The COVID-19 outbreak helped unite the nation’s anti-vax movement, with evangelical Christians convinced that vaccine mandates, masking requirements and social distancing violated religious freedoms, religion scholar Kira Ganga Kieffer said. The two communities already shared a distrust of government when…
Trump’s EEOC goes after another company that required vaccines
An Oklahoma company has agreed to settle a federal religious and disability discrimination lawsuit stemming from its firing of unvaccinated employees during the pandemic, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced. AG Equipment Co. in Broken Arrow will pay $4.2…
Trump’s EEOC targets businesses that required COVID vaccines
The Trump administration is using the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to punish businesses that required employees to get COVID vaccinations in order to protect public health. These actions appear to be inspired by the vaccine denialism of Robert F. Kennedy…
The lunatics are now in charge
Not all ideas are equally valid, and not all beliefs are equally true. There is reality and there is fantasy. A heavy dose of “both sides are valid” denial of reality has set up the United States of America for…
Today, vaccine hesitancy is growing and celebrated
In the five years since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Republicans and Christians have seen a complete shift in their perspective on vaccines that is changing federal policy and affecting global charity efforts — potentially sparking a measles epidemic…
Measles outbreak inevitable due to lower vaccination rates, experts say
The spread of measles is inevitable in communities where reliance on vaccine alternatives is high and trust in medical science is low, a panel of vaccine and infectious disease experts warned during a March 20 webinar. The media briefing was…
Delivering the nation’s health care into the hands of anti-vaxxers is the wrong decision
When I was pregnant with our twins, I read stacks of books on “what to expect when you’re expecting.” (I’ve since discovered, with twins always expect the unexpected.) One well-marked book in my stack was about childhood vaccinations. It was…
Churches must preach the truth on vaccines
One simple way churches could proclaim truth in an era of Trumpian disinformation is to speak plainly about the importance of vaccines. At the height of the COVID pandemic, as many Americans were resistant to what they considered an untested…
Florida surgeon general spreads more doubts about COVID vaccines
Florida’s controversial surgeon general — who has said his religious faith inspires his opposition to COVID vaccines — began the new year by warning mRNA coronavirus vaccines could contaminate patients’ DNA. That conspiracy theory has been roundly debunked by the…
Gap widens on American confidence in vaccines
More Americans trust childhood immunizations than they do vaccines to protect against coronavirus, according to a new study by Pew Research Center. “The survey findings highlight the sizable gap between higher public confidence in childhood vaccines and lower ratings of…
Vaccine hesitancy is not a matter of doctrine, but for some it remains a matter of faith
One-fifth of the United States population remains unvaccinated against COVID-19, and one-third are not fully vaccinated. The gap between the vaccinated and unvaccinated remains for much the same reason that has been true from the beginning: Those least likely to…
Former Surgeon General Jerome Adams, now teaching at Purdue, still thinks about the pandemic every day
Former U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams found himself at the center of American history in dealing with a once-in-a-century pandemic. Now he wants Americans to understand that while things are improving, the pandemic is still with us. “I do think…