right to free will must be balanced by our collective right to safety when conditions are very dangerous. War, natural disasters, and pandemics are such times.

When pushing a relative to get vaccinated, try these steps:

1. Emphasize that you want a relationship, but the timing is bad. You can’t take the risk of having them at the Thanksgiving dinner table if they are a potential threat to the health of others in the family. Offer an alternative, like having them join virtually, or sending them a "care package" of leftovers so they understand they are still being thought of as a member of the family.
2. Listen to their reasons for not vaccinating. They may have a good excuse, though it is really a medical professional who decides if there should be an exemption, not family members with the power to vote them on or off the dinner invite list. Without a well-considered medical assessment, hold to your decision to exclude the unvaccinated person from the gathering. It is harsh "tough love," but it reminds people that to be part of a family they have both rights and responsibilities.
3. Offer to help your unvaccinated relative get the vaccine. Get them the information they need. Pay for their taxi or gas to get there.
4. Plan an event that reintegrates the person after they have been vaccinated. Don’t linger on or even mention their change in status. Let your relationship return to how it was before.
5. Avoid the contentious issue of vaccination. It will only trigger bad feelings and make the person who was pushed to vaccinate feel embarrassed and lose face.

There is no easy way to persuade people who have adopted beliefs that harm themselves and others. But we can protect ourselves while still doing our best to maintain the social networks that we all rely on for our physical and mental well-being.