This fact might be hard to believe, but there’s no denying it: Anti-vaccine sentiments are likely to play a key role in this year’s election. President Biden is fending off challenges from not one but two opponents regularly spouting anti-vaccine messages.
Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has repeatedly declared in campaign speeches that he “will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate,” even though all 50 states require specific vaccines for students. These regulations have been key to the United States’ successful near-elimination of measles and polio and to preventing countless outbreaks of chickenpox, rotavirus and whooping cough.
Then there’s Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who’s running as an independent and has much as 21 percent support in some polling. He has an unenviable history of anti-vaccine advocacy, including peddling debunked claims linking vaccines to autism and leading an anti-vaccine group. He claims he is not opposed to vaccines, though that’s hard to square with his recent comments that “there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective” and “I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby, and I say to him, better not get them vaccinated.”