Lessons From Leftist Pandemic Disinterest Toward Rebuilding Public Health

Author’s Note: This is a lightly edited and updated version of an essay originally published in New Green Horizons on October 13, 2025.

In 2022-2023, the Biden administration rapidly dismantled the emergency social safety nets put in place during the early COVID-19 pandemic. Biden officials declared the pandemic to be over despite objections from experts, backpedaled from vaccine and mandate policy to try to avoid controversy, and canceled social safety nets resulting in many impacts including the highest increases to child poverty since 1967.

Unfortunately, the failure of the broader left to meet the moment and resist the dismantling of early-pandemic-era policy has encouraged further dismantlement of public health and medical science by Trump’s Health Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The goal of this essay is to understand what happened, why the left did not organize around public health, and propose a path forward for reopening a leftist approach to driving public discussion and debate on public health in context to broader issues of capitalism.

The Current Status of COVID-19 in the United States

So first, in the five years since the pandemic began, what are the statistics? Unfortunately, the CDC has tracked over 1.2 million COVID-19 deaths and it is likely this is severely under-reporting the real numbers, as hospitals are no longer required to report respiratory illness statistics. Death isn’t the only outcome but other impacts are often disregarded in reporting: hospitalization rates are still nearly 100 per 100,000, which translates to around 250,000 hospitalizations per year for the US’s 300+ million people. Every single hospitalization threatens death, disability (including “Long Covid,” which can impact the ability to work and live), and huge medical debt. Children and teens especially face increased chances of “Long Covid” with every reinfection.

Positive COVID-19 test rates are nearing 10% in nationwide averages as COVID-19 cases rose since July 2025, yet we’re not hearing any sort of warning or guidance from federal or state governments. Compare this current lack of reaction with ABC reporting in 2020 that pandemic quarantines were necessary in states with rates hitting 10%. Recent research suggests that COVID-19 has resulted in year-round flu-like conditions, increasing the amount of work absences and early retirements compared to pre-pandemic years.

While death rates have been lower in recent history (thanks to vaccines in large part), this situation is not guaranteed to last. With how rapidly the virus mutates it is entirely possible for a much more deadly variant to mutate at any point and spread rapidly — and mutations become much more common as more people are infected and fewer are vaccinated.

Kennedy’s Assault on Vaccines

Kennedy’s crusade against the COVID-19 vaccines has led to a larger attack on mRNA vaccine research. mRNA, short for messenger ribonucleic acid, is a single-stranded molecule used by our cells to synthesize proteins, and is used to rapidly develop targeted vaccines for respiratory illnesses like COVID-19 & flu. mRNA is also being developed for targeted vaccines against cancer, tumors, and more. Kennedy is canceling $500 million in funding for mRNA vaccine development projects, which the science journal Nature called an act of “the highest irresponsibility”. This sets back our ability to fight an ongoing pandemic as well as advance cancer research, and will result in unnecessary deaths from both sources.

Despite scientists speaking out, Kennedy is reportedly planning to outright ban COVID-19 vaccines from the market within months, making them impossible for anyone to access moving forward. In recent testimony before Congress, Kennedy made several false and misleading statements, including misunderstandings about mRNA, downplaying the number of pandemic deaths, and hinting that he was planning action against other vaccines beyond Covid.

Kennedy also drastically revamped the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) to seat members that would support his policies. Kennedy’s ACIP has already changed childhood vaccination recommendations without any scientific evidence to back up the changes. Even Republican senators noted that “there are real concerns that safe, proven vaccines like measles, like hepatitis B, and others, could be in jeopardy” due to Kennedy’s policies.

Kennedy attempts to justify these actions by making false claims about vaccines and calling for retraction of scientific papers he doesn’t like; thankfully, scientists from the medical journal Annals of Internal Medicine refuted Kennedy’s claims with strong data showing vaccine safety and efficacy and refused to retract the papers. As of late November 2025, Kennedy is escalating attacks on vaccine adjuvants, blaming aluminum compounds without any evidence for autism, and has ordered the CDC to update its website to falsely claim “ignored” links between vaccines and autism.

Anti-Vax is Profitable

Why would Kennedy and other Trump nominees like Oz be so resistant to vaccines, pharmaceuticals, and public health? As is the case with many issues in a capitalist system, one explanation comes from the profit motive.

Anti-vax culture has become a profitable industry, ironically preying on fears of for-profit corporations by attacking pharmaceuticals. Lydia Greene, in an article “Confessions of an Ex-Anti-Vaxxer,” describes what the anti-vax movement has become:

“The anti-vax movement isn’t simply a grassroots network of concerned parents. It’s an industry. It’s lucrative, selling supplements, e-books, courses and products. It operates on a simple premise: if you’re not vaccinating your kids, you need to protect them somehow, and here’s a bunch of things you can buy to do that. The biggest voices in the space publish books, make public appearances, manage huge social media platforms or run Substacks with paying subscribers. They earn big money.”

