What the race for a COVID vaccine could mean for anti-vaxxers
And how climate advocates are strategizing for the next stimulus bill
Vaccines are the type of innovation that have worked so well that people often start to take them for granted. I’ve been reading recently about the history of vaccines (a good book is Michael Kinch’s Between Hope and Fear) and getting a clearer sense of how the anti-vaccine movement has grown and thrived, especially in the U.S.
On Sunday I published a story in The Daily Beast about what the expedited process for a coronavirus vaccine could mean for these anti-vax activists (who prefer organizing under banners of “vaccine choice” and “informed consent”).
The race to develop a COVID19 vaccine is already the fastest one in human history, which isn’t inherently a worrying thing. As one vaccine expert told me, "Speeding things up does not mean cutting corners. You can try to run the quarter-mile faster. There are ways to do that, some of which are scientific, and some of which are simply expensive.”
But anti-vaxxers are watching this all closely, confident they’ll be able to exploit the expedited process to show why vaccines are not safe. I wrote about how COVID19 is really a make-or-break moment for them.
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Environmental advocates had a tough time during negotiations last month for the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package, known as the CARES Act. While some climate advocates wanted lawmakers to condition bailout money on airlines reducing their carbon emissions, Republicans seized on this to accuse Democrats of exploiting the crisis and stalling needed relief. The Green New Deal became a punching bag, and while climate groups managed to stave off a $3 billion bailout for oil, they didn’t win new subsidies for clean energy, the provision for airline emissions was scrapped, and cash-strapped drillers may emerge replenished from the new aid.
I wanted to learn how climate advocates were thinking through all this, and how they were gearing up for the likely future stimulus fights to come. What kinds of environmental demands are they planning to make? How explicit will they be? Where and how does a Green New Deal fit into this?
Demanding climate conditions for federal aid has precedent. During the 2008 auto industry bailout, General Motors and Chrysler had to accept new fuel-efficiency standards in exchange for money. And the 2009 stimulus package included new subsidies for clean energy and infrastructure. Still, things are particularly complicated right now and many progressives worry Democrats are not serious enough about leveraging the power they have — with demands like vote-by-mail and saving the postal service hanging in the balance. You can read how climate advocates are thinking through these politics in In These Times.
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