Why are some people anti-vaxxers?

We live in a free, democratic state where people are entitled to have personal opinions. At the present time, when the world is invaded by a dangerous virus, there are people who refuse to avail of a medicine - a vaccine - which medical science tells us will help to control, or mitigate, the worst excesses of that virus and the vast majority of us enthusiastically and thankfully avail of that protection.
So why do some people, whom we describe as anti-vaxxers, refuse to be coaxed or even persuaded or coerced into doing likewise? Looking back on the comparatively recent history of this form of preventative medication, one cannot fail to be impressed by its obvious success. Yet it is apparent that a minority is not impressed by this recent history and they are perfectly entitled to persist in this opinion. Though they - the anti vaxxers - have a democratic right to that persistence, do the rest of us not have a corresponding right to ask: why they refuse?
I can still see on my very elderly upper left arm three little white marks, evidence that I was taken as an infant to Clonmel Dispensary in Queen Street, and given the then mandatory vaccination against Smallpox. This vaccination is no longer necessary because Smallpox, a lethal disfiguring disease, no longer threatens the lives of small children in the western world.
The Dispensary, to which I was taken, was situated at the street frontage of the Fever Hospital, now the location of this newspaper’s offices. This hospital was built by the Quaker community in Clonmel, at the turn of the 18th/19th century, at a time when Cholera was rampant in the town and long before the State had any involvement in public health. That community had identified the infectious nature of many of the diseases then affecting humankind, and realised the necessity for isolation. The hospital was later taken over by the State and functioned until the 1960s.
I recall my next experience of vaccination, during a time in the 1930s when many young people died from Diphtheria. The school nurse, Miss Richardson, came to our classroom and told us to go to a clinic, then situated in Dowd’s Lane in the yard of the Town Hall, where Dr Murphy administered the vaccination. Diphtheria is no longer killing young people in our western world.

Marking a special birthday - December 6, 1921

DEATH OF A YOUNG FRIEND
I also recall that some time in that long-ago childhood accompanying my mother when we visited a young neighbouring playmate, then a patient in what was known as the Consumptive (TB) Ward in St Joseph’s Hospital (now Tipperary University Hospital) in Clonmel. We first had to negotiate our entrance via Mr Moore who controlled the locked entrance gates to the hospital on the Western Road, and having climbed the hill found our way to a large ward filled with very pale, very ill people, laying prone in their beds wracked by acute bouts of coughing. Our young friend, who obviously had difficulty in breathing, gave us a wan smile. She died some days later. The ward was presided over by a very tall imposing nursing Sister, who wore an all-enveloping starched white uniform. It was a scary place.
Consumption (TB), as it was then called, was a very common disease, which frequently resulted in the deaths of entire families. While it is still extant it no longer poses the certain death-threat it once did, and its incidence is very rare. Medical science has learned how to control, and more importantly, how to prevent it.
I remember taking my own children, as infants, to the doctor for their “3-in-1” (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) vaccine, and thereafter they availed of every medical procedure as they passed through school. Thank God, and thanks to scientific and medical procedures and vaccines, they came into adulthood and into parenthood without being assailed by the deadly epidemics and pandemics which had been a feature of past generations.
Yes, science and medicine, as functions performed by human beings, have made some mistakes, but they have contributed enormously to improving the quality and extension of life, especially in the area of identification and prevention of killer diseases. Their contribution in recent decades has been extraordinary.

PERSONAL INTEGRITY
It has to be accepted that this contribution is an acknowledged fact, just as it has to be accepted that people are absolutely entitled to their personal integrity, including the right not to be coerced into taking a medicine or a vaccine. Nevertheless, it would be interesting to know why, at a time of great threat to health, there is such an objection to availing of a procedure that brings some amelioration. Why are people marching, rioting and burning cars to indicate their objections and disapproval - especially in other erstwhile peaceful, sensible European countries?
Why are the anti-vaxxers so anti-social in their anti-vaxxing?