FEVER PITCH

IN JUNE, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, a prominent American anti-vaccination activist, posted a photo to Instagram of himself with the actor Jessica Biel. They were seated together at the California State Assembly, lobbying against a state bill that would limit exemptions from vaccinations. Within minutes, social media erupted with fury and vitriol. Jessica Biel the “anti-vaxxer” was trending on Twitter. “There is something so poignantly privileged about rich people lobbying against vaccines when people in third world countries line up for miles just for the chance to get inoculated,” wrote one user. “I wish the 1 per cent would stop spreading disease to the 99 per cent,” wrote another.

Biel later clarified that she’s “not against vaccinations”, but, rather, is advocating for families to have “the right to make educated medical decisions for their children alongside their physicians”. But it’s scenarios like that involving Biel — where an affluent person with a public voice or a celebrity with no medical qualifications throws themselves behind a health cause — that Professor Julie Leask at The University of Sydney, a behavioural scientist who works in public health and specialises in vaccination, says skews public perception of the anti-vaccination movement. Suddenly, anti-vaxxers are everywhere, which, to the