Anti-Vaxxers Claim “Freedom” At Stake

DR. JEANNE MARRAZZO, UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA AT BIRMINGHAM: If you look at the CDC’s data on the rates of hospitalization, severe illness and death, it is directly inverse to the level of vaccination coverage. So, the entire Southeast United States really has had a problem and a challenge with vaccine uptake, particularly among younger adults. And it’s important to recognize that the number of cases we’re seeing, the hospitalizations right now are really being driven by relatively young people. People — of course, pediatric admissions right now have reached a record in the United States, but people 18 to sort of 40, they are really driving the bulk of this transmission. So you can do direct, literally, associations between the rate of vaccinations and the ability to keep people out of the hospital. Some data suggest that the current vaccines are a little bit less effective at preventing acquisition of the Delta variant, meaning they may not work as well as they used to for the original variants in terms of getting the virus, but they still work fantastically well for keeping people out of the hospital and keeping them from dying, which is really, at this point, what we really need to do.

AMANPOUR: Exactly. That is, in fact, the point. So let me turn to Tara Haelle, science journalist who’s done a deep dive onto this vaccine crisis. So, apparently, only 40 percent of the Alabama population is vaccinated. An alarming statistics suggests that the U.S., the most developed country in the world, is certain to fall to last place amongst G7 nations regarding vaccinations. And across the country, only 63 percent are vaccinated, which is different to Europe, where, as a whole, 80 percent are, and, here in the U.K., 77 percent. So, all that to say, why and what have you discovered to be the most pernicious reason for this lack of vaccination?

TARA HAELLE, AUTHOR, “VACCINATION INVESTIGATION: THE HISTORY AND SCIENCE OF VACCINES”: There’s lots of reasons, but the dominant reason is the really intense disinformation that’s being distributed. And it has been for a very long time. I have been working on following the anti-vaccine movement for a decade. And especially starting in 2015, we saw a shift, where the disinformation was continuing, but it was increasing. And it sort of — it began to merge with the rhetoric of the Republican Party, where we saw anti-vaccine activists take on that freedom cry, saying, I have the freedom to determine what happens to my body, I have the freedom to determine what happens to my kids, and whether or not I give them the vaccine. And that meshed very well with the existing rhetoric in the Republican Party of pushing for the freedom from government tyranny and other things.