HPV vaccine confidence and cases of mass psychogenic illness following immunization in Carmen de Bolivar, Colombia, 2018, Larson et al

HPV vaccine confidence and cases of mass psychogenic illness following immunization in Carmen de Bolivar, Colombia
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6363158/

We report the case of multiple adverse reactions following HPV vaccination in Colombian adolescents in Carmen de Bolivar. In August 2012, the country introduced a school-based HPV immunization programme which successfully reached over 90% of the target population in the first year. In 2014, between May 29th and June 2nd,15 adolescent girls in one school presented adverse reactions after vaccination and were admitted to the local hospital. Soon, videos of girls fainting, twitching, and arriving unconscious at emergency rooms started to appear in national news media as well as on social media platforms such as YouTube. The viral spread of these videos and disturbing images were followed by the viral spread of symptoms, with over 600 cases reported across Colombia. Thorough epidemiological investigation by Colombian health authorities found no organic association between the teenagers’ symptoms and the HPV vaccine, concluding this was a case of mass psychogenic reaction to vaccination. Scientific evidence did not appease the anxious public whose confidence in HPV immunization dropped dramatically. By 2016, HPV vaccine uptake among eligible girls declined to 14% for the first dose and 5% for the complete course, down from 98% and 88%, respectively, in 2012. We document this case and discuss the role of news and social media, particularly YouTube, as a driver of contagious psychogenic reactions. We also discuss the role of health authorities and government, and the importance of acting rapidly and appropriately to contain the spread of such symptoms and maintain public confidence in vaccines.

 

Stumbled into this fascinating look into psychosomatic medicine and how they define psychogenic illness. As usual, it is nothing more than being unable to fully determine in what is likely a series of factors, in many cases likely having nothing to do with the vaccine itself. Although in some cases it likely was a cause, the tools of medicine do not make it possible to determine, and so an epidemic of social media-fueled "mass psychogenic illness" was invented out of the logical fallacy of appeal to ignorance. As is tradition.

In truth this case is closer to psychosomatic medicine being the driver for what is essentially the unwanted cancellation of a successful mass vaccination campaign by being unable to process the reality of some adverse reactions. In most cases they may still be unrelated, entirely coincidental. And for sure the motivation of some people to ascribe them to vaccination was a major factor here, but that simply makes it a double case of false attribution error, two wrongs doing far more wrong in combination.

The paper clearly uses the simple definition of psychogenic illness as being unable to determine an "organic association". We know from chronic illness, far better now with Long Covid, that there are a significant number of quite disabling medical conditions for which medicine is simply incapable of determining the cause, their tools simply don't allow it, no different than old primitive telescopes making it impossible to see black holes, and deciding that they this cannot exist.

Most likely here there are simply a variety of causes and coincidences, and 600 cases out of so many people does not make for "mass" anymore than the absence of a full determination makes it psychogenic. But the old script applies nonetheless, past failure fueling more failure in the present and future.

Sadly, I saw it posted on Twitter as a fascinating example of mass psychogenic illness, when it is so much more interesting as a look into the mass delusion that is the very concept of mass psychogenic illness. In medicine as in any other natural phenomena, there are underlying explanations for everything, it's just not always possible to unravel them. Here the problem is the attribution, by people motivated with propaganda, by people not knowing any better and finding no answer to a real phenomenon, and by a medical profession too eager and quick to assert that they can never fail to know, and by extension their ignorance can only mean this old mythical narrative.

 

Wonder if it was a single batch ?