BY NATHANIEL WEIXEL - 03/09/24
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| RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DEATH OF OVER HALF A MILLION AMERICANS FROM COVID 19 |
Public health advocates are watching in growing alarm as former President Trump increasingly embraces the anti-vaccine movement.
“I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or a mask mandate,” Trump said in a recent campaign rally in Richmond, Va.
It’s a line Trump has repeated, and his campaign said he is only referring to school COVID-19 vaccine mandates — but that hasn’t eased fears that the GOP leader could accelerate already worrying trends of declining child vaccination.
Trump “is an important voice. He has a big platform. And he uses that platform, in this case, to do harm. Because he’s implying by saying that we shouldn’t mandate vaccines, vaccines are in some ways ineffective or unsafe,” said Paul Offit, a pediatrician and vaccine expert at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
The ironic part, Offit noted, is that the Trump administration kickstarted Operation Warp Speed, which helped drug companies use a relatively new technology to make two very effective and safe COVID-19 vaccines in less than a year.
Throughout the campaign, Trump has performed a complicated tap dance regarding COVID vaccines. He simultaneously wants to take credit for their speedy development but has also criticized their use and knocked his now former rivals for being too pro-vaccine.
In a post on Truth Social reacting to Biden’s State of the Union speech on Thursday, Trump again claimed credit for the COVID-19 shots.
“You’re welcome, Joe, nine month approval time vs. 12 years that it would have taken you!”
Every state and the District of Columbia requires children to get vaccinated against certain diseases before they start school, including measles, mumps, polio, tetanus, whooping cough and chickenpox. A plan to withhold federal funding would have widespread impact.
“Like most states, Virginia requires MMR vaccine, chickenpox vaccine, polio, etc. So Trump would take millions in federal funds away from all Virginia public schools,” former GOP Rep. Barbara Comstock (Va.) wrote in response to his campaign threat on X, formerly Twitter.
Since the public health emergency ended last May, no state requires students to get the COVID-19 vaccine, while 21 states have laws specifically banning schools from requiring COVID-19 shots.
Trump’s campaign says his comments only apply to states that mandate COVID-19 vaccines — making it essentially an empty threat.
“If you actually listen to the entire section, and also if you’ve been following his speeches for the past year, he’s talking about COVID vaccines in addition to masks in the same breath. This isn’t anything new,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in an email.
Experts say the politicization of vaccines has led to an increase in hesitancy and is sparking more outbreaks of preventable diseases like measles.
There have been measles outbreaks in 15 states this year, most recently in Florida, where state Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo did not recommend parents vaccinate their children or keep unvaccinated students home from school as a precaution.
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 sentiments, primarily about the COVID-19 shots.
Ladapo told people not to get the most recent shot and has drawn sharp rebukes from the medical community — as well as federal health agencies — for claims that the shots alter human DNA, can potentially cause cancer, and are generally unsafe.
Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said he worries that Trump is signaling he will empower more people like Ladapo if he wins reelection.
“I worry about any administration that doesn’t follow good evidence and good science, that they will put more and more people like them in their administration,” Benjamin said.
“We know that Trump had some extraordinarily competent people [in his first term]. But we also know that he had some extraordinarily incompetent people, and that in many situations, some of the really incompetent people carried the day because they aligned with his philosophy,” Benjamin added.
Robert Blendon, a professor emeritus of health politics at the Harvard School of Public Health, said the experience in Florida and the comments from Trump are part of a much broader Republican backlash against public health expertise and government mandates that can be traced to anti-COVID policies.
“It isn’t that he’s just going after these anti-vaccine votes,” Blendon said of Trump.
Trust in public health authorities has dropped precipitously among Republicans since 2021, and Blendon said Trump is a symbol of that. The anti-vaccine movement has never been associated with one particular political party, whereas the public health backlash is strongly Republican-centric.
“That’s made it very, very powerful,” Blendon said. “There are Republicans in the House and Senate, who when they’re not investigating public health, want to cut back the budget … so it has caught on within the Republican base very widely.”
Whether it’s anti-vaccine specifically or anti-public health more broadly, the sentiment is growing.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the percentage of kindergartners whose parents opted them out of school-required vaccinations rose to the highest level yet during the 2022-2023 school year.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a well-known vaccine skeptic who is running for president as an independent, has gained a major platform to spread misinformation and widely debunked claims about vaccines.
He has falsely claimed vaccines cause autism, falsely declared the coronavirus shot is the world’s deadliest vaccine and questioned the safety of shots’ ingredients.
Offit, the vaccine expert, said he thinks public health officials could have done a better messaging job on the COVID-19 shots, and that by mandating vaccines they “inadvertently leaned into a Libertarian left hook.”
Still, Offit said he is concerned about the increasing anti-science rhetoric from politicians like Trump.
