By Gary Evans, Medical Writer
Distinguished scientist and vaccine advocate Peter Hotez, MD, PhD, is battling the antivaccine movement and ubiquitous misinformation campaigns that have science on the run at the cost of thousands of lives annually.
Indeed, the title of his upcoming book says it all: The Deadly Rise of Anti-science: A Scientist’s Warning. After he delivered a keynote address at the 2023 conference of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC), Hospital Employee Health asked Hotez what challenges medicine and science are facing.
“It’s a really big concern,” Hotez says. “I think it is going to spill over into things like gene editing in biomedical science. In some ways, it is reproducing what climate scientists [faced] in the 2010s. As we head toward the 2024 election, it’s not going to get any better, particularly since we have two [Republican presidential] candidates now who are [antivaccine]. It’s not good for the country.”
In a recent article, Hotez detailed the threat to climate scientists, saying it led to a legal defense fund and the establishment of a new type of clearinghouse organization for biomedical scientists to seek both legal counsel and general support. “Because we are a nation built on science and technology, there is too much at stake to allow our scientific institutions and profession to falter,” he wrote. “All indications so far suggest that the biomedical scientific community has not prepared adequately, and there are few plans to counter these politically motivated attacks.”1
Hotez is dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine and professor of pediatrics and molecular virology and microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. He was instrumental in distributing a non-patented COVID-19 vaccine called Corbevax globally in a time when vaccines were primarily limited to wealthy countries.
Still, in the United States, where the mRNA vaccines were plentiful and free, tens of thousands of people refused to accept them. Hotez said those who refused the vaccine and died were “victims of antivaccine aggression.” With vaccines roughly 90% protective against death, he estimated 200,000 people died after refusing the shots. A small, mild-mannered man with a devastating wit, Hotez has received threats for his scientific stances, and had security posted near the APIC stage. With Anthony Fauci, MD, out of the pandemic limelight, Hotez joked the antivaxxers must consider him “Fauci-lite.” Hotez is a frequent guest on TV news programs, patiently extolling the benefits of vaccination over the risks of refusal.
Recently, Hotez ran into a kerfuffle because he refused to appear on the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast to debate antivaxxer and presidential candidate Robert Kennedy, Jr., saying it would quickly descend into “The Jerry Springer Show.” An exasperated Hotez said this “is not debating some aspect of the culture wars — 200,000 died because of this. It’s the hardest thing to talk about because all of our training as healthcare professionals, as physicians and scientists, says you are not supposed to talk about politics. I get that — I don’t like talking about it, either.”
That said, Hotez plunged ahead to APIC audience applause as he showed analysis2 and charts of the discrepancy in COVID-19 vaccination rates between traditional red and blue states, which included a New York Times report titled “Red Covid.”3
“Why did this happen? It happened because of the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas in 2021,” Hotez said. “They basically said, “First, they are going to vaccinate you, and then then they are going to take away your guns and Bibles.’”
Indeed, a meeting report revealed — after it was announced that government officials may go door-to-door to encourage vaccination — now-former Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-NC, said, “they could then go door-to-door and take your guns, they could go door-to-door and take your Bibles.”4 A similar daily threat while delivering the U.S. mail was not mentioned.
“As ridiculous as that sounds to us, people across Texas essentially accepted it,” Hotez said, estimating 40,000 of the 200,000 deaths in the unvaccinated occurred in Texas.
The antivaccine message also appeared frequently on Fox News, Hotez said, “as 3 million viewers every night went down this rabbit hole and made the decision not to get vaccines. They were targeted. These are people who would give you the shirt off their backs, and they were victims of this. I used this example in a talk at Stanford of where would I’d rather have a flat tire? In Palo Alto, they’d be driving right by. In East Texas, there would be people fighting over the opportunity to help you. These were victims of antivaccine aggression, and it is very political.”
That, in a nutshell, is the problem. When the high bar of objective scientific truth — proven or discarded through repeated experiments — becomes merely a choice of political affiliation, rational thought has left the building.
“I couldn’t care less about their conservative views, but somehow you have to uncouple them from vaccine science,” Hotez said. “Because it is killing too many Americans. Look at the numbers of the societal cost of [COVID-related] death. These are not small numbers. We’re talking about numbers that will be right up there with any other societal cost of death.”
Clinicians have been correcting misperceptions and myths about vaccines ever since the annual influenza shot began. But as an audience member asked, “How do you reason with someone who is against the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine?”
“The short answer is, ‘I have no clue,’” Hotez lamented. “We used to have [reasonable] conversations about why measles can be a killer disease and you should get vaccinated. Now, it has shifted to peoples’ political allegiance. When your identity is tied to this, it becomes much tougher. The health sector doesn’t know what to do with this.”
Another healthcare worker in the audience noted showing public data on vaccinations, hospitalizations, intubation, and deaths has been persuasive in some cases.
The discussion turned to the responsibility of healthcare workers to take the vaccine to protect themselves, colleagues, and patients. The federal mandate has been lifted, but many individual facilities and health systems are expected to require COVID-19 immunization as a condition of work, much as they do with flu shots.
“I am big proponent of healthcare providers getting their vaccines,” Hotez said. “You want to know when you go to a hospital that your provider is vaccinated against influenza and everything else.” Hotez reminded the audience the Supreme Court upheld the healthcare worker mandate even while rejecting such a requirement for businesses with at least 100 employees.
REFERENCES
- Hotez P. Anti-science conspiracies pose new threats to US biomedicine in 2023. FASEB Bioadv 2023;5: 228-232.
- Kates J, Tolbert J, Rouw A. The red/blue divide in COVID-19 vaccination rates continues: An update. Kaiser Family Foundation. Jan 19, 2022.
- Leonhardt D. Red Covid. The New York Times. Sept. 27, 2021.
- Holmes D. They clapped for death at CPAC. Esquire. July 12, 2021.
Distinguished scientist and vaccine advocate Peter Hotez, MD, PhD, is battling the antivaccine movement and ubiquitous misinformation campaigns that have science on the run at the cost of thousands of lives annually.
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