Center for Vaccine Development co-director Dr. Peter Hotez said Tuesday on NBC News Digital’s “Meet the Press Now” that 200,000 Americans needlessly died because of “far-right” anti-vaccine aggression that is amplified every night on Fox News.
Hotez said, “Well, remember, the anti-vaccine activism is at an all-time high. Two-hundred-thousand Americans needlessly lost their lives in the last half of 2021 because they refused the COVID vaccine. Despite the fact that vaccines were widely available, they were victims of this expanding anti-vaccine aggression.”
He continued, “And we know where it’s coming from. It’s continuing to 2022, and now that the anti-vaccine activists are emboldened. They’re now politically empowered. They’ve been adopted by the House Freedom Caucus by the far-right. Their false messages are amplified every night on Fox News. Even if COVID starts to dissipate, they’re not stopping. They are going to go after all childhood vaccinations, and we are already seeing this play out in state legislatures now. And now we have the first case of acute flaccid paralysis of polio. I’m worried about measles. I’m worried about polio.”
Hotez added, “Overwhelmingly, COVID is a bad illness. There is a lot of misinformation, disinformation again from the anti-vaccine groups who try to sugarcoat COVID-19 in kids. We lost over 1200 kids to COVID in the United States.”
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