How anti-science views infiltrated mainstream politics

How anti-science views infiltrated mainstream politics

David Crane | Media News Group

People protest against the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) vaccine mandate in front of Los Angeles Unified School District offices on May 10, 2022.

Routine childhood immunization rates will reach their lowest level in 10 years in 2023. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, this puts about 250,000 kindergartners at risk for measles, which can often lead to hospitalization and death. Philadelphia continues to have a measles outbreak that has spread to day care centers and hospitalized an infant and two young children in recent weeks.

This is a dangerous shift driven by a critical mass of people who reject decades of science supporting the safety and effectiveness of childhood vaccines. State by state, they have persuaded lawmakers and courts to more easily allow children to enter kindergarten without vaccines because of their religious, spiritual or philosophical beliefs.

Rising vaccine hesitancy is just one part of a broader rejection of scientific expertise that could have impacts ranging from disease outbreaks to reduced funding for research that leads to new treatments. there is. “The word ‘infodemic’ means random junk, and that’s incorrect,” said Peter Hotez, a vaccine researcher at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas. “This is an organized political movement, and the medical and scientific fields don’t know what to do.”

According to the Pew Research Center, changing views within the Republican Party have led to a shift toward easing childhood vaccination requirements. Nearly 80% of Republicans supported the rule in 2019, but fewer than 60% currently support it. The Democratic Party is solid with around 85% support. Mississippi, which once had the nation’s highest childhood vaccination rate, began allowing religious exemptions last summer. West Virginia, another leader in vaccinations, is moving forward with similar efforts.

Anti-science movements have accelerated during the pandemic as Republicans and Democrats have differing views on science. Seventy percent of Republicans said science had a mostly positive impact on society in 2019, but fewer than half felt that way in a November Pew poll. Partisan rifts could widen further ahead of November’s election, as presidential candidates devote airtime to anti-vaccine messages and members of Congress denigrate scientists and pandemic-era public health policies. Highly sexual.

Dorit Rees, a vaccine policy researcher at the University of California, San Francisco School of Law, draws parallels between today’s public health backlash and early climate change denial. Both issues evolved from nonpartisan fringe movements into the mainstream by appealing to conservatives and libertarians who traditionally seek to limit government regulation. “Even if people weren’t anti-vaccine to begin with, they will act that way if the argument is appropriate,” Reese said.

The same goes for certain actors. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the American Institute for Economic Research, a libertarian think tank, undermined climate scientists by publishing reports that questioned global warming. The institute issued a statement widely known as the “Great Barrington Declaration” early in the pandemic. The party opposed measures to curb the spread and advised all but the most vulnerable to continue life as normal regardless of the risk of infection.

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that such an approach would overwhelm health systems and put millions more people at risk of disability or death from the coronavirus. “It is completely unethical to allow a dangerous virus that we don’t fully understand to go unchecked,” he said.

Another group, the National Federation of Independent Business, has been fighting regulatory action to curb climate change for more than a decade. The company won a Supreme Court case in 2022, overturning government efforts to temporarily require employers to require workers to be vaccinated against the coronavirus or wear face masks and undergo regular testing. Development has begun. According to one study, about 1,000 to 3,000 coronavirus deaths would have been avoided in 2022 if the courts had upheld the rule.

If public health becomes a political flashpoint in the run-up to the presidential election, political backlash could be funded and better organized. In the first days of 2024, Florida’s Surgeon General, appointed by Republican presidential candidate and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, said the use of mRNA coronavirus vaccines “has not been proven to be effective.” They echoed DeSantis’ false statements and called for the suspension of use. Be safe and effective. ”

And Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic and independent candidate for president, has announced that Del Bigtree, the executive director of the nation’s wealthiest anti-vaccination organization, will lead his campaign’s communications. Announced. A conspiratorial talk show host. On the day of the announcement, Big Tree posted a letter spreading misinformation, including unsubstantiated rumors that coronavirus vaccines will make people more susceptible to infection. He and Kennedy frequently combine health misinformation with terms that appeal to anti-government ideology, such as “medical freedom” and “religious freedom.”