“I feel like we’re on the edge of a precipice here … you have the most contagious of the vaccine preventable diseases coming back to some extent, and with Donald Trump basically casting aspersions on vaccines, that’s only going to worsen.”
OPINION
Dick Polman: Don’t forget Trump’s response to pandemic
By DICK POLMAN
PUBLISHED: March 10, 2024
It’s perversely fitting that the anti-science quack whose imbecilic behavior during the pandemic resulted in an unnecessarily high death toll is now declaring that, if returned to power, he will withdraw all federal funds from public schools that require vaccines.
There’s a lot to unpack in that opening paragraph. The Lancet, a prominent medical journal, concluded in a ’21 report that Trump’s “appalling response” to the pandemic “expedited the spread of Covid” in the United States. As a result, as many as 40 percent of the 470,000 deaths that occurred on his watch could have been avoided, had he acted rationally.
But has Trump learned anything since? Of course not. At a recent Virginia rally, he indeed talked about punishing schools that mandate vaccines, a brain fart he first floated in Iowa a year ago.
As this country slowly goose-steps toward a MAGA Restoration, with roughly half the electorate too dumb or oblivious to take notice, Trump’s record on public health would seem to be relevant grist for fresh discussion. I know, the pandemic was so four years ago, ancient history by our standards — Gore Vidal was right when he quipped that U.S.A. stands for “the United States of Amnesia” — but since Trump was once an incumbent, perhaps we should treat him like one by re-inspecting his detestable actions.
And there’s no better time than right now, because last week, we marked the four-year anniversary of America’s first confirmed COVID-19 death. Four years ago this week, the CDC reported 60 confirmed cases. Four years ago this month, the entire nation virtually shut down.
Trump, we now know, was seriously briefed about the impending crisis long before it hit. But here’s what he said publicly on Feb. 26, 2020: “When you have 15 (infected) people, and the 15 within a couple days is going to be down close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done. …This will end. You look at flu season. (Covid) is a little bit different, but in some ways it’s easier. … It’s a little like the regular flu.”
But that’s not what he told Bob Woodward in an interview on Feb. 7: “It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flu. … This is deadly stuff.”
That’s why he fired Nancy Messonnier, a top CDC official, who’d made the mistake of committing public candor on Feb. 25 when she said that Americans should get ready for “significant disruptions” to their lives.
Then we got Dr. Trump’s miracle cures. He pitched hydroxychloroquine (“try it if you like … it’ll be wonderful, it’ll be so beautiful”) — which was deemed worthless by the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, and the World Health Organization. And when Richard Bright, a prominent federal vaccine expert, stated that the drug “clearly lack(ed) scientific merit,” Trump fired him.
Undeterred as always, Trump flashed his medical credentials on the topic of disinfectants. Either half the electorate wants to restore this kind of thinking to the presidency, or, more likely, half the electorate doesn’t remember it, or know it even happened, or doesn’t care that it happened. Trump was talking to a science official who was off camera:
“So supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it’s ultraviolet or just a very powerful light — and I think you said that hasn’t been checked because of the testing. And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or some other way, and I think you said you’re going to test that, too. … I see the disinfectant that knocks (Covid) out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning? As you see, it gets in the lungs, it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that.”
Suffice it to say that, during the Biden administration, the makers of Lysol haven’t felt compelled to issue a statement warning against internal uses of its cleaning project.
Five days after Trump’s 2017 Inaugural, I wrote that he would likely “get a lot of people killed.” That was a cinch prediction, and indeed he did. If we’re heedless enough to entrust our lives, yet again, to an anti-science sociopath, next time could well be worse.
Dick Polman is a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a writer in residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net
Donald Trump's Plan Would Destroy Funding for Schools in Republican States
Trump said during a rally in Rock Hill, South Carolina, last month that he would not support federal funds for any schools requiring vaccine or mask mandates, a policy that would be a departure from even the most conservative of states. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), all states and territories have some vaccine requirements in place, though mandates may differ in scope and exemptions.
"I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or a mask mandate," he said, eliciting cheers from the audience.
Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for Trump's campaign, told Newsweek that Trump was "talking about COVID vaccines in addition to masks in the same breath."
"This isn't something new he's saying," she said.
In his remarks at the rally, the former president did not differentiate between whether this would apply to all types of vaccines, including those that have been required by schools for decades, or simply the COVID-19 vaccination, as some critics have raised concerns about the speed in which it was rolled out after the virus forced widespread shutdowns across the globe beginning in 2020.
Removing all vaccine requirements from schools could have serious impact on students, public health experts warned following his remarks.
"Hoping he doesn't really mean it, since it would create a public health catastrophe for the nation..." Dr. Peter Hotez, dean at the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, wrote in a post to X, formerly Twitter.
