In early 2020, when the coronavirus still felt like an offshore problem, I was working on a story about vaccine skepticism. The trend pre-pandemic was for states to restrict or roll back religious and philosophical exemptions for vaccine mandates, due to a series of measles and whooping cough outbreaks. I asked someone with an anti-vaccine group whether the coronavirus wouldn’t hurt their cause, because everyone in the world was going to be praying for a vaccine.
“You’re comparing apples to fruit salad,” she said. Mandates during a crisis were one thing, she suggested, but they weren’t necessary when there’s not an emergency.
The reason there’s not a measles crisis, I thought, is because there’s already a measles vaccine. At the time, I never dreamed that the COVID-19 pandemic would turn into a market opportunity for vaccine skeptics, but that’s exactly what happened. What had been a fringe position — that vaccines are dangerous — has now entered the political mainstream. “The average person would say that vaccines are good,” says Ohio state Rep. Beth Liston. “Now all of a sudden it seems legitimate to question them.”