Mr. Kennedy, a product of a Democratic dynasty, appears to have more appeal among Republicans, according to a Politico analysis. DeSantis said he would consider nominating Kennedy to head the FDA, which approves drugs and vaccines, or the CDC, which advises on vaccines and other public health measures. Another Republican presidential candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, has vowed to gut the CDC if he wins.

Today’s anti-science movement gained its foothold in the months before the 2020 election, largely as Republican politicians drew support from voters who objected to pandemic measures such as wearing masks and closing businesses, churches, and schools. Ta. For example, then-President Donald Trump mocked Joe Biden for wearing a mask during the September 2020 presidential debate. Democrats also fueled the politicization of public health by blaming Republican leaders for the nation’s soaring death rates rather than blaming systemic problems. The result has been vulnerabilities in the United States, including underfunded health departments and deep economic disparities that put some groups at much higher risk than others.

Just before Election Day, a Democratic-led Congressional subcommittee released a report calling the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic “one of the worst leadership failures in American history.”

Republicans launched a subcommittee investigation into the pandemic and harshly criticized scientific institutions and scientists once considered nonpartisan. On January 8 and 9, the group questioned Anthony Fauci, a leading infectious disease researcher who has advised Republican and Democratic presidents. Committee member Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) accused Fauci, without evidence, of supporting research that created the coronavirus to promote vaccines, saying, “For that reason… He should be in jail,” said Green, a vaccine skeptic. “This is like a more sinister version of science.”

Taking cues from environmental advocacy groups seeking to combat strategic and financially motivated efforts to block energy regulation, Hotez and other researchers say public health has a background in law and politics. He says that he needs supporters who can support him. These groups fight against policies that limit the power of public health, advise lawmakers, and provide legal counsel to scientists who are harassed or summoned to Congress for politically charged hearings. there’s a possibility that. Other efforts are aimed at avoiding double-sidedism, where the media presents opposing views as if they are equivalent, when in fact the majority of researchers and much evidence points in one direction. The aim is to clearly present the scientific consensus.

Oil and tobacco companies have effectively used this tactic to sow doubts that science links their industries to harm.

Kathleen Hall Jamison, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, said the scientific community needs to improve communication. Expertise alone is not enough when people distrust the motives of experts. In fact, nearly 40% of Republicans report that they have little or no trust in scientists to act in the public’s best interest.

In a study published last year, Jamieson and colleagues identified public values ​​that go beyond expertise, such as transparency and self-correction about the unknown. For example, researchers managed expectations for coronavirus vaccines by emphasizing that most vaccines provide less than 100% protection and wane over time, requiring additional shots. Jamieson said it could have been done.

And when the first coronavirus vaccine trials demonstrated that the shots significantly reduced hospitalizations and deaths but revealed little about infectious disease, public health officials worried about the uncertainty. It could have been more open.

As a result, many people felt betrayed, even though the coronavirus vaccines only moderately reduced the risk of infection. Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), chairman of the Republican-led coronavirus subcommittee, told Congress in July that “vaccines were promised to stop infection, but that’s not entirely true.” It turned out that there was no such thing, and the United States noticed it too.” Hearing.

Jamison also recommends repetition. This is a sophisticated tactic used by misinformation propagators, which has led to the number of people believing that the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin cures COVID-19 to more than double in the past two years. This probably explains why they did so – despite persistent evidence to the contrary. In November, the drug came under fire again during a hearing in which Republicans in Congress argued that the Biden administration and scientific agencies were censoring public health information.

Hotez, the author of a new book about the rise of anti-science movements, fears the worst. “Distrust of science will continue to accelerate,” he says.

Additionally, traditional efforts to combat misinformation, such as debunking, may prove ineffective.

“It’s really troubling that the sources we rely on to get the right information are becoming less reliable,” Jamison said.

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