"I'm old enough to remember when polio ripped through the globe and put my 6-year-old friends into iron lungs," former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich wrote. "We dutifully lined up at school to get polio shots [without the howling of anti-vaxxers]. And we eradicated polio. Why has saving lives become political?"
"Trump said in Richmond, that he will take all federal funds away from public schools that require vaccines. Like most states, Virginia requires MMR vaccine, chickenpox vaccine, polio, etc. So Trump would take millions in federal funds away from all Virginia public schools," wrote former GOP Representative Barbara Comstock, a Trump critic.
Virginia, which voted for Democrats in recent elections but backed Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin in 2021, requires 11 vaccines for students to attend schools or other child care facilities, according to the Virginia Department of Public Health.
Some of the states with the most conservative governors also require vaccines for schools.
Texas, for instance, requires students to be vaccinated against at least nine viruses, according to the Department of State Health Services. It allows exemptions when a medical reason exists or if parents or guardians have "reasons of conscience," including religious beliefs.
Florida, which has recently been struck by a measles outbreak, requires at least seven vaccines but also allows exemptions based on medical reasons and religious beliefs, according to the Florida Department of Health.
Trump was vaccinated against COVID-19 and has touted Operation Warp Speed, his administration's effort to quickly roll out the COVID-19 vaccine, as helping to save lives. His stance on vaccines has at times left him at odds with his most conservative voters, some of whom have rejected vaccines. While he has said the vaccine is safe, he has also opposed the government requiring individuals to get vaccinated if they
By Margaret Hartmann, senior editor for Intelligencer who has worked at New Yorker since 2012
Trump speaks at a rally in Richmond, Virginia, on March 2, 2024.
During a rally in Richmond, Virginia, last weekend, Donald Trump made a number of wild, headline-generating remarks, from calling Joe Biden “Obama” to claiming that the current president’s border policies amount to a “conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America.” But one of his most incendiary comments didn’t garner much media attention.
“I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or a mask mandate,” Trump declared.
On Saturday night, Barbara Comstock, a former Republican congresswoman from Virginia, drew scrutiny to the comment in an X post. She said Trump was essentially promising to cut millions in federal funding to Virginia public schools, which require a variety of childhood immunizations.
Indeed, all 50 states have legislation requiring specific vaccination for students. This is nothing new: Massachusetts issued the first school-immunization requirement in 1853. Many states align these mandates with the recommended childhood-vaccination schedule from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but they’re set by state, not federal, law. According to the CDC, “These laws often apply not only to children attending public schools but also to those attending private schools and day care facilities.”
While cutting federal funding might thrill the anti-vaxxer contingent in Trump’s base, this would be a radical policy change sure to enrage the vast majority of parents nationwide. Plus, he hasn’t come out against vaccines before and was quite insistent on claiming credit for COVID shots thanks to Operation Warp Speed.
So it’s hard to believe Trump suddenly became an anti-vaxxer, though video confirms Comstock accurately quoted him in Richmond. And the line — sometimes phrased as “I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or mask mandate, from kindergarten through college” — has actually appeared in numerous Trump speeches for at least a year.
The Trump campaign said this line refers solely to COVID-vaccination mandates for students, not older immunization requirements for diseases like polio, measles, and diphtheria.
“If you actually listen to the entire section, and also if you’ve been following his speeches for the past year, he’s talking about COVID vaccines in addition to masks in the same breath. This isn’t anything new he hasn’t said,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said via email.
Trump did not say the word COVID while discussing his education plans on Saturday, or in previous versions of his stump speech that featured similar phrasing. He said in Richmond:
On day one I will sign a new executive order to cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content onto our children. And I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or a mask mandate. I will keep men out of women’s sports, 100 percent.
Many people were unclear on whether Trump was referring to COVID-vaccine mandates or all vaccine mandates. In recent days, a handful of education and public-health professionals came to the conclusion that he was talking about the latter policy and expressed concerns about new disease outbreaks and the widespread defunding of public schools.
While the overwhelming majority of Americans are in favor of K-12 vaccination requirements, there’s little chance that this brief line will cost Trump voters in November. First, it has largely gone unnoticed until now. And second, it’s an empty threat. Since the end of the federal public-health emergency, the few states that had COVID-vaccine mandates for students have dropped them, while 21 states still have laws specifically banning schools from requiring COVID shots. Also, the president doesn’t have the power to unilaterally withhold federal funding from school districts (Trump is reportedly looking to resurrect the president’s ability to block certain congressionally appropriated funds, but that would draw legal challenges).
Vowing to cut funding to “any school that has a vaccine mandate” might go over well with the people closely following Trump’s rallies right now. But it’s a line he can modify as the general election draws closer and will never have to make good on.
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