Last Friday, someone anonymously emailed me an article from a far-right American website as supposed proof that I had killed my husband with Covid vaccines — a reboot of the same baseless narrative first pushed in the weeks following his death in late 2022.
According to mRNA vaccine conspiracists, any untimely death or health affliction since the pandemic is because of the Covid mRNA vaccines, often linking unrelated medical events to vaccination without any evidence.
My husband died from a ruptured aortic aneurysm; his condition had no connection to Covid vaccines. Autopsy results confirmed that. But in the conspiracist worldview, any such event can be folded into the narrative.
At the time, I didn’t realize the email foreshadowed what would come later that day: news of a shooting at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta.
The gunman was reportedly fueled by Covid-19 vaccine conspiracy theories and blamed the vaccine for his depression. The attack left both himself and a law enforcement officer dead, and C.D.C. buildings riddled with bullet holes.
The symbolism could not be clearer: Scientists, doctors, public health officials, and law enforcement officials — people whose life’s work is to protect the nation — have targets on their backs.
Public health in America has always been divisive because it sits at the intersection of science, government authority, personal freedom and economic interests — subjects Americans have long debated fiercely.
From smallpox quarantines in the 1800s to seatbelt mandates in the 20th century to Covid restrictions in our own time, public health demands collective action in a society deeply attached to individual liberty.
Public health measures, including vaccine mandates, can disrupt the economy and family life, as well as challenge cultural norms — pressures that can drive people apart, as they did during the pandemic. They can be especially contentious when blame is assigned along partisan or cultural lines.
Covid vaccination has become tribal. On social media, one far-right American political activist claimed the Covid vaccines have “killed many, many people” and predicted more deaths to come.
Pro-vaccine commenters have mocked and insulted vaccine-skeptical people, reinforcing the perception that the vaccine debate is as much about identity and status as it is about evidence or health.
That dynamic was evident throughout the Covid pandemic. Public officials and experts across the political spectrum often failed to explain the values and trade-offs behind their decisions.
During the pandemic, and as a member of the Biden administration’s Covid-19 Advisory Board, I talked about “following the science.” I explained that this meant recommendations might change as new evidence emerged.
But I could have been clearer that prioritizing saving lives could mean sacrificing other social and economic goods, and that such trade-offs were unavoidable in a crisis of that scale. I was speaking about these choices by May 2020, but the pandemic response had already hardened along partisan lines.
Misinformation about Covid vaccines is circulating online — and is even being spread by the federal government — in part because science was treated as the only source of truth during the pandemic, rather than one important tool alongside lived experience, context, history, culture and values.
That misunderstanding has left science vulnerable to being twisted for political ends, and two of the most powerful people shaping health policy right now are doing just that.
