Public health advocates are on high alert as former President Trump ramps up his anti-vaccine campaign.
“I will not give a dime to schools that require vaccinations or require masks,” President Trump said at a recent campaign rally in Richmond, Virginia.
It's a line President Trump has repeated repeatedly, and his campaign said he was only referring to mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations in schools, even as Republican leaders continue to say that child vaccinations are declining. Concerns remain that this will accelerate an already worrying trend.
Trump is “an important voice. He has a big platform. And in this case, he's using that platform to cause harm.” “He's implying that vaccines shouldn't be mandatory, so they're in some sense ineffective or unsafe,” said one Paul Offit.
The irony, Offit said, is that the Trump administration launched Operation Warp Speed and pharmaceutical companies used relatively new technology to create two highly effective and safe strains of COVID-19 in less than a year. He pointed out that it was supporting the production of vaccines.
Throughout the campaign, Trump has performed an intricate tap dance on the coronavirus vaccine. He wants to take credit for its rapid development, but he has also criticized its use and accused his former rivals of being too pro-vaccine.
In a post on Truth Social responding to Biden's State of the Union address on Thursday, President Trump once again claimed credit for the COVID-19 vaccination.
“You’re welcome, Joe, it took 9 months to get approved instead of 12 years!”
All states and the District of Columbia require children to be vaccinated against certain diseases before they start school, including measles, mumps, polio, tetanus, pertussis, and chickenpox. The plan to withhold federal funding would have far-reaching implications.
“Like most states, Virginia needs the MMR vaccine, varicella vaccine, polio, etc. That's why President Trump will take millions of dollars of federal funding away from all of Virginia's public schools. ” wrote former Republican Congresswoman Barbara Comstock of Virginia in response to campaign threats. on X (formerly Twitter).
Since the public health emergency ended last May, no state has required students to receive COVID-19 vaccinations, but 21 states have started requiring schools to provide COVID-19 vaccinations. There are laws that specifically prohibit this.
Trump's campaign has argued that his comments apply only to states that have mandated COVID-19 vaccinations and are essentially empty threats.
“If you actually listen to this whole section, and if you've been following his speeches over the past year, you'll find that in addition to masks, he's also talking about the COVID-19 vaccine at the same time. This is nothing new,” Trump campaign spokesman Stephen Chan said in an email.
Experts say the politicization of vaccines is increasing vaccine hesitancy and leading to more outbreaks of preventable diseases like measles.
Measles outbreaks have occurred in 15 states this year, and recently in Florida, state Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo has urged parents to vaccinate their children as a preventative measure and to encourage parents to vaccinate their children. It was not recommended to send students home from school if they did not receive the test.
Instead, he sent a letter to parents advising them to make their own decisions about school attendance.
Ladapo was appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in 2021 and has since aligned himself with anti-vaccine sentiment, primarily regarding COVID-19 vaccinations.
Ladapo has urged people not to receive the latest vaccination, responding to claims that the shot alters human DNA, can potentially cause cancer and is generally unsafe. It has drawn harsh criticism from the community and federal health agencies.
Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said he is concerned that President Trump is suggesting he will empower people like Ladapo if he is re-elected.
“I'm concerned about administrations that don't follow good evidence and good science that we're going to end up with more and more people like them in office,” Benjamin said.
“We know that Mr. Trump had very talented people.” [in his first term]. But we also know that he had some very incompetent people, and in many situations, some of the really incompetent people were in line with his philosophy, so on that day. I also know that I survived that,” Benjamin added.
Robert Brendon, professor emeritus of health politics at Harvard School of Public Health, said the Florida experience and President Trump's comments are part of a broader Republican backlash against public health expertise and government responsibility. He said the cause was anti-coronavirus. policy.
“He's not just chasing anti-vaccine votes,” Brendon said of Trump.
Trust in public health officials has plummeted among Republicans since 2021, and Brendon said President Trump is a symbol of that. The anti-vaccination movement has never been tied to any particular political party, but the public health backlash is centered on Republicans.
“This makes it very powerful,” Brendon said. “We have Republicans in the House and Senate who want to cut the budget when they're not doing public health research…so this issue is very pervasive within the Republican base.”
Whether it's anti-vaccine specifically or anti-public health more broadly, that sentiment is on the rise.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the percentage of kindergartners whose parents refused school-required vaccinations rose to its highest level on record during the 2022-2023 school year.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent vaccine skeptic and independent candidate for president, has gained a major platform for spreading misinformation and widely debunked claims about vaccines.
He falsely claimed that vaccines cause autism, falsely declared coronavirus vaccines to be the world's deadliest vaccines, and questioned the safety of vaccine ingredients.
Offit, the vaccine expert, said public health officials could have communicated better messages about COVID-19 vaccinations and that making the vaccine mandatory “inadvertently gave a libertarian left hook. “It's tilted,” he said.
Still, Offit said he is concerned about the rise in anti-science rhetoric from politicians like Trump.
“I feel like we're on a precipice here…The most contagious vaccine-preventable disease is coming back to some degree, and Donald Trump is basically slamming vaccines. The situation is only going to get worse.”
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