If you are debating how to vote, here is a clue. I’ll comment on it but frequently pause to let you draw your own conclusions. As you read it, think about evolutionary effects — who lives, who dies, and at what ages.
How fringe anti-science views infiltrated mainstream politics
Amy Maxmen, KFF Health NewsRates of routine childhood vaccination hit a 10-year low in 2023. That, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, puts about 250,000 kindergartners at risk for measles, which often leads to hospitalization and can cause death.
In recent weeks, an infant and two young children have been hospitalized amid an ongoing measles outbreak in Philadelphia that spread to a day care center.
It’s a dangerous shift driven by a critical mass of people who now reject decades of science backing the safety and effectiveness of childhood vaccines. State by state, they’ve persuaded legislators and courts to more easily allow children to enter kindergarten without vaccines, citing religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs.
It’s more of a clash between religious/political beliefs vs. science. This comes with the timing. What has been the prime influencer in the past 10 years?
I suggest that the significant recent change has been the influence of Trumpism (Magaism, denialism, rejectionism, cultism) on the Republican party — the rejection of evidence and scientific fact in favor of the belief in the words of an idol.
Growing vaccine hesitancy is just a tiny part of a broader rejection of scientific expertise that could have consequences ranging from disease outbreaks to reduced funding for research that leads to new treatments.
“The term ‘infodemic’ implies random junk, but that’s wrong,” said Peter Hotez, a vaccine researcher at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas. “This is an organized political movement, and the health and science sectors don’t know what to do.”
The early stages of a religious movement contain a wide variety of myths and stories (aka “conspiracy theories”), often self-contradictory, which only later coalesce into more formalized beliefs.
Anyone who doubts the factual basis for gods, spirits, bibles, and non-scientific explanations has experienced the frustration of fruitless argument, where plain facts are denied in favor of mystical claims.
Changing views among Republicans have steered the relaxation of childhood vaccine requirements, according to the Pew Research Center.
Whereas nearly 80% of Republicans supported the rules in 2019, fewer than 60% do today. Democrats have held steady, with about 85% supporting.
Mississippi, which once boasted the nation’s highest childhood vaccination rates, began allowing religious exemptions last summer. Another leader in vaccination, West Virginia, is moving to do the same.
An anti-science movement picked up pace as Republican and Democratic perspectives on science diverged during the pandemic. Whereas 70% of Republicans said that science had a mostly positive impact on society in 2019, less than half felt that way in a November poll from Pew.
With presidential candidates lending airtime to anti-vaccine messages and members of Congress maligning scientists and pandemic-era public health policies, the partisan rift will likely widen in the run-up to November’s elections.
If less than half of a group feels that science has a mostly positive impact on society, what does the majority believe? 
“Science is the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation, experimentation, and testing theories against the evidence obtained.
What are we left with if we do not believe in observation, experimentation, and testing as a way to uncover the truth? Rumor, myth, conspiracy, and authoritarianism — the varied interpretations of the words of an invented god.
We become stone-age savages, dancing around a fire, fomenting hatred for non-believers (aka “blasphemists”).
Dorit Reiss, a vaccine policy researcher at the University of California Law San Francisco, parallels today’s backlash against public health and the early days of climate change denial.
The parallels are unmistakable: Climate change denial, vaccination denial, science denial, election denial — these paint a picture of people who feel oppressed by reality and having no solutions in the real world, wish to create their own mythical world ala the “Dark Ages” of human civilization.
Both issues progressed from nonpartisan, fringe movements to the mainstream once they appealed to conservatives and libertarians, who traditionally seek to limit government regulation.
“Even if people weren’t anti-vaccine to start with,” Reiss said, “they move that way when the argument fits.”
Even certain actors are the same. In the late ’90s and early 2000s, a libertarian think tank, the American Institute for Economic Research, undermined climate scientists with reports that questioned global warming.
The libertarians cling to the implicit claims that any amount of government is too much government and that individuals should be allowed to do as they wish — except when any individuals diverge from the cult’s beliefs.
Thus, ostracizing minorities — gays, blacks, scientists, scientific culture, government aid recipients, and others who might lean on society — is approved, while any organized culture (aka “government” and laws) is rejected.
