Yesterday, Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed Dr. Joseph Ladapo, an apostle of the Great Barrington Declaration’s eugenics lite “focused protection” approach to COVID-19, as Florida Surgeon General. If you want to see the harm caused by the GBD and crank “COVID contrarian” physicians, look no further.
The embrace of antimask and antivaccine views by the right wing is due to more than just clever reaching out by antivaxxers. There’s a big money astroturf machine encompassing various “think tanks” behind it.
It’s been several years coming, but President Biden’s issuing of a vaccine mandate for federal employees and large employers has removed all doubt that the Republican Party is not just anti-vaccine mandate. It’s antivaccine.
There have always been “reasonable” apologists for the antivaccine movement. Thanks to COVID-19 their prominence has increased as they mistakenly conflate “antivaccine” with “vaccine hesitant.”
On Monday the FDA granted full approval to Comirnaty, the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech. By Tuesday, antivaxxers had a propaganda line that the vaccine is still “experimental.”