Kennedy has made millions from referrals for vaccine lawsuits while deregulating and dismantling health and food safety. From 2015-2023, Kennedy made over $20,000 per week by chairing Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit advocacy group alleging connections between children’s health issues and vaccines, fluoridation of drinking water, acetaminophen, wireless communication devices, and more, then using lawsuits to force public health policy changes. A 2019 study, just before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, found Children’s Health Defense (originally known as World Mercury Project) was one of two major buyers of anti-vaccine advertisements on Facebook, with ads “largely centered on the belief that vaccines are harmful and are contributing to an ‘epidemic of childhood chronic illness’” and appealing to readers for donations.

Oz has up to $25 million in company stocks in and works as a consultant for iHerb, a website selling healthy and beauty supplements. The recent Trump administration endorsement of Luecovorin has raised questions if Oz will profit from iHerb’s sale of folinic acid, the generic ingredient of Leucovorin which is essentially a form of Vitamin B. Oz has additional investments in health insurance company United HealthCare and other health system companies. Naturally, there is more money to be made the more the healthcare system is privatized and public health programs are ended.

Militarism and imperialism are key components of capitalism beyond pure profit that have also influenced health policy. The Pentagon was caught running anti-vax campaigns to undermine China, due to China manufacturing its own COVID-19 vaccine Sinovac and developing its own mRNA vaccine technology. The US and China have been the top filers for vaccine patents, creating competing economic interests around COVID-19 that drive up prices and inhibit distribution globally.

Anti-Vax to Ableism, Eugenics, and the End of Public Health

Bird flu is spreading globally in poultry farms as of November 2025, but while many other countries have quickly reacted by vaccinating poultry, the US has “held off [on vaccinations] amid political and economic opposition” according to reporting by ProPublica. Experts warn that without vaccines, virus mutations can begin infecting humans. The anti-vaccination movement, emboldened by Kennedy, has now moved beyond human vaccination, creating dangerous conditions where a new pandemic can start if the virus mutates human-to-human transmission capability. This occurs as the US is at risk of losing its measles elimination status due to declining vaccination rates and the highest number of reported cases in over three decades.

While Kennedy is rewriting national vaccine policy, it is important to recognize he is still largely a symptom of the overall problem and not the primary source. Anti-vax tendencies are harnessed by right-wing extremists to pipeline people into a larger reactionary movement promoting eugenicist ends. Anti-vax activists used a playbook of misinformation to quickly shift the public debate away from protecting everyone — especially those disabled or more at risk of severe illness such as with compromised immune systems — to an individualistic approach that abdicated any governmental or social responsibility. Engaging in “lockdown revisionism,” vaccine and masking policies were misleadingly recast as impediments to individual social life, arguing it was not the government’s job to interfere with individual health decisions or require any public health action. Those most at risk were on their own to deal with the pandemic, and should simply stay out of public spaces if they want to be assured to remain safe. Effectively, the actual risk, costs, and impediments to social life were flipped entirely onto the most vulnerable.

We can see the pivot from anti-vax to more extremist attitudes as Kennedy has moved onto policy beyond vaccines. The Office of Long COVID Research and Practice has been shut down, ignoring the 20+ million Americans facing Long COVID symptoms and disability regardless of vaccination status. Kennedy, alongside Trump and Mehmet Oz, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator, spread misinformation about a supposed link between Tylenol to autism, despite decades of use and previous studies showing there is no link. Pregnant people should “tough it out” according to Trump, potentially putting their health in serious danger for the sake of avoiding autism.

At first, a recent report about OSHA cuts to workplace safety regulations may seem unrelated. However, the cuts are proposed by alleging “burden” on employers to implement safety protocols when a specific workplace safety standard does not yet exist. In other words: it costs employers money, so why do it? Instead, workers are to manage their own safety as individuals, perfectly in line with the “lockdown revisionism” stances that argue the government should “stay out” of public health decision-making and should not compel businesses or employees to act in the name of public safety and health.

Kennedy has also ordered an FDA review of mifeprestone despite its decades of safe use, raising alarm that access to mifeprestone, and therefore abortion access, may be severely restricted in the near future, threatening women’s rights and reproductive rights. Kennedy claims this is done in the name of health, yet simultaneously is behind the FDA withdrawing asbestos testing of cosmetic products. Despite Kennedy and Trump previously opposing pesticides, the Trump EPA has approved PFAS-based “forever chemicals” pesticides for use in the food supply, again showing a purposeful selectiveness of what is deemed “healthy”.

