Listen to this full episode of The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.
Today’s right-wing conservatives have recently adopted a dangerous strain of inflammatory anti-vaccine rhetoric, according to scientist and vaccine expert Dr. Peter Hotez, who joins The New Abnormal this week to discuss his new book on the subject, The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science.
And he says there’s plenty of research to suggest that the vaccine hesitancy born of far-right conspiracies is at least in part responsible for the unique trajectory of American COVID-19 deaths throughout the past three-plus years, something he addresses at length in his book.
“The reason it’s important to talk about this is not because it’s just another check box in the culture wars, or something to do with wokeness or anti-wokeness—it is the fact that it killed Americans in unprecedented numbers,” Dr. Hotez said.
“This aggressive anti-vaccine movement I estimate killed up to 200,000 Americans during the Delta and BA.1 Omicron waves, after vaccines were widely available, because people refused vaccines,” he added. “They went down this rabbit hole and believed elected members of Congress, the senators, members of the House of Representatives, the far-right podcasters on Fox News, and it killed people.”
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Then, labor reporter and author Kim Kelly joins the program to discuss the ongoing United Auto Workers’ strike—as well as a host of other labor-related news.
Plus! An analysis of Kristen Welker’s debut on Meet the Press, complete with an off-the-rails interview with former President Donald Trump.
Listen to this full episode of The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.
