The Republican AntiVaxxer Coalition

More Shock Troops for Dear Leader

There’s one issue many Democrats haven’t taken on in the run up to the 2024 elections. I’m not sure I blame them, though somebody needs to say something.

Anti-vaxxers have made the subject of all preventative inoculations so toxic that 50% of the public is now concerned about dog vaccines.

Starting with the woo-woo conspiracy set willing to accept the 1950s Bircher myths about a United Nations takeover, the anti-vaxx movement has assimilated crunchy granola types, and become associated with the ‘parents rights’ agenda, you know, the folks bringing Proud Boys and anti-LGBTQ hate to school board meetings. 

Anti vaccine groups are now considered a modern political force, including a supposedly Democratic political candidate, a major political party willing to embrace a web of untruths, and a phalanx of well-funded non-profits.

Right wing COVID denialism was just another step along the road to the GOP inclusion of anti-science, anti-education movements. 

Conservative pundits and politicians need to sell the base on a party platform of letting polluters pollute, letting drillers drill, and telling everyone else that whatever horrors they or their loved ones had to face as a result were simply the price of patriotism. It makes no difference to them that their constituencies are dying at a higher rate from COVID than the general population.

There’s money to be made spreading disinformation and skepticism these days, and it should surprise nobody that the climate change denialist Koch family is also handing out money to anti-vaxxers.

Now if these pundits/politicians believed in education, they’d do a little research on past pandemic conspiracy schemes and get a sense of how generally rancid they were.

• “The plague was caused by Jews poisoning wells”

• “Cholera isn't real; doctors just want your body parts”

• “German subs caused the Spanish flu”

• “Aids is a western plot to boost profits”

Public confusion over COVID, fed by a steady stream of incoherent pronouncements from the Trump administration and disinformation campaigns from nations unfriendly with the US, has spawned skepticism and outright opposition to vaccines mandated in many states as a requirement for attending grades K-12. 

To be clear, this approach to preventative health care is not accepted by anything close to a majority of people in the US. But (Via Politico/Morning Consult polling done this month)…

• Only 26% of Republicans say the public should be encouraged to get COVID vaccines, as opposed to 64% of Democrats.

• Opposition to government recommended vaccines for school children, while still a minority opinion (21% of registered voters with children under 18), is growing. Overall support for  mandating measles, mumps and rubella vaccines for children dropped from 82% in 2016 to 70% in 2023, with self-identified Republicans sliding from 79% to 57%.

 Regarding the 2024 elections…

• The increased doubts about vaccines among Republican voters come as party leaders flirt with unproven or discredited claims about the shots’ safety. From former President Donald Trump’s unfounded suggestions during the 2016 campaign that childhood vaccines could cause autism, to Ron DeSantis’ administration this month discouraging Floridians under the age of 65 from getting a Covid booster, political leaders in the GOP have tried to tap into the anti-vaccine elements of the party. 

The Biden administration’s response to disinformation about COVID and other vaccines has been hamstrung by a Republican lawsuit over the administration’s initial attempt to clamp down on anti-vaxxers.

The issue is whether the White House violated the First Amendment in encouraging social media companies to crack down on anti-vaccine posts. So far, the anti-vaxxers have successfully used judicial rulings limiting government ability to police disinformation online. 

Via Politico:

• The administration also found itself mired for months in a standoff with congressional Republicans over more Covid funding. During that time, it pared back its ambitions and messaging, maintaining during the most recent vaccination campaign last fall that its role was primarily to ensure the vaccine was available for those who wanted it. Just 20 percent of adults got last year’s shot, according to CDC data through May 11, down sharply from the 79 percent of adults who received their initial series of vaccinations in 2021.

• The White House has since dropped its push for more Covid money in the face of solidified Republican opposition, instead agreeing earlier this year to let Congress claw back more than $27 billion of unspent funds in exchange for salvaging $5 billion earmarked for next-generation vaccines.

