Quote of the Day (Nicholas Christakis, on COVID-19 Vaccines)

“We were also lucky that highly effective and safe mRNA vaccines emerged so quickly. Covid was the first pandemic in history to feature the development of such a powerful vaccine while the pathogen was still at its outset. The efforts to make a vaccine could just as easily have resulted in abject failure or a very long delay, as with previous vaccine programs. A much higher mortality rate without vaccines would likely have resulted in greater consensus not just for lockdowns and mask mandates but perhaps even for military intervention, as imagined in the movie ‘Contagion.’”— Greek-American sociologist and physician Nicholas Christakis, “Four Years Later, Covid Isn’t Done With Us,” The Wall Street Journal, Mar. 9-10, 2024

Five years ago today, a San Jose, Calif., resident became the first COVID-19 death on US soil, though this would not be confirmed until the results of an autopsy were released two months later.

As bad as the scourge of COVID has been in the US—not just to lives lost but also to our psyches, economy, and politics—it would, as Christakis has noted, have been infinitely worse without a vaccine developed so quickly.

Now, despite some pointed questioning and trepidation, the Republican majority on the Senate Finance Committee unanimously approved the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary, making it more likely that he will be confirmed by the full Senate. 

That vote would put in charge of our nation’s health system not just an opponent of vaccine mandates, but an outright skeptic who in May 2021 petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to revoke authorization for COVID vaccines, according to a New York Times report published last week.

The vote also comes when U.S. epidemiologists have been anxiously watching an outbreak of avian flu. 

A prior RFK Jr. statement—that he would pause infectious disease research for “about eight years”—does little to ease concern that he would act quickly to contain a potential future pandemic or would fund medical research that would, like the COVID vaccines, help turn the tide against any avian flu disaster—or indeed, any pandemic that might develop in the future.

If that were to occur, Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill will have an especially great deal to answer for in meekly kowtowing to Donald Trump’s demand that this nominee—like his other unqualified, even dangerous, Cabinet picks—be approved. Among the consequences would be the kind of nightmare scenario outlined above by Christakis.

In the period following World War II, the United States built a consensus for a public-health system that would not be buffeted by the winds of politics. Like so much else in the last decade, that support has become just another casualty in the culture wars. 

The insidious advancement of COVID-19 from pandemic to endemic, and the rise of RFK Jr. to such an important position of authority, are visible signs of how a virus in the body politic is rendering Americans physically sick, too.

(For more information on the challenges that presumptive HHS head Kennedy will face, I urge you to read Amy Baxter’s report this week for PharmaVoice.)

(The image of Nicholas Christakis that accompanies this post was taken by Paul Schnaittacher.)