Democrats have become the party of anti-vaxxers

Fewer people than ever would be willing to get a coronavirus vaccine if one were made available today. Democrats are to blame.

Democrats began spreading baseless conspiracy theories about the coronavirus vaccine this summer in what appeared to be an attempt to undermine President Trump’s reelection efforts. The argument went something like this: Trump wants to be reelected, so he is pushing to expedite the approval process for a vaccine; therefore, we should be skeptical of any vaccine released before the election.

“[If doctors] tell us that we should take it, I’ll be the first in line to take it. Absolutely,” vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris said during her debate with Vice President Mike Pence. “But if Donald Trump tells us that we should take it, I’m not taking it.”

Pence rightly called out Harris for endangering the health of millions of people by needlessly sowing doubt about the vaccine’s safety in advance. But Harris’s argument, as irresponsible as it was, at least had a political explanation. Not so anymore. We are two weeks away from the election with no chance at all of a vaccine being released beforehand. So why are Democrats still discouraging people from trusting a vaccine?

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said on Monday that he would “need someone other than this FDA and CDC saying it’s safe” to encourage New Yorkers to take the vaccine. Why? Because the vaccine would be “new” and “done quickly.”

Cuomo’s answer, like Harris’s, makes no sense. For months, he and other Democrats have been urging the American public to trust health experts — except on this, evidently. Should we not trust that the health experts know what they’re doing when developing and testing a vaccine? Should we not trust the process that has been put into place for this very purpose?

What Democrats don’t seem to understand is that you can’t pick and choose which parts of the system to trust. The skepticism they’ve sown now will not simply disappear if Joe Biden becomes president. The public will remain hesitant because they now have a reason to distrust the entire process.

Moreover, Democrats’ fearmongering about Trump’s role in the approval process is nonsense. Yes, he’s been pushing the process forward — as any president facing a global pandemic would. We need a solution, and we need it quickly. But just because he’s cutting through red tape that ordinarily slows the bureaucracy down does not mean he is circumventing the testing process to which our entire government is legally bound. The FDA cannot suddenly decide to release a vaccine because Trump says so. It must be thoroughly vetted, tested, and studied before the experts even think about distributing it. This process remains the same regardless of who is president, and Democrats know it.

There is no excuse, explanation, or justification for Democrats’ anti-vaccine conspiracy theorizing. It is reckless, and it will hurt this country as we continue to take the next steps forward.