• “It’s become now a politically motivated movement,” said Peter Hotez, a virologist at the Baylor College of Medicine who has written extensively about the anti-vaccine movement, arguing that vaccine skepticism has become more embedded in conservatives’ worldview than ever before. “But I can’t get any engagement out of anybody.”

Two years of pandemic-defined reality have left Americans fatigued about discussions of the subject. The first thought of a lot of folks when they hear about a new virus variant or rising hospitalizations is now more like “not again?”

At this point, facts don’t matter as a countering force to the fear at the forefront of the anti-vaxx movement. They’re successfully making enough noise to prevent rational discussion anyways. If Peter Hotez, the virologist referred to above, makes a statement reported on social media, armies of trolls use him as a basis for disinformation, defamation, and threats.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk is okay with posts on Xitter claiming that people are dying after receiving the COVID vaccine. The technique of flooding the zone with dis/misinformation works to some degree, promoting cynicism and nihilism in people who otherwise might be productive members of society. 

Tactically speaking, there is little difference between the anti-vaxx forces and those promoting ginned up wars on woke in schools. Knowing they’d eventually lose a rational discussion, they’ve both mastered threatening rhetoric and shouting down defenders of truth and justice. And I’m certain that a minimal amount of digging would show significant overlap between those groups.

Being an obnoxious jerk and/or claiming to be a victim has become a pathway to candidacy for some who got their start as anti-vaxxers. Locally, supervisor candidate Amy Reichert is a prime example. Already elected officials, like congress member Marjorie Taylor-Greene have anti-science sentiments in their everyday tool kits for garnering media attention.

I’m not sure about how one can still be part of such a movement given that 18 million Americans have discovered that long COVID can keep making people sick for an extended period of time or the 1.2 million plus in the US have died from the virus.

Then again, worldwide we’re experiencing multiple weather events consistent with what scientists have told us to expect from climate change, and denialism is doctrine for most of those titans at the heart of our economy.

We’re NOT all gonna die. At least not soon. But we’d all have better lives if science denialism wasn’t an ascending force in politics.

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Tuesday’s Transportation Links

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UAW Workers in California Stand Up as Strike Expands Via The American Prospect

• Trucks come to this Mopar site to engage in “cross-docking,” where they exchange parts that then go out to dealerships. Unionized Teamster drivers have refused to cross the picket lines; some have even joined UAW workers as they strike. So the trucking companies have been hiring non-union replacements to try to get parts moving. “We call them scabs,” said Mike Lacey, the strike captain on this past Sunday morning.

• On two occasions during the first two days of the strike at this site, one of 38 parts facilities where workers walked out last Friday in an escalation of the UAW’s Stand Up Strike, a scene like this one became more dangerous when the truck driver pulled a gun on the strikers. In the incident that occurred when I was there, the UAW members seemed rather unfazed by this, holding their ground. After a short standoff, the truck reversed and pulled up the road toward another entrance. The workers told me they had locked that entrance with a new lock. But just to be sure, a few members piled into a van and took off toward that entrance.

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Trump to Oppose Striking Auto Workers at Non-Union Plant Via Meidas Touch

• While Joe Biden arrives in Michigan this week as the first US president to join a picket line of striking union workers in over 100 years, Trump will appear at a non-union auto parts plant to complain about electric vehicles.

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US Bike Trips Have Soared Since 2019 Via Bloomberg (Yay! San Diego!)

• A new report from StreetLight Data reveals significant gains in cycling across the US since the start of the pandemic.

• Out of the 100 largest US metropolitan statistical areas, New York City led the pack with 97% growth in bike trips from 2019 to 2022, reflecting a lasting shift towards cycling by commuters who previously relied on subways. San Diego, where bicycle sales soared during Covid and officials installed a raft of new bike lanes in turn, came in second with 71% growth. Bakersfield, California, and Las Vegas had the third and fourth highest growth, respectively, while in Virginia, Richmond and Virginia Beach came in fifth and sixth place. Los Angeles and Chicago, the two largest US cities behind New York, also saw upwards of 50% growth.

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Lead Graphic: Jeff Gates & the Chamo - Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

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