Why Republican Anti-Vaxx Politics Will Undermine Public Health For Decades
Trump's legacy, aside from the fascism and white nationalism, will be a slew of childhood diseases running rampant in the United States again.
by Justin Rosario
My son was diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum a little over eleven years ago. In the months that followed, my wife and I, as millions of parents before us have, embarked on a crash course of “what the fuck is autism?” Part of that crash course, naturally, is “why the fuck is autism?”; a question we quickly learned had no definitive answer.
We discovered, during our accelerated education, that a lot of people blame vaccines. But it took all of an extra ten minutes to find how that lie got started, who was profiting from it, and how extensively it had been debunked. At the time, the anti-vaxx movement was apolitical and was, in fact, mostly associated with rich white liberal nitwits and, to a much lesser degree, Orthodox Jews. But this was at the height of the Tea Party and a blaring alarm started to go off in my head: what if Republicans start to use the anti-vaxx movement for political purposes? The pain and suffering they would unleash would be inconceivable.
A decade later, here we are. One of my worst fears is unfolding in real time. Republican anti-vaxx politics will undermine public health for decades. Children will pay the heaviest price as the “pro-life” GOP plays games with our lives.
It Wasn’t Like This Just A Few Years Ago
Anti-vaxx idiocy was not at all a Republican thing. Back in 2015, there was a series of Measles outbreaks and while some on the right pounded their chest about “personal freedom”, a lot more of the right were hostile to this. Both Megyn Kelly and Bill O’Reilly, two of Fox News’ top talking heads at the time, came out forcefully in favor of vaccines. Not just vaccines, but vaccine mandates.
Salon reported that Kelly discussed having her three kids vaccinated before going on to say this:
"This is going to be a big issue for politicians going forward, because it's about Big Brother," continued Kelly. "But on the other hand, some things do require some involvement of Big Brother."
Even Dana Loesch, yes that Dana Loesch, once tore prominent anti-vaxxer Jenny McCarthy to pieces on live TV. This may seem surprising now but it’s not all that complicated to understand why this was the prevalent attitude at the time. A significant chunk of the GOP’s base (and Fox News’ audience) are Baby Boomers. They grew up in the 1940 and 50s, at the height of the last waves of Polio before it was eradicated in America by the vaccine.
Every summer, there would be an outbreak somewhere in the country and hundreds or thousands of children would get sick. The worst wave, in 1949, saw over 42,000 infected…