The Rise of the Measles-Industrial Complex

Why MAGA wants children to get sick and die

On Monday Donald Trump issued an executive order that, if implemented, would substantially reduce the number of vaccines American children receive and, in practice, how many of them are vaccinated at all. While it’s not clear whether Trump’s order has any legal force, it will reinforce public skepticism of and hostility to vaccines, which has led to declining vaccination rates. This decline has in turn led to a surge in infectious diseases that had previously been virtually eradicated, notably measles. As the chart below shows, cumulative cases in the first 30 weeks of this year already exceeded the total for last year, which itself was the worst measles year since 1991:

Trump justified his anti-vax decree by pointing to an alleged link between vaccines and autism. Yet dozens of careful scientific studies have failed to find any such link.

However, you know what does have a strong, well-documented correlation with autism? Air pollution. Childhood exposure to air pollution is clearly associated with higher rates of autism. Moreover, scientists have found a found a strong association between autism and pre-natal maternal exposure to particulate matter from fossil fuel pollution.

So Trump’s campaign against vaccines won’t reduce autism, but it will cause many children to suffer devastating, possibly deadly, infections diseases. Meanwhile, autism rates will rise as a result of his crusade against clean energy and in favor of dirty energy.

The question is, why is Trump doing this? To understand what is happening, we need to put Monday’s executive order in the context of the general right-wing turn against vaccines, and against science in general.

Why do I call it a “right-wing turn”? Because declining support for childhood vaccines is entirely a Republican phenomenon. Gallup has some striking charts on this. One tracks belief that it’s extremely important for parents to get their children vaccinated — a belief that has plunged over the past decade, but only among Republicans:

Another tracks belief that vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases they prevent, a false belief that has soared in popularity — but, again, only among Republicans:

It’s worth noting, however, that even among Republicans the view that vaccines are unsafe is a minority position. Here’s the latest YouGov poll:

So Trump is very much taking an extremist position on vaccines. But it’s clearly a position that he believes will resonate with his base.

Why is this happening? Anti-vaccine sentiment is a lot like climate change denial. In both cases, to understand the politics one must do two things. First, follow the money: look at which interest groups benefit financially from misinformation, and why those groups have power. Second, follow the culture war: ask why this particular misinformation resonates with the prejudices and grievances of a segment of the population.

At first sight, the monetary interests behind anti-vax politics are less obvious than the fossil-fuel interests backing climate denial. After all, nobody benefits directly when children get measles.

Peddling quack medicine is, however, a highly profitable business. And it’s a business deeply enmeshed with the right-wing media ecosystem: Ads for dietary supplements with no proven medical benefits and other forms of snake oil have for decades been a key revenue source for right-wing talk radio, conspiracy-theory websites, and more. So there is a longstanding connection between hucksters touting fake cures and hard-right politics. Some observers were startled to see Dr. Mehmet Oz — who has touted, among other things, the health wonders of bovine colostrum — named by Trump as administrator for Medicare and Medicaid, a job for which he has no relevant qualifications. But given the underlying monetary and political incentives, Oz’s appointment is no surprise.

Why are right-wing audiences receptive to the lies of the snake oil industry along with agitprop against vaccines? To understand such gullibility, we have to address the culture war part of this debacle.

The modern right is a deeply anti-intellectual, anti-science, anti-expertise movement that is highly receptive to conspiracy theories. And like RFK Jr during his recent interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, when confronted with scientific facts it flies into a sputtering rage. So the snake oil industry targets its marketing to the kind of person who listens to the rants of right-wing influencers, gets their news from Newsmax, and finds common cause with the neo-Nazi posters on X. By framing their false claims as “The Medical Miracles that the Elites Don’t Want You to Know About”, the snake oil hucksters create a receptive audience for conspiracy theories that malign actual medical miracles like vaccines.

Unfortunately, Covid greatly boosted anti-vaccine forces. The witch hunt against Anthony Fauci shows how strong a hold anti-medical-science conspiracy theories now have on the Republican Party. This was not, to be clear, because medical science failed. In fact, the clear negative correlation across the United States between rates of Covid vaccination and Covid deaths was an object lesson in how effective vaccines can be. But those Americans already inclined to believe that the elites are out to get them, already hostile to any notion of collective action for the common good, reacted to vaccine mandates with rage. And their rage quickly generalized beyond preventive measures against Covid to preventive measures against all diseases — including measles.

Trump’s executive order has little legal force, and assuming that the next president is sane, anti-vax conspiracy theories won’t remain the basis of official U.S. policy. But the political forces that led to this new attack on vaccination will remain even after Trump is gone.

Thanks to Trump and the triumph of snake oil, many American children will get sick from preventable diseases, some of them dying. And autism rates will continue to go up.

MUSICAL CODA