The blame for the spike in misinformation falsely claiming that vaccines cause autism is usually linked with the rise of social media, and the fact that junk vaccine science circulated there unchecked for years. Telling parents that children are being permanently disabled by routine vaccinations is certainly a sensational message, one seemingly made for the attention economy. But as with misinformation related to Covid, social media only intensified tendencies that were already present. In my conversations with autism parents who have gone the vaccine-blaming route, I am always struck by their sense that they have been cheated or wronged; that someone or something robbed them of what they were sure were their rightful, neurotypical kids and substituted them with ones who were different and defective; that their families had somehow been invaded.

XREF: Mirrors the book's broader argument about Covid misinformation — social media intensifying rather than originating false beliefs.

Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, loc. 643