Why the COVID Deniers Won
Lessons from the pandemic and its aftermath
By David Frum
February 12,
2025 March issue of The Atlantic titled “Dispathces”
Five years ago, the coronavirus pandemic struck a bitterly divided society.
Americans first diverged over how dangerous the disease was:
just a flu (as President Donald Trump repeatedly insisted) or something much
deadlier.
Then they disputed public-health measures such as lockdowns
and masking; a majority complied while a passionate minority fiercely resisted.
Finally, they split—and have remained split—over the value
and safety of COVID‑19 vaccines. Anti-vaccine beliefs started on the fringe,
but they spread to the point where Ron DeSantis, the governor of the country’s
third-most-populous state, launched a campaign for president on an appeal to
anti-vaccine ideology.
Five years later, one side has seemingly triumphed. The
winner is not the side that initially prevailed, the side of public safety. The
winner is the side that minimized the disease, then rejected public-health measures to prevent
its spread, and finally refused the vaccines designed to protect against its
worst effects.
Ahead of COVID’s fifth anniversary, Trump, as
president-elect, nominated the country’s most outspoken vaccination opponent to
head the Department of Health and Human Services. He chose a proponent of the
debunked and discredited vaccines-cause-autism claim to lead the CDC. He named
a strident critic of COVID‑vaccine mandates to lead the FDA. For surgeon general,
he picked a believer in hydroxychloroquine, the disproven COVID‑19 remedy. His
pick for director of the National Institutes of Health had advocated for
letting COVID spread unchecked to encourage herd immunity. Despite having
fast-tracked the development of the vaccines as president, Trump has himself
trafficked in many forms of COVID‑19 denial, and has expressed his own
suspicions that childhood vaccination against measles and mumps is a cause of
autism.
The ascendancy of the anti-vaxxers may ultimately prove
fleeting. But if the forces of science and health are to stage a comeback, it’s
important to understand why those forces have gone into eclipse.
Continues here: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/03/covid-deniers-anti-vax-public-health-politics-polarization/681435/
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