In early 2021, as Covid deaths in the United States were nearing half a million and the first vaccines were being rolled out, a divided America once again sorted itself into opposite camps. Those who were jumping at the chance to avoid suffocating sickness and death were confounded by those who weren’t. Someone I know who wasn’t surprised by the skepticism worked at a grocery store focused on natural health. She texted me photos of the anti-vax literature she routinely found tucked away on the store’s baby-goods aisle. 

I googled the website on the cards and eventually landed on an article in Foreign Policy magazine, “How Russia Sows Confusion in the U.S. Vaccine Debate.” The gist was that our Cold War nemesis, which can’t defeat us militarily, hopes to destabilize us through the “exacerbation of Americans’ distrust of one another and, in turn, the erosion of their confidence in society and the U.S. government.”

Like Donald Trump, Gov. Bill Lee and Tennessee’s Republican lawmakers were eager to stoke people’s fear for political gain, even if it undermined public health. In July 2021, Lee fired the physician deftly handling Tennessee’s Covid vaccine rollout. Tennesseans later paid $150,000 to settle a lawsuit she filed against the state to clear her name. By 2022, “vaccine freedom” had become a campaign rallying cry for Republicans in the Tennessee General Assembly. 

Perhaps they sincerely don’t believe in established science: that is, when ninety-nine out of a hundred doctors believe something, these folks are willing to follow the one outlier. If so that’s their right as private citizens, but they shouldn’t be making laws about public health. Since the pandemic they’ve filed numerous bills not grounded in medical science (or reality).

Who needs Russian trolls—or the Grim Reaper—when you’ve got the Tennessee GOP? But for “leaders” like them, the United States might have eradicated measles and polio by now.

Allison
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