The same institute issued a statement early in the pandemic, grandly called the “Great Barrington Declaration.” It argued against measures to curb the disease and advised everyone — except the most vulnerable — to go about their lives as usual, regardless of the risk of infection.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, warned that such an approach would overwhelm health systems and put millions more at risk of disability and death from COVID. “Allowing a dangerous virus that we don’t fully understand to run free is simply unethical,” he said.
Another group, the National Federation of Independent Business, has fought regulatory measures to curb climate change for over a decade. It moved on to vaccines in 2022 when it won a Supreme Court case that overturned a government effort to temporarily require employers to mandate that workers either be vaccinated against COVID or wear a face mask and test regularly.
Around 1,000 to 3,000 COVID deaths would have been averted in 2022 had the court upheld the rule, one study estimates.
Politically charged pushback may become better funded and more organized if public health becomes a political flashpoint in the lead-up to the presidential election.
In the first few days of 2024, Florida’s surgeon general, appointed by Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, called for a halt to the use of mRNA COVID vaccines as he echoed DeSantis’ incorrect statement that the shots have “not been proven to be safe and effective.”
Like the court magician of old, Joseph Lapado broadcasts the “emperor’s” false, politically motivated claims.
And vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is running for president as an independent, announced that his campaign communications would be led by Del Bigtree, the executive director of one of the most well-heeled anti-vaccine organizations in the nation and host of a conspiratorial talk show.
Bigtree posted a letter on the day of the announcement rife with misinformation, such as a baseless rumor that COVID-19 vaccines make people more prone to infection.
He and Kennedy frequently pair health misinformation with terms that appeal to anti-government ideologies like “medical freedom” and “religious freedom.”
A product of a Democratic dynasty, Kennedy’s appeal appears to be stronger among Republicans, a Politico analysis found.
DeSantis said he would consider nominating Kennedy to run the FDA, which approves drugs and vaccines, or the CDC, which advises on vaccines and other public health measures.
Employing a vaccination denier to run the FDA or the CDC would be like asking Donald Trump to provide marital advice or having a shaman run NASA,
Another Republican presidential candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, vowed to gut the CDC should he win.
Today’s anti-science movement found its footing in the months before the 2020 elections, as primarily Republican politicians rallied support from constituents who resented pandemic measures like masking and the closure of businesses, churches, and schools.
Then-President Donald Trump, for example, mocked Joe Biden for wearing a mask at the presidential debate in September 2020.
Democrats fueled the politicization of public health, too, by blaming Republican leaders for the country’s soaring death rates rather than decrying systemic issues that rendered the U.S. vulnerable, such as underfunded health departments and severe economic inequality that put some groups at far higher risk than others.
The problem lies with the often-misquoted Reaganesque comment that “government is the problem” and the people’s ignorance of Monetary Sovereignty.
Our Monetarily Sovereign federal government easily could fund health departments, while mitigating economic inequality, all without collecting a penny in taxes.
But conservatives incorrectly label such initiatives (Medicare and Social Security for All) as “socialism” and “unsustainable.”
Just before Election Day, a Democratic-led congressional subcommittee released a report that called the Trump administration’s pandemic response “among the worst failures of leadership in American history.”
Republicans launched a subcommittee investigation into the pandemic that sharply criticizes scientific institutions and scientists once seen as nonpartisan.
On Jan. 8 and 9, the group questioned Anthony Fauci, a leading infectious disease researcher who has advised both Republican and Democratic presidents.
Without evidence, committee member Marjorie Taylor Greene(R-Ga.) accused Fauci of supporting research that created the coronavirus to push vaccines: “He belongs in jail for that,” Greene, a vaccine skeptic, said. “This is more of an evil version of science.”
Visualize an crazed religious advisor to a king pointing fingers at innocent people, calling them infidels, witches, and heretics, and causing those people to be hated or killed by an ignorant populace. That is the Marjorie Taylor Greene of the GOP, today.
Taking a cue from environmental advocacy groups that have tried to fight strategic and monied efforts to block energy regulations, Hotez and other researchers say public health needs supporters knowledgeable in legal and political arenas.
Such groups might combat policies that limit public health power, advise lawmakers, and provide legal counsel to scientists who are harassed or called before Congress in politically charged hearings.
