In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread. And among those diseases could be COVID-19.
Gallup: If an FDA-approved vaccine to prevent coronavirus/COVID-19 was available right now at no cost, would you agree to be vaccinated? GALLUP PANEL, JULY 20-AUG. 2, 2020
.............................................Yes No
...............................................% %
All Americans ......................65 35
Men ......................................65 35
Women .................................65 35
Democrats ............................81 19
Independents ........................59 41
Republicans ..................47 53
Elizabeth Cohen and Dana Vigue at CNN:
Gallup: If an FDA-approved vaccine to prevent coronavirus/COVID-19 was available right now at no cost, would you agree to be vaccinated? GALLUP PANEL, JULY 20-AUG. 2, 2020
.............................................Yes No
...............................................% %
All Americans ......................65 35
Men ......................................65 35
Women .................................65 35
Democrats ............................81 19
Independents ........................59 41
Republicans ..................47 53
Elizabeth Cohen and Dana Vigue at CNN:
While anti-vaxxers flood social media with lies about the upcoming coronavirus vaccine -- that it contains monkey brains, that it's a CIA plot to take over the world -- the government's multi-billion-dollar vaccine effort has yet to come up with a public education campaign to counteract that propaganda.
"We are behind here," said Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health. "We haven't done a good job of getting [coronavirus vaccine] information out there."
The stakes are high. A CNN poll in May found one-third of Americans said they would not try to get vaccinated against coronavirus, even if the vaccine is widely available and low cost.
"Speaking for myself, I think I underestimated the level of public resistance," Collins said. "I didn't expect it to be that widespread."
A spokesman for "Operation Warp Speed," the Trump administration's effort to get a coronavirus vaccine on the market, said a public education campaign will "soon focus" on vaccine education.
"We see more vaccine hesitancy with the Covid vaccine than with other vaccines. We know that. This concerns us, of course," said Michael Caputo, an assistant secretary for the US Department of Health and Human Services.Thomas Buckley at Bloomberg:
As the fervor grew, Todd Wolynn, a fellow doctor and a co-founder of Shots Heard Round the World, an informal group that seeks to protect vaccine advocates from online abuse, enlisted 16 volunteers to help get hateful posts removed and some of their 6,000 authors banned. Wolynn also thought a counterattack might be in order—so he called in Zubin Damania.
Damania is something of a health-care avenger. His YouTube videos, in which he raps in costume or rants about the anti-vaccine movement and wider problems with the medical system, have been viewed tens of millions of times. He’s one of a growing number of physicians turned online influencers able to communicate compellingly to viewers who might otherwise fall prey to pseudoscience. After getting the call from Wolynn, he organized a virtual rally, calling on health workers of all stripes to post videos, statements, and evidence to discredit Baldwin’s aggressors alongside the hashtag #DoctorsSpeakUp. The resulting campaign trended nationally on Twitter.
