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The Moral Calm Before the Storm: How a Theory of Moral Calms Explains the Covid-Related Increase in Parents’ Refusal of Vaccines for Children

In this study, I ask why, despite historically high rates of participation in childhood vaccination campaigns, large numbers of US parents are now planning to refuse or delay getting Covid-19 vaccines for their children. Combining insights from the theory of moral panics with pre-pandemic research on parents who refuse vaccines, I argue that to understand the high levels of concern about Covid-19 vaccines for children, we need a theory of “moral calms.” Drawing on interviews with 80 mothers of young children whose vaccine decisions I have tracked since 2018, I find that early public health and media messaging created a “moral calm” around children and Covid-19. These messages led many mothers—particularly mothers who perceived their families as “naturally healthy”—to see their children as being at low risk of contracting, transmitting, and suffering serious consequences from Covid-19. As a result, many mothers came to see Covid-19 vaccines as unnecessary, even if they had previously vaccinated their children. Seeing vaccines as unnecessary then made mothers more susceptible to misinformation about Covid-19 vaccine risks and ultimately weakened their desire to vaccinate their children as soon as possible. I conclude that moral calms can, ironically, lay the groundwork for moral panics. By weakening people’s concerns about a larger threat, they facilitate efforts to raise concerns about other smaller or nonexistent threats. I discuss how the theory of moral calms may help to explain other moral panics, and I consider the implications of these findings for efforts to reduce or prevent vaccine refusal.