Anti-Vax America: Could It Happen Here?

cool Zone Media. Over the past episodes, we've explored the origins of the current measles outbreak, the historical roots of the anti vaccination movement, the overlap between vaccine hesitancy and conservative Christianity that upholds a strong belief in spiritual healing, and the eugenic implications of contemporary anti vax ideology and the Maha movement. In this episode, we'll explore the future.

Could the United States see a massive return of viral outbreaks, How would a nationwide collapse and vaccination rates impact our public health? And what are we to make of the rise of alt medicine and whether that could continue to spread if people like RFK Junior elevate these hucksters into national figures. These are not just academic questions. If vaccination rates continue to decline, we could see the return of diseases like polio, which had been eradicated in the United

States for decades. In recent years, there have been cases of polio found in waste water, and one confirmed case of a man with polio in an unvaccinated community in New York. An expert warned that these isolated incidents could spread into larger outbreaks, and these concerns are well founded, particularly given that RFK Junior has said as recently as twenty twenty three that early batches of polio vaccines caused cancer,

something that has never been demonstrated in the research. Vaccination is the most effective tool we have to prevent the spread of communicable, deadly diseases. Without widespread vaccination, we face the very real possibility of devastating public health crises, and the resurgence of diseases like measles and polio, and smallpox and more would put our most vulnerable populations at risk, especially the elderly, the immunal compromised, and others who cannot

be vaccinated. We don't have a crystal ball that will allow us to see into the future, but as the anti vaccination movement grows, it is clear that the risk of large scale outbreaks is increasing, and if we don't correct the course soon, we could see a public health disaster unlike any we've seen in recent history. Perhaps even worse than COVID, which took more than one point one million American lives. In this episode, we will explore what could happen here in the United States if the anti

vaccination movement continues to get their way. As I conducted interviews with medical doctors and public health experts featured in this series, I asked them all the same question, where do you see this going? Each had their own answer, and all of their answers pointed in the same direction. Here's Catherine Wells, the head of public health in Lubbock, the largest county in West Texas where the measles outbreak began.

were refusing COVID vaccine. Years later, especially in conservative rural areas of West Texas East Texas, the vaccination rates continue to be strong in our cities of the Texas Triangle, Dallas where you are, in Houston where I am, and San Antonio and Austin. But you know, in the more conservative rural areas of West Texas East Texas, that's where

you saw big declines in kids getting vaccines. And once you go below a certain threshold, roughly below ninety percent and bam, that you start to see break through childhood infections. And usually the first one you see is measles. You can ultimately get all of them, but measles is the first one you see because it's so highly transmiss it's the most transmissible virus we know about. So measles is kind of the whatever you want to call it, the

early biomarker of a problem with your vaccination system. And unfortunately, now it's just tearing through West Texas and the Panhandle, and now it's in four states, all more or less in the Great Plains area of the country. Right it's the Panhandle in West Texas at the southern end of the plain's been into joining areas in New Mexico, then going up into Oklahoma and now Kansas. In my worry is that this is a very large probably much larger than is actually being reported. I mean, I don't see

this thing wearing down anytime soon. And I'm worried about really prolonged measles epidemic to the point where we could even lose measles elimination status in the US if it goes on a full year. Between twenty twenty three and twenty twenty four, we've had a fold rise in measles epidemics outbreaks. We've had a sixfold rise and whooping cough Protessa's cases. We've had polio upear in the wastewater in

New York State. So we're already trending in the wrong direction even before this current administration because of all the anti vaccine sentiment rhetoric out there. Now you throw on top of it efforts to actively dismantle our vaccine ecosystem, and I can only imagine what's going to happen. I really worry about the widespread return of all these childhood illnesses,

just like we're seeing now with measles. I mean, we're looking at the potential of sustained transmission going on for months and months to the point where we could lose our measles elimination status, and then it goes on from there, because measles is the most highly transmissible I worry about the same with whooping cough protessis. I worry about even potentially polio returning, and not only in the US, because you know, as we both know, the US is very

good at exporting its called. Sure, we export our music, we export our movies. I worry about exporting this stuff, and I worry about the impact on Latin American countries, on low and middle income countries in Asia and Africa, and in Europe as well. So a complete unraveling of our vaccine ecosystem and global goals, and that really gives me a lot of pause for concern.

killed by diseases like smallpox or folio. In the twentieth century, three hundred million people were killed by smallpox in the nineteen forties and nineteen fifties, Polio killed nearly half a million people world wide annually and paralyzed hundreds of thousands, but both of those diseases were effectively eradicated decades ago.

