The vaccine-autism myth endures because it offers parents external blame and control.

Evidence

The persistent appeal of the vaccine-autism myth, no matter how many times and in how many ways it has been debunked, is that it gives parents who see difference as tragedy something external to blame. It’s not the genetic lottery. It’s not parental age. It’s the jab, they tell themselves, egos safely protected. Similarly, for new parents who are following willowy momfluencers to help them figure out how to perfect and optimize a new and daunting chapter in their lives, not getting their kids vaccinated is a way to feel in control of something that is, in fact, not in any of our control. Much like the promise of wellness itself. — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 659

Categorization

• XREF: Directly states the diagonalist convergence at its roots: the momfluencer/wellness promise, the control illusion, and the anti-vax myth all share one psychological mechanism — which is the book’s central thesis. Ties back to Klein’s earlier chapters on wellness culture and the perfectibility race.
• SEED: An essay angle: why ‘it gives you someone to blame’ is the structural appeal shared by wellness, conspiracy, and the vaccine-autism myth — blame as emotional supply, control as the commodity being sold.