In 2019, amid a rise in popularity for anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and psuedoscience, a petition was started for Plague Inc. to implement anti-vaccine advocates, or "anti-vaxxers", as a situation that would buff your disease. Ndemic Creations, while noting that anti-vaxxers do technically exist as a smaller part of the "Science Denial" scenario along with flat Earth theorists and climate change deniers, agreed to include the movement as a solo buff for the disease, but did not have an idea for how they would work in gameplay at the time. Anti-vaxxers have not yet been added to the game, but a second buff partially referencing anti-vaxxers, "Fake News", would be added.