While one might be tempted to write off Kennedy’s statements and policies as misunderstanding basic concepts of science and seeking profits, his actions suggest a far more insidious and cynical approach, taking advantage of public science illiteracy and distrust of pharmaceutical corporations to promote a eugenicist, sexist agenda. Ironically, the talk against “Big Pharma” merely benefits other industries, such as wellness, cosmetics, and corporate agriculture.

Even if Kennedy is ousted — and he absolutely should be fired if he refuses to resign — the problematic misinformation and eugenicist views will continue as the Kennedy-aligned “Make America Healthy Again” (“MAHA”) movement pivots to a new representative to keep up their profitable, eugenicist “wellness” industry. The movement as a whole must be resisted and addressed; Kennedy is only a symptom of the problem, not the root cause.

Anti-Vax and Ableism in the Left

The left must firmly confront this harmful “MAHA” movement in public debate. In late 2021, as a National Steering Co-Chair for the Green Party of the United States, I advocated a Green COVID Relief Plan initially proposed by the Hawkins/Walker 2020 campaign and worked with my fellow Steering Committee members to approve a statement on COVID-19. The statement was unanimously approved by our 9-member Steering Committee, and posted online with an urging to all Greens to find ways to advocate the agenda in their states and communities.

The statement reaffirmed a commitment to vaccine science and public health policy including vaccine mandates, and called for the ending of vaccine patents that prevented rapid, cheap international distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine. The core of the plan advocated for economic relief protecting workers’ health and ending the pandemic:

• Monthly relief checks for every individual;
• Expanded unemployment benefits;
• Rent, mortgage, and utility payment cancellation;
• Eviction and utility shutoff moratoriums;
• Emergency Medicare-for-All to cover all vaccines and pandemic illness, leading toward a permanent single-payer system and a community-controlled non-profit National Health Service; and
• Universal high-speed internet access for both jobs and education.

While some Greens reached out to express their full support for the statement and vaccines including mandates, some strongly opposed the idea of mandates entirely. Many others felt the COVID-19 policy and the fight around it, particularly over vaccine mandates, was “distracting” from other issues. At the time, I warned that withdrawing from the moment and refusing a strong stance would allow extremism to win the “controversy.” Extremists would take the national narrative away from our collective need to act for the safety and health of all and substitute their own eugenicist, fascist views instead. Ultimately, to my disappointment, the Green Party of the United States National Committee effectively “agreed to disagree” and took no further action on vaccine advocacy or even the remainder of the COVID Relief Plan. Without national consistency and organizing, individuals and state parties advocating for COVID-19 relief were left on their own.

The Green Party wasn’t the only leftist organization to back off from pandemic policy. Across the left, many organizations quickly began to hold in-person events again, often with at best only a “recommendation” of masking. The general sense was that vaccines were now available, so the pandemic was essentially “over” — interestingly, in-line with the Biden administration’s “back to normal” policy — and there was no use talking about it anymore, certainly not discussing hot-button issues like mandates. Organizations pivoted right back to the same pre-pandemic issues and tactics and, as community organizer Raia Smalls put it, “deprioritized COVID”. Smalls noted that, for example, the Democratic Socialists of America’s (DSA’s) Disability Working Group (DWG) has seen a proliferation of ableism in DSA around pandemic issues. As Brynne Olsen, Communications Secretary of DSA’s DWG at the time, put it, “[m]any comrades see disability issues as identity politics, as opposed to issues of liberation.”

With the left ceding the whole conversation around public health and disability rights, the extreme right is now confidently driving the narrative. While the overwhelming majority of Americans support school vaccine mandates to protect against preventable diseases, some polls show support dropping rapidly, with much less urgency for action even among supporters. Perhaps this is why Florida is now banning school vaccine mandates, one of the consequences I feared as national co-chair.

Public Health Versus Authoritarian Eugenics

To review, we are not only resisting Kennedy and Trump, but a whole misinformation movement capturing “hearts and minds” via fear-mongering. As YouTube essayist Byrony Claire describes, COVID-19 was utilized to build distrust in vaccines and science and end public health and social safety nets. Eugenicist policies start by discriminating against disabled people and mental health, and grow criticism toward anyone not living the “right” life as defined by the extremist right-wing.

Ultimately, the pandemic, vaccines, and mandates have illuminated a contradiction in US leftist values that must be resolved. As pointed out by author Duncan Chapel, a “conservative left” has grown in recent years due to changing material and political conditions. “Conservative left” is of course a contradiction which can ensnare otherwise left-leaning individuals into right-wing traps. COVID-19 and public health appears to have triggered a right-wing trap in thinking that has been exploited to divide the working class and fray solidarity while dismantling public health, safety, and services.

