A new front has opened in the ideological battle in the United States launched during Donald Trump's second term. After clashes over culture, anti-discrimination policies and free trade, now healthcare policy, and vaccination more specifically, has become the latest target of conspiratorial attacks fueled by distrust of experts, the federal government and scientific facts. The announcement by the top health official in the (Republican-governed) state of Florida on Wednesday, September 3, ending mandatory vaccination for schoolchildren – an obligation he compared to "slavery" – is just the latest manifestation of the terrible anti-vax current stoked by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the US secretary of health.
A longstanding opponent of vaccination and founder of an activist group that advocates "medical freedom" in the name of "protecting children's health," in May, Kennedy unilaterally removed the Covid-19 vaccine from the recommended immunization schedule for healthy children and pregnant women, much to the dismay of scientific societies.
He then replaced members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which issues recommendations that determine which shots are reimbursed, with vaccine skeptics. On August 27, he fired Susan Monarez, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), less than a month after her appointment, after she refused to endorse his anti-vaccine whims.
Exploiting falsehoods
It did not matter that Trump had, in December 2020, at the end of his first term in office, boasted of having succeeded in urgently developing vaccines against Covid-19. The current moment is about the political exploitation of falsehoods that challenge the fact that vaccination is "one of the greatest public health achievements, preventing tens of thousands of deaths [and] millions of cases of disease," as the American Academy of Pediatrics wrote.
Even the total inconsistency of Kennedy's position has gone politically unpunished: During his Senate hearing on Thursday, September 4, he called Trump's anti-Covid strategy "genius," even though it was based on vaccination, which he has also described as a "crime against humanity." When it comes to vaccination, as in other areas, the most important thing is to demonstrate one's allegiance to the president.
As several Democrat-led states have started to push back against federal policy, vaccination has emerged as a new political flashpoint and a factor that divides the country – even though, according to one poll, 81% of American parents support mandatory vaccination.
This politicization of science, which has made the acceptance of established scientific truths, backed by rational inquiry, dependent on one's political stance, marks a dangerous step backward for a country where many of the vaccines that are now under attack were, in fact, originally developed. It acts as a double poison: For the health of Americans, as well as many others, given the risk of eroding vaccination coverage. Yet it is also poisonous for democracy itself, as its foundation – reasoned debate based on facts – risks being undermined if lies spread on social media and repeated by top-level political leaders end up imposing alternative "truths," which are far removed from established facts.