A Biden administration that vowed to restore Americans’ faith in public health has grown increasingly paralyzed over how to combat the resurgence in vaccine skepticism.
And internally, aides and advisers concede there is no comprehensive plan for countering a movement that’s steadily expanded its influence on the president’s watch.
The rising appeal of anti-vaccine activism has been underscored by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s insurgent presidential campaign and fueled by prominent factions of the GOP. The mainstreaming of a once-fringe movement has horrified federal health officials, who blame it for seeding dangerous conspiracy theories and bolstering a Covid-era backlash to the nation’s broader public health practices.
But as President Joe Biden ramps up a reelection campaign centered on his vision for a post-pandemic America, there’s little interest among his aides in courting a high-profile vaccine fight — and even less certainty of how to win.
“There’s a real challenge here,” said one senior official who’s worked on the Covid response and was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “But they keep just hoping it’ll go away.”
The White House’s reticence is compounded by legal and practical concerns that have cut off key avenues for repelling the anti-vaccine movement, according to interviews with eight current and former administration officials and others close to the process.
Maybe if the entire medical industry wasn’t already shady and deplorable enough we wouldn’t have these vaccine skeptics. The biden administration needs to focus on fixing the medical industry if they want these people to trust it.
Except it has nothing to do with the medical industry being shady or not. The big recent hullaballoo started because Andrew Wakefield lied to everyone. But that largely only affected the crunchy New Age mom types at the time.
The big explosion of right wing idiots being anti-vaxxers simply has to do with Republican politicians and Fox News repeatedly claiming all scientists and experts on topics are lying (to make money somehow, despite that money never materializing). They started making such anti-science claims with climate change and just expanded it to everything else.
