The Progressive Anti-Vaxxers

By Aaron Kliegman Thanks to Operation Warp Speed, a public-private partnership initiated by the Trump administration, we’re going to have a coronavirus vaccine in record time. But there’s a problem: Democrats are undermining public trust in the vaccine. Specifically, Democratic politicians and their allies in the media are questioning whether it would be safe to take the vaccines currently being developed. By doing so, these voices are risking American lives — seemingly for political gain. On Monday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) said that Americans should be wary of any coronavirus vaccine manufactured and approved under the Trump administration. “You are going to say to the American people, now, here’s a vaccine, it is new, it was done quickly, but trust this federal administration and their health administration that it’s safe?” Cuomo told ABC News. “And we’re not 100 percent sure of the consequences? I think it’s going to be a very skeptical American public about taking the vaccine and it should be.” Cuomo added that he doesn’t trust the FDA or the CDC and needs someone else to say the vaccine is “safe.” The governor’s remarks came about a month after he said he’s “not going to trust the federal government’s opinion” on any federally approved vaccine and wouldn’t recommend New Yorkers take it. Instead, he continued, the state of New York will independently review all vaccines authorized by the federal government. Cuomo is hardly alone in questioning whether the Trump administration will deliver a safe and effective vaccine. Last month, none other than the Democrats’ presidential nominee overtly made trust in a vaccine a political matter. “I trust vaccines, I trust scientists, but I don't trust Donald Trump,” Joe Biden said in Delaware, before questioning the administration’s ability to ensure that a vaccine meets scientific standards and to distribute a vaccine safely and “without a hint of favoritism.” Most egregiously, Biden’s running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), refused to say in an interview with CNN early last month whether she would take a vaccine. Why? She “think that we have learned since this pandemic started, but really before that, that there's very little that we can trust that can comes out of Donald Trump's mouth.” Harris even questioned whether we could trust the scientists and public health experts who endorse the vaccine because they “will be muzzled, they will be suppressed, they will be sidelined, because looking at an election coming up in less than 60 days, and he's grasping for whatever he can get to pretend that he has been a leader on this issue, when he has not.” But Harris wasn’t done. During the vice-presidential debate earlier this month, she stated proudly that she won’t take the coronavirus vaccine if President Trump “tells us that we should take it.” (She did say she’d take the vaccine if Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, vouched for it.) Naturally, the mainstream media is echoing Democratic concerns about a vaccine. The New York Times, for example, recently published a report titled, “Scientists Worry About Political Influence Over Coronavirus Vaccine Project.” The scaremongering article doubted the efficacy of the vaccine, warning that it would be rushed to approval by President Trump. It would take willful blindness not to see here a coordinated campaign to undermine the American people’s confidence in a vaccine. And worst of all, it seems to be working. As the Federalist reported, while “69 percent of the US public said they would get the COVID-19 vaccine ‘as soon as a vaccine was available’ in mid-August, only 58 percent said the same thing in October, according to a new poll released by STAT-Harris.” The same poll showed that, in August, 70 percent of white Americans would be willing to be vaccinated immediately, compared to 59 percent now. The figure for black Americans dropped from 65 percent to 43 percent over the same period. This change, according to the report, “suggests growing concern that the regulatory approval process for a COVID-19 vaccine has been politicized by the Trump administration in the run-up to the presidential election.” It doesn’t take a public health expert to figure out the source of much of that “growing concern.” Indeed, while skepticism about vaccines is always higher among Republicans, the percentage of Democrats who said they would “definitely” get the vaccine plummeted from 50 percent in May to 24 percent in September. And if that’s not enough, anti-vaxxers are feeding off Democrats’ skepticism, which has been a boon to the anti-vaccine movement. What’s so shameful about this effort to erode public trust is that it’s clearly political, meant to hurt President Trump before Election Day. And what’s so mindboggling about the situation is that President Trump isn’t the one who approves the vaccines. In fact, no politician will have that ability. Scientists and public health experts will be the ones who decide when a vaccine is ready to be distributed. Which is why none other than Dr. Fauci said recently that Americans should trust the process of developing a vaccine. He knows how the process works — hence him calling it “disturbing” that so many people are hesitant to get a vaccine and blaming “mixed messages that have come out of Washington” for waning public trust. As debate over the vaccine rages on, we should recall the words of Vice President Mike Pence during the vice-presidential debate. After Kamala Harris continued to undermine public confidence in a coronavirus vaccine, Pence called her efforts “unconscionable” and urged her to “stop playing politics with people’s lives.” But don’t expect Harris to stop — or Biden, or Cuomo, or the New York Times. At least not when there’s a presidential election coming up. Unconscionable, indeed. Order Newt's Latest Book: https://www.gingrich360.com/trump-and-the-american-future