Troubling growth in anti-vax sentiment
Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and a vaccine for whooping cough. Credit: AP/Hannah Schoenbaum, Getty Images/Kevork Djansezian
In 2019, it was measles.
In 2022, it was polio.
Now, it's whooping cough.
One by one, diseases thought to be dormant or largely eliminated thanks to vaccination have reappeared.
That's no magic trick. It's the result of an ongoing campaign by those who oppose vaccination and vaccine mandates. That anti-vaccination sentiment has taken center stage in recent months, thanks to the presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
In the latest outbreak, the Suffolk County Department of Health reported 108 current cases of pertussis, also known as whooping cough, at the end of 2023. Only four cases were reported in 2022. While those who are vaccinated can get whooping cough, vaccination helps protect people both from getting the disease and from the severity of it.
In numerous interviews, Kennedy has tried to suggest he doesn't oppose vaccination while at the same time reciting familiar anti-vax tropes. But any effort to disguise his true views was undone earlier this month, when Kennedy hired Del Bigtree as his new communications director.
Bigtree leads the Informed Consent Action Network, or ICAN, a well-known anti-vaccine organization. Bigtree produced the problematic film “Vaxxed,” which alleges the long-discredited connection between vaccines and autism. He has said anyone taking the COVID-19 vaccine is “taking on a severe risk.”
Want an idea of Bigtree's thinking? Just read what he wrote to supporters after Kennedy named him to the campaign.
“In January 2020, we witnessed what the dark forces of medical tyranny are capable of when they launched the greatest psychological operation the world has ever experienced,” Bigtree wrote of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent vaccine requirements.
“On the debate stage, [Kennedy] will be attacked for his record on vaccine safety and medical freedom,” Bigtree added. “And when that happens, we will finally have a voice capable of defending our position with scientific reason and evidence.”
Bigtree is right that Kennedy will support his harmful positions — but wrong that any of that backing has scientific reason or evidence behind it. Kennedy's anti-vaccine, anti-mandate diatribes rely on conspiracy theories, untruths and scare tactics, not scientific reason and evidence. And he has now provided a national platform to one of the most dangerous voices to our public health.
Meanwhile, Kennedy himself is gaining notoriety, most recently through plans for a PAC-sponsored birthday celebration that he said would feature celebrities like Martin Sheen and Dionne Warwick. It turned out none of those celebrities ever intended to come, or support Kennedy. But the damage was done. Plenty of people saw the alleged show of support as giving Kennedy legitimacy.
Kennedy and Bigtree have contributed to a troubling national decline in trust in vaccination. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in November that coverage from state-required vaccines among kindergartners fell from 95% in 2019-20 to 93% in 2022-23. Waivers from the requirement, meanwhile, rose to 3.0% in 2022-23 — the highest ever. Such exemptions rose in 41 states, exceeding 5% in 10 of them. In Idaho, a troubling 12.1% of children are exempt.
Luckily, New York, which ended all but medically-required exemptions in 2019, has an exemption level at 0.1% and vaccination above 96%. But here, too, a threat looms: Those who oppose vaccine requirements are gearing up for a new push in Albany to restore the religious exemption.
It's not likely to happen. But the push alone, like Kennedy's efforts, keeps the anti-vax mentality in a dangerously wide spotlight, making no disease dormant and putting everyone at risk.
Columnist Randi F. Marshall's opinions are her own.
Randi Marshall is a member of the Newsday editorial board.