Other initiatives aim to present the scientific consensus clearly to avoid both-sidesism, in which the media presents opposing viewpoints as equal when, in fact, the majority of researchers and bulk of evidence point in one direction.
Oil and tobacco companies used this tactic effectively to seed doubt about the science linking their industries to harm.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, said the scientific community must improve communication. Expertise alone is insufficient when people mistrust the experts’ motives. Indeed, nearly 40% of Republicans report little to no confidence in scientists to act in the public’s best interest.
When the public’s best interest opposes the interests of the cult leader, his followers will not just ignore but violently reject facts. The January 6th attempted coup is an example of mob justice led by a “religious” (Trumpism) divinity.
In a study published last year, Jamieson and colleagues identified attributes the public values beyond expertise, including transparency about unknowns and self-correction.
Researchers might have better-managed expectations around COVID vaccines, for example, by emphasizing that the protection conferred by most vaccines is less than 100% and wanes over time, requiring additional shots, Jamieson said.
And when the initial COVID-19 vaccine trials demonstrated that the shots drastically curbed hospitalization and death but revealed little about infections, public health officials might have been more open about their uncertainty.
As a result, many people felt betrayed when COVID-19 vaccines only moderately reduced the risk of infection.
“We were promised that the vaccine would stop transmission, only to find out that wasn’t completely true, and America noticed,” said Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), chair of the Republican-led coronavirus subcommittee, at a July hearing.
No one made such a promise. It is a strawman claim.
Every scientist knows that no medicine is perfect. To attribute vaccination denialism to the fact that the vaccines were not perfect is in itself a form of denialism.
The record of vaccines in preventing death is a remarkable scientific achievement. The human lifespan would be much shorter were it not for vaccinations against Smallpox, RSV, Hepatitis, Rotavirus, Diphtheria, Influenza, Polio, Pneumonia, Measles, Mumps, Tetanus, Meningitis, Chickenpox, and yes, COVID.
And not one of those vaccinations is 100% perfect.
So why has COVID been singled out for not being perfect? Politics. Despite falsely claiming credit for the development of the COVID vaccination, the Republican shaman disclaimed the seriousness of the disease.
Not being vaccinated was a symbol of subservience to the cult leader.
Jamieson also advises repetition. It’s a technique expertly deployed by those who promote misinformation, which perhaps explains why the number of people who believe the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin treats COVID more than doubled over the past two years — despite persistent evidence to the contrary.
Repetition wasn’t the problem. Ivermectin was touted by the cult leader. That is where belief originated and maintained.
In November, the drug got another shoutout at a hearing where congressional Republicans alleged that the Biden administration and science agencies had censored public health information.
Hotez, author of a new book on the rise of the anti-science movement, fears the worst.
“Mistrust in science is going to accelerate,” he said. And traditional efforts to combat misinformation, such as debunking, may prove ineffective.
“It’s very problematic,” Jamieson said, “when the sources we turn to for corrective knowledge have been discredited.”
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(KFF Health News, formerly known as Kaiser Health News (KHN), is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs of KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.)
Darwinian evolution relies on those less fit being eliminated from the human gene pool, which, on balance, improves genetic survivability.
Those predisposed to deny medical science will die younger and breed fewer surviving children, which, over time, will improve humanity’s intelligence.
The political party that claims to be “pro-life” ignores the scientifically proven, life-saving effect of vaccination, and instead promulgates the Libertarian, MAGA magic anti-life Trumpism of Dark Ages pseudo-science.
Humans, being a social species, are interdependent. As always, the denial of facts in favor of belief and the studied ignorance of influential leaders again forces us all to suffer, just as we did in the 6th – 16th centuries.
We no longer bleed the anemic according to the zodiac, but even that may not be beyond today’s deniers.
This year, Americans will vote. Will we vote for informed, secular, fact-driven, logic, or for doctrine-driven adherents to the latest cultish faith?
The Dark Ages lasted a thousand years. Will we have learned from that experience?
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Twitter: @rodgermitchell
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THE SOLE PURPOSE OF GOVERNMENT IS TO IMPROVE AND PROTECT THE LIVES OF THE PEOPLE.
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