A look at forces undermining vaccines
In January 2019, a Vox reporter interviewed vaccine researcher Peter Hotez about his newly released book, “Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism: My Journey As a Vaccine Scientist, Pediatrician, and Autism Dad.”
Rachel is Hotez’s daughter. She was born in 1992 and diagnosed with autism shortly before Hotez witnessed the anti-vaccine movement kick into high gear in 1998. He wrote the book in 2019 out of frustration, fear and, importantly, hope.
Maybe, he thought, his personal narrative, combined with his role as the head of Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, combined with his time as U.S. science envoy during the Obama administration, would convince parents to reject the morass of pseudoscience that was leading a growing number of them to opt out of life-saving immunizations for their children.
“What’s at stake if vaccine denialism deepens?” Vox reporter Julia Belluz asked Hotez, in a moment so prescient it makes you want to weep. We’re living it. A significant portion of the U.S. population is taking a pass on the COVID19 vaccine, offering the virus time to mutate into new variants and inviting COVID-19 to remain with us indefinitely.
This contributes to countless preventable illnesses and deaths, incalculable grief and generations of trauma reverberating through families and communities.
It threatens livelihoods. It puts the prospect of a normal school year on shaky footing. It robs us of the singular delight found in gatherings — or turns those gatherings into deeply contentious flashpoints. Lollapalooza wasn’t just a music festival this year; it was, depending on your lens, either a joyful homage to survival, or a highly irresponsible potential superspreader.
It forces distance where closeness should be. My friend’s son was hospitalized last week (not related to the coronavirus), and an uptick in COVID-19 cases meant she was barred from visiting him.
We’re being called on to protect one another. We’re breaking each other’s hearts instead.
We didn’t arrive here overnight.
Hotez has a new book out, “Preventing The Next Pandemic: Vaccine Diplomacy
in a Time of AntiScience.” It’s a paean to vaccines. “One of our most noble pursuits,” he writes. “Science for the benefit of humankind.”
It’s also a look at the forces that led to the emergence or return of infectious diseases throughout the 21st century: political instability, climate change, human migrations, an anti-science movement that began as a fringe element and quickly grew into its own media empire.
“By some estimates, there are now almost 500 anti-vaccine misinformation websites on the Internet, all amplified on Facebook and other forms of social media, as well as e-commerce platforms,” Hotez writes.
“By dominating the Internet,” he continues, “the anti-vaccine movement inundates parents with misinformation. Indeed, based on my experience, I conclude that it is now difficult for worried moms and dads to download accurate healthcare information about vaccines. Serious and meaningful information regarding this topic resembles a lost message in a bottle floating aimlessly in the Atlantic Ocean.”
The anti-vaccine movement has spun off political action committees,
Hotez writes, which lobby state legislatures to make it easier for parents to opt their children out of school vaccine requirements. These PACs also raise money for political candidates, he writes, and use such slogans as “medical freedom” and “health freedom” and “choice.”
It works.
A Kaiser Family Foundation survey released Aug. 4 found most unvaccinated adults in the U.S. believe the COVID-19 vaccine poses a greater risk to their health than a COVID-19 infection. This is despite thorough testing of the COVID-19 vaccine by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, continuous and intense safety monitoring, and close to 350 million doses administered so far in the United States with very few serious side effects.
Hotez would like to see a much stronger vaccine advocacy push in the U.S.
“For too long our government agencies have taken for granted the assumption that the American and European public accept vaccines as safe and lifesaving technologies,” he writes. “However, we are now many decades away from the 1950s and 1960s, when scientists such as Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin, the discoverers of the polio vaccines, were lauded as heroes.”
We’re beginning to see companies mandate vaccines for their workers and businesses mandate vaccines for their customers. A growing number of both public and private colleges and universities are requiring students to get vaccinated. New York City is requiring proof of vaccination to access indoor dining, gyms and movie theaters — the first U.S. city to do so.
I hope we continue to incentivize the hesitant, whether by mandate or Krispy Kreme doughnut.
I hope we don’t give up hope. I hope we don’t give up on each other. I read Hotez’s latest book not as a screed against humanity’s darkest impulses, but as a testament to our capacity for innovation and growth and goodness, in and among dark impulses that have been decades in the works. I read it as a reminder of our ability to envision a better world and our willingness to keep working to get there.
We’re being called on to protect one another. And we’re capable of doing so. It is, after all, the only way this one single, beautiful, harrowing, humbling life works.