The contradiction comes from the right-wing framing of individual liberty as a “freedom” to go shopping and patronize business. Under this viewpoint, any public health policy is an “authoritarian” assault on that freedom. What gets swept under the rug of course is ironically how many people are compelled into unsafe and harmful situations by the refusal to enforce public health standards. In a society where food, housing, healthcare, are not guaranteed except if one works a wage job, opening businesses to the general public without protections for workers is compelling them to potentially become infected by a known deadly virus in order to maintain their income and remain housed. The right-wing frame puts profits and convenience above the lives of others, while leftists should be arguing the opposite. The right-wing “solution” is for individuals to “opt out” of the capitalist system — stay home from the grocery or any space that is unsafe, and quit your job if too unsafe, both essentially impossible without social safety nets — ironically while arguing public health standards are too hard to opt out of.

The hyper-individualism instilled in us living under a capitalist regime cannot be reconciled with the need for social action to protect others, especially the most vulnerable. “You do you” in a capitalist society is leaving the most vulnerable on their own and arguing to ignore any systemic harms caused by a lack of public health. COVID-19 is a disabling virus, meaning as this pandemic continues, more and more people will become disabled and left behind by society every year until we organize for disability justice. Disability justice is therefore a key component of reversing Kennedy’s damage to public health and safety nets.

What Should a Green Resistance Look Like?

Leftist organizations have historically focused on organizing labor, marginalizing disabled people and others whose primary roles in family and community are outside of commercial or industrial workplaces. Disability justice must therefore be integrated into organizational structures and organizing strategy. In other words, the world we want to build must start with our own organizations, and we’re not going to build a liberated bottom-up democracy with organizations that are top-down and ableist.

Therefore, to effectively resist Kennedy and the eugenicist movement, Greens need to act in three major areas: rebuild trust in science and healthcare, advocate public health policy, and make disability justice a priority to oppose eugenics.

First, trust in science must be rebuilt. Greens should emphasize scientific methods and advocate public education efforts to oppose anti-intellectualism. We must also recognize that trust was also undermined by a largely privatized, for-profit healthcare system, and governmental policy under a bipartisan system that emphasized profits over people. A non-profit community-controlled National Health Service that removes the profit motive and gives communities more direct control of public health policy and budgets should help address many concerns about the current system and rebuild trust.

Second, Greens must advocate vaccine science and public health policy. Greens should formally add support for vaccine science and policy into the national party platform so the public knows where we stand. Beyond vaccines, Greens should advocate adopting policies like ASHRAE-241 into regulations and law to make indoor spaces safer by requiring proper ventilation and air filtering that significantly reduce airborne transmission. Learning from how anti-vax used misleading arguments for individual freedom to attack public policy, Greens must emphasize how our personal freedoms come with, and come from, social responsibilities and duties. Public health is needed because we cannot be our best, independent selves without making sure everyone has the safety net and support necessary to meet their individual needs — to not only end pandemics but to generally take care of everyone, now and in the future.

Third, Greens must advocate disability justice and disability rights to dispel eugenicist policy. The Green Party should formalize a Disability Caucus (one is currently in formation). The Green Party should work with disability rights stakeholders to remove ableist language and include more disability rights demands in the national platform. Greens should also consider ways to make participation in the organization more accessible; we cannot organize a truly liberatory movement for bottom-up participatory democracy if everyone can’t actually participate. For example, the Green Party should maintain virtual national meetings to avoid the restrictions on attending in-person meetings due to cost, travel, health, and disability. When in-person meetings are necessary, for example around training or a specific action, facilities must be accessible and precautions should be taken including masking requirements (N95 or better).

Conclusion

The “back to normal” mentality during a pandemic expects us to ignore the suffering of those less fortunate around us. Greens should lead the resistance against this eugenicist policy and learn from how we failed to organize and respond during the early years of the pandemic. A number of suggestions have been made that the Green Party can adopt to strengthen its ability to organize and resist Kennedy and attacks on public health by building a more inclusive movement.

Don’t stop talking about COVID-19 and the impact it has had — and continues to have — on millions of lives. COVID-19 is a disability issue, a women’s rights issue, a social justice issue, a racial justice issue, and a workers’ rights issue. Climate change will increase chances of pandemics in the near future, as well as other natural disasters. We must learn the lessons of the Left’s failure around COVID-19 policy and make sure it does not happen again for any future pandemic or disaster.

Lastly, Greens must lead the public debate recognizing the COVID-19 pandemic’s impacts are not separate “distractions” but actually tightly-interwoven symptoms of the same root causes: authoritarianism, racism, sexism, ableism, which all builds on anti-science rhetoric. In a word: fascism. The sooner we understand these are all different sides of the same coin, the sooner we can develop a successful mass movement based on the principles, policies, and strategies outlined above.