Anti-science extremism is now spreading like a virus on the political right. Legislation in some red states seeks to roll back vaccination requirements not just for the coronavirus but for any other disease — potentially even preventing schools from enforcing long-existing requirements that students be vaccinated against polio, measles and the like. It sounds extreme, but in fact it’s the logical outcome of the irrational conservative backlash against coronavirus vaccination mandates.
Vaccines have saved an incalculable number of lives in the past century. Smallpox, a deadly scourge throughout the history of civilization, has been eradicated globally for almost half a century now. Once-common and dangerous childhood diseases like polio, measles and whooping cough have been brought under control by school vaccination mandates in place for generations, without significant controversy.
It takes a special kind of historical ignorance to imagine that, on balance, the minimal risk inherent in vaccines is remotely commensurate with the massive harm these various diseases have inflicted on humanity down through the ages — and could again, if left unchallenged. That’s why, until recently, America’s anti-vaccination movement was a minor fringe.