The last person living in an iron lung, the medical device that keeps people who were paralyzed from polio alive, died in March of twenty twenty four, and even measles, which is considered a relatively less dangerous illness, was routinely deadly before vaccination was widespread. There was a time when thousands of Americans died from the disease every year. All of that was due to the creation of vaccine policy

and infrastructure over time. But now RFK Junior and the MAHA movement threatened to tear all that down and send us back in time. Here's doctor David Gorsky.

is out of office. If they define it as just new vaccines for diseases that don't have vaccines, it might be less of an issue either way, though contrary to what they claim they want to do, which is increase public confidence in vaccines, it will almost certainly have the opposite effect. I recently wrote I think yeah. It was

last week's post. I wrote about a study that modeled what would happen with certain percentage declines in vaccine uptake for four different vaccines, including the measles vaccine, of course, and it estimates did you know some pretty catastrophic numbers, if, for instance, vaccine uptake declined even ten percent or fifty percent over the next twenty five years, you know, millions of cases, thousands of deaths, you know, in other words, going back to basically the way it was before the

measles vaccine was licensed in the early nineteen sixties. You know, you sure you can. You can complain that, you know, the model was somewhat simplistic, but if anything, I think it was probably conservative because they used a lot of

conservative assumptions. We could well be heading for that sort of future, although it takes a while for things to change, even with this sort of radical action that RFK Junior is taking, and likely we would not see the worst effects really take off until after Trump's out of office, assuming he leaves office in twenty twenty nine, so you know, it'll be left to his successsessors to deal with the mess. And it's always easier to destroy than it is to

rebuild out. Obviously. Now the interesting counterpoint to you know, Maha saying, oh, we must increase the gold standard science applied to vaccines and make the standards for approval and licensure you know, much more stringent. The exact opposite is what they're talking about. For things like stem cell therapies, you know, they're on the vast majority of which are unproven and often very expensive. A lot of other you know,

wellness treatments and that sort of a thing. So we could be seeing a lot less novel pharmaceuticals and vaccines being approved because the anti pharma you know, suspicion will be such that the bar for approval will be higher,

arguably too high. I realize that in the past I once argued that that maybe our bar for approving some drugs was too low, but that was more based on the various accelerated approval programs that had come into being in the years before that, where I thought that perhaps the follow up after the initial accelerated approval was not adequate. At the same time, it could become more and more like the Wild West. When it comes to everything else, we could very well have the equivalent of you know,

the traveling snake. Oil salesmen going across you know, the planes in their cart, you know, selling There are various lineaments. I'm not exactly sure what that would look like. I do know that, for instance, it's already pretty much like that for a lot of quote unquote stem cell therapies that have never really been demonstrated to be effective and safe, and you know, the same randomized clinical controlled trials that

they demand, you know, for vaccines. One thing I have little doubt of is that public health is going to be degraded significantly over the next four years. And how we recover from that, I don't know. I'm struggling with thea of what can be done to resist it or slow it down, given that you know, the entire Republican Party doesn't seem to want to put any sort of checks on this administration mm hm.

public health and vaccination. You know, the outcome of COVID was you know, it's it's quite clear that COVID was sort of an accelerant for a lot of the anti vaccination beliefs that had long been incubating. And you know, our public discourse and broad distrust of public health entities in general. And you know, like you said, you know, Trump's successor will be left to clean up whatever mess is made. And it's possible that Trump's successor could be

someone like JD. Van's, Yes, it could, or someone who shares this affinity for you know, quasi eugenic statements or beliefs, or this general disregard for the consequences of a sort of social Diarwinist approach to public health. And so, you know, we don't want to overstate the risks and be doomsayers. But on the other hand, there's this real potential for the return of you know, God forbid something like polio or a breakthrough a and flu.

or watch films or even in television. You know, there would be examples of something like that, someone who had been impacted by polio and whether they were left disabled, you know, and had less use of their limbs, or you know, if they ended up in an iron lung.

You know, that was something at least people were aware of the risk, and it's it's kind of paralleled with something Another public health official I spoke with talked about how there's been like two decades of doctors who went through their residencies never even seeing a case of measles, and so now we're having to sort of re educate not just our doctors, but really the whole population, and that's a massive undertaking. We'll hear a bit more from doctor Gorsky right after the sad break.

being home from school and they're not very sick. They just have little thoughts painted all over them, because I guess that's how they showed them having the measles.

you know they did. And you know there were hundreds of thousands of confirmed cases a year, maybe millions of cases a year, and at least averaging about four or five hundred deaths a year, which doesn't sound like a lot, but in anything having to do with children, that's a lot of death because we don't expect children to die. Children should not die. They usually, you know, it's not like elderly people where you know, it's expected that that's when you know, the body starts giving out and people

are reaching the end of their lives. Children's death rates should be low. That's why that's why we look at, you know, childhood cancer, and there was such an effort made, you know, over from like the fifties on to try to decrease the rate of death from childhood cancer. And you know, the results have been pretty spectacular. About eighty five percent of children with you know, cancer live, which you know, before it was you know, a pretty small number.

