Five Years After COVID, The GOP Is The Anti-Vaccine Party

Despite the ongoing spread of COVID, measles and bird flu, Trump has handed power to anti-vaxxers and vaccine skeptics.

By Sasha Abramsky, Truthout

With vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. now in control of the Department of Health and Human Services, state-level anti-vax politicians believe their moment has struck to fundamentally shift the country away from mass vaccination programs. As a result, the U.S. stands on the edge of a series of cascading public health crises.

Today marks the fifth anniversary of the World Health Organization’s declaration of the global COVID-19 pandemic, and the rapid implementation of stay-at-home orders in an attempt to stem the tide of airborne sickness and death.

In the days leading up to this grave anniversary, last week Iowa Republicans moved a state bill out of subcommittee and into the full Iowa Senate Health and Human Services Committee that would make it a misdemeanor offense for Iowa doctors to give a patient an mRNA vaccine. The bill, Senate File 360, targeted what its supporters labeled “gene-based vaccines,” which it defined as those generated through using mRNA, and threatened health care providers with a $500 fine for vaccinating patients, and, even more insidiously, with a revocation of their state license to practice.

COVID-19 vaccine in researcher hands, female doctor's holds syringe and bottle with vaccine for coronavirus cure. Concept of corona virus treatment, injection, shot and clinical trial during pandemic

In the end, the bill didn’t make it out of the full committee and onto the Iowa Senate floor, thus killing it off for the current legislative year. But the fact that both of the Republicans on the three-person subcommittee voted to advance it, despite public comments being overwhelmingly against the measure, is indicative of how far anti-vaxxers have advanced in mainstreaming their ideas within the GOP. Legislators in Montana and Idaho have also introduced legislation this year aimed at banning mRNA vaccines.

Meanwhile, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has asked legislators to make permanent a ban on COVID vaccine mandates at both government offices and private businesses. And state public health officials in Louisiana have stopped all promotion of COVID vaccines and Mpox vaccines, and have even stopped promoting routine flu shots as well. This follows on from Texas’s decision last year to stop promoting COVID shots.