She Resisted Getting Her Kids The Usual Vaccines. Then The Pandemic Hit.

That's how Lydia, a 39-year-old mother of three in Canada, describes feeling when she was pregnant back in 2008 with her daughter and had questions about vaccinating. She worried it might cause more harm than good.

"I remember feeling some trepidation and saying to my husband, 'We can't undo this once we do it,' " she says. NPR is not using Lydia's full name because she's worried about backlash from a community she once believed in — people opposed to vaccines.

The record-speed development of the COVID-19 vaccine has some asking questions about it as well as about the safety of all vaccines. It's something that's taken root and grown because there's a natural incubator inside the broader movement opposed to vaccines.

"We have been seeing an increase in vaccine-hesitant conversations online," says Kolina Koltai, a misinformation researcher at the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public. "Vaccine-opposed communities online saw a growth in membership and it has become easier to be exposed to vaccine-opposed content."