Invoice Cassidy: A Profile in Cowardice through NewsFlicks

Over 10 years in the past,
a Republican congressman named Invoice Cassidy attended a ribbon-cutting at Westdale Heart Faculty in East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana. The party was once to honor the renovation of 3 native school-based well being facilities, made imaginable through a federal grant from the USA Well being and Human Services and products Management, which have been secured with Cassidy’s help. On the ribbon-cutting, Cassidy mentioned how he had helped to get hepatitis B and influenza vaccinations getting in East Baton Rouge colleges.

The top of an area nonprofit, Well being Facilities in Faculties, talked fondly of the congressman’s enthusiasm for vaccines, announcing: “I be mindful Invoice [Cassidy] calling me from the ground of the Louisiana Senate when he was once within the state legislature asking me if I knew concerning the flu immunization research from a health care provider in Texas—I had simply learn that very same article myself. So, with Invoice’s lend a hand, we introduced the flu vaccinations in East Baton Rouge colleges the similar yr.” Cassidy had labored in public hospitals in Louisiana for 30 years, and he was once neatly conscious about the facility of immunization. His push for school-based vaccinations for HBV was once motivated through his personal medical revel in and, specifically, the near-death of a lady below his care because of liver failure related to this preventable viral hepatitis.

Cassidy is now the senior senator from Louisiana and the chair of the tough Senate Well being, Training, Hard work, and Pensions Committee. He’s extra influential than ever, and he has possibly now not forgotten concerning the significance of vaccinations. So when Donald Trump nominated longtime anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to the publish of secretary of well being and human products and services previous this yr, Cassidy was once in an excellent place to thrust back.

Everyone knows what he did as an alternative. After expressing reservations concerning the nomination, Cassidy became round and made an lodging with Kennedy, securing “key commitments” on vaccine coverage that Cassidy claimed had happy his issues. He then introduced up the an important sure vote to RFK Jr., environment the vaccine denier up for complete Senate approval.

It’s now June. Each and every promise Kennedy made to Senator Cassidy has been damaged. The Facilities for Illness Keep watch over and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) has been purged and its participants changed with famous anti-vaxxers with obtrusive conflicts of pastime. In the meantime, a troika of fellow vacationers, Vinay Prasad and Marty Makary at the USA Meals and Drug Management, together with Jay Bhattacharya at the USA Nationwide Institutes of Well being, have unilaterally modified US Covid vaccination policymaking into an end-run round ACIP, most commonly particularly putting the advice for pregnant girls and youngsters to get the vaccine, which flies within the face of the medical proof and the medical truth of the illness in those populations.

As Katherine Wu at The Atlantic has mentioned, we’re now getting into The usa’s anti-vaxx generation. With measles and pertussis outbreaks going down around the nation, this can be a gasoline-on-a-fire second. As colleagues of mine at Stanford have prompt, measles is most likely to go back to endemicity in the USA, and will have to RFK Jr. and his “Mini-Me”s additional erode vaccine protection for different illnesses, we chance different infections changing into extra commonplace as neatly.

All of us knew who RFK Jr. was once. So did Senator Cassidy. But he voted for him. Now, when wondered about what is going on,
Cassidy flees from newshounds chasing him down the hallways of the Senate, and he has refused interviews at the topic since January.

RFK Jr.’s uncle as soon as wrote a e book referred to as Profiles in Braveness, consisting of brief biographies of US senators who bucked their birthday party to do the suitable factor and suffered the effects. JFK’s e book was once widespread—braveness and integrity amongst politicians appeared to promote neatly again in 1956. However cowardice is all of the rage on this subsequent century.

If somebody wish to write it, I’d counsel Invoice Cassidy be Bankruptcy One in Profiles in Cowardice. He can run from newshounds, however he can’t conceal from historical past. How does a lifelong recommend for vaccination capitulate so readily to the king of the anti-vaxxers? Within the wake of his vote and in the end that has took place in those brief months, Invoice can’t even rally himself to struggle again for even a 2d. Does he even recall to mind the ones kids in East Baton Rouge? That younger lady who virtually misplaced her lifestyles to HBV? In fact he does—however he’s decided, which is to place his personal political long term forward of the tens of millions of youngsters on this nation who will now undergo the effects of his cowardice.

It is a particular more or less cravenness. The Susan Collinses and Lisa Murkowskis of this global will all the time specific worry over unhealthy issues after which vote with their birthday party. However Invoice Cassidy has
a selected lifetime of provider that he has now trashed: Along with putting in place vaccination systems in his state, he served the deficient and uninsured at Earl Ok. Lengthy Clinical Heart for greater than twenty years, and arrange a makeshift health facility in an deserted Baton Rouge Ok-Mart after Typhoon Katrina. Now he’s going to be connected with RFK Jr. eternally.

Cassidy opened the door and let RFK Jr. in. Now, he’s listlessly observing as RFK “is going wild” on well being. Relatively a precipitous fall for the great physician. Unfortunately, now we have now not hit all-time low but on this new anti-vaxx generation. Cassidy’s popularity nonetheless has additional to fall, too.