And the funny thing is the number of childhood cancers is very small compared to a lot of other things that cause death. We viewed it as sufficiently important to try to do something about it. At least we did, the question of whether we will continue to because you know, anti kenemotherapy and various cancer nonsense tends to go right along with maha and the other thing.

stop to this. Please, please, parents, get your kids vaccinated. Instead, what he sort of said is, yes, the vaccine, you know, vaccination is good, you know the best way to stop the outbreak. But then he buries it instead of baffling with bullshit, it's more like burying it in bullshit. He talks about, you know, vitamin A supposedly to treat measles.

He talks about how children die with measles rather than of measles, which should sound very familiar because they pulled the same rhetoric out for COVID and the idea being that only the children who were already sick were harmed by measles, and that you know, your middle class healthy children are not in any danger. You know. One way to look at the anti vaccine movement, besides the eugenesis undertones, sometimes not even undertones, one way to look at it

is as a purity cult. You may remember the whole pure blood thing from a few years ago, like those who were not vaccinated refusing to mingle with those who are. Who are you know whose blood has somehow been contaminated by the vaccine. It's the same as all. And think of how much of alternative medicine involves quote unquote detoxification. I like to call it ritual purification because it's like more of a religious concept than it is actually a

medical concept. And look at how treatment of quote unquote vaccine injury involves something like elation therapy to pull the evil heavy metals that are supposedly causing autism out of you. So the idea that you have control of your health if you only make your terrain in your body hostile to microbes through your superior lifestyle. The one example of this that I like to point out, and the best retort to it that I like to point out, comes

from about two thousand and nine. If I recall right, it was Bill Maher on his HBO show, and Bob Costas was the guess, and he was going on about how, you know, this was around the time of the each one in one flu pandemic, and he was going you knowing, he was going on about how he didn't need the flu vaccine because you know, his terrain was so hostile to the flu, because you know, of his superior lifestyle.

Caused me to roll my eyes. But and that if he were on an airplane with people coughing with the flu, he would not get the flu. What did Costas say to him? I love this retort? He said, Oh, come on, superman.

fittest herd. Immunity strategy, where snake oil and beef tallow salesmen are heralded above doctors and scientists, and where only the strongest will survive at the expense of the week. Diseases long thought defeated could return, and our ability to address new viruses will be diminished. If RFK Junior successfully dismantles what remains of our public health bureaucracy, and he's doing it at a steady clip. In other words, the future may end up looking a lot like the past,

more than it already does, and that's terrifying. The last time deadly pandemics, religious fervor, and resistance to medical science and eugenic policies all coincided historically with global trade breakdowns, things did not work out so well for anyone involved. And unfortunately, if I've taken one thing away from my exploration of anti vacs America, it's that things will likely have to get worse before they get better. It's really

hard to get people unstuck from their beliefs. Despite more than one million Americans dying of COVID, the reaction to pandemic restrictions combined with the anti vaccination movements convincing misinformation around vaccines radicalized many people against vaccines and public health measures in general. Before I recorded this final statement, the Texas House voted to advance a bill that will expand the ability for parents to seek exemptions for child vaccination

requirements for school. And this is happening as a measles outbreak is ongoing, and things aren't looking good, But there is at least one sliver of hope that I've found. As my conversation with Gere illustrates, it's possible for people who grow up in communities where vaccinations are avoided or where there is no belief in them to get out

of those communities and to get themselves vaccinated. And as my conversation with Catherine Wells illustrated, it is also possible for people who had been hesitant to get their children vaccinated for something like measles to be spurred into action given reporting around an outbreak. But the question that ultimately remains is whether enough people will have their minds changed and embrace what the science tells us we should do.

Given doctor Gorsky's astute observation that the anti vaccine movement is someone like a purity cult and Gear's comment that escaping their anti vax upbringing was sort of like escaping a cult. Unfortunately, I think we will have to temper our expectations for how quickly we can extricate our nation from this deep dark place that I call anti vax America. I'm Stephen Monicelli. Thanks for listening.