Bill Cassidy: A Profile in Cowardice

Over 10 years in the past,
a Republican congressman named Invoice Cassidy attended a ribbon-cutting at Westdale Center Faculty in East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana. The celebration was to honor the renovation of three native school-based well being facilities, made doable by a federal grant from the US Well being and Human Providers Administration, which had been secured with Cassidy’s help. On the ribbon-cutting, Cassidy talked about how he had helped to get hepatitis B and influenza vaccinations stepping into East Baton Rouge colleges.

The pinnacle of an area nonprofit, Well being Facilities in Colleges, talked fondly of the congressman’s enthusiasm for vaccines, saying: “I bear in mind Invoice [Cassidy] calling me from the ground of the Louisiana Senate when he was 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 assist, we launched the flu vaccinations in East Baton Rouge colleges the identical yr.” Cassidy had labored in public hospitals in Louisiana for 30 years, and he was effectively conscious of the ability of immunization. His push for school-based vaccinations for HBV was motivated by his personal medical expertise and, specifically, the near-death of a woman under 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 highly effective Senate Well being, Schooling, Labor, and Pensions Committee. He’s extra influential than ever, and he has presumably 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 companies earlier this yr, Cassidy was in an ideal place to push again.

Everyone knows what he did as an alternative. After expressing reservations concerning the nomination, Cassidy rotated and made an lodging with Kennedy, securing “key commitments” on vaccine coverage that Cassidy claimed had happy his considerations. He then supplied up the essential sure vote to RFK Jr., setting the vaccine denier up for full Senate approval.

It’s now June. Each promise Kennedy made to Senator Cassidy has been damaged. The Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) has been purged and its members replaced with famous anti-vaxxers with apparent conflicts of curiosity. In the meantime, a troika of fellow vacationers, Vinay Prasad and Marty Makary on the US Meals and Drug Administration, together with Jay Bhattacharya on the US Nationwide Institutes of Well being, have unilaterally changed US Covid vaccination policymaking into an end-run round ACIP, largely notably hanging the advice for pregnant ladies and kids to get the vaccine, which flies in the face of the scientific proof and the medical actuality of the illness in these populations.

As Katherine Wu at The Atlantic has mentioned, we’re now entering America’s anti-vaxx era. With measles and pertussis outbreaks taking place throughout the nation, this can be a gasoline-on-a-fire second. As colleagues of mine at Stanford have urged, measles is likely to return to endemicity within the US, and will RFK Jr. and his “Mini-Me”s additional erode vaccine protection for different illnesses, we threat different infections changing into extra widespread as effectively.

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

RFK Jr.’s uncle as soon as wrote a e book known as Profiles in Braveness, consisting of brief biographies of US senators who bucked their occasion to do the correct factor and suffered the implications. JFK’s e book was in style—braveness and integrity amongst politicians appeared to promote effectively