The news reported a family speaking out against vaccination just after the death of an unvaccinated child. (The report said the entire family became infected with measles and one child died.) They were still espousing the opinion that the measles vaccine was in some way evil. Some of the rest of us struggled to imagine what they thought was more evil than the unnecessary death of a child.
My first reaction was surprise and distress to find this opinion was being maintained by the parents.
My second reaction was sadness and disappointment that a political group was using the family's sorrow as a tool for propaganda.
The third reaction was different. To find people overcome by grief holding onto the beliefs they previously held is not a surprise -- or should not be. The immediate aftermath of a traumatic experience is not the right time to attempt a rational reasessment of opinions. A family coming out of an illness affecting every family member should not be expected to undertake a dispassionate review of health practices and expectations and probably could not accomplish that task during such a time.
In actual reality there may be no rational play available when the game turns in this way.
Fourthly I thought about parents of young men in the Vietnam War era. Many parents sent their sons off to war believing in the myth of patriotism and of protecting the freedom and successful lives of their families and communities back home. (That was a myth in both senses: It was a story used to explain the actions of the nation and its citizens, to make sense out of sending 18 year old boys into danger far away. It was also a myth in the untechnical sense of being factually false.)
Far too many of those sons died in the warfare and additional boys were damaged physically or psychologically. When a body was shipped back home, many parents clung to the myth they had believed in. It might have been the only comfort they knew; likely it was the only story which addressed their willingness to send their son to die.
I do not know how many of these parents later changed their minds. The news stories usually only continued for a few weeks at the most. Some people, not all of them in the affected families, have held onto that and similar myths for 50 or 75 years or more.
The best plays in the actual reality game are the ones which prevent all the wars in which soldiers are sent to kill and die. A second best play will at the least avoid death and mayhem with no truthful excuse or justification. But often the game moves forward as a result of plays already made and we are left to extricate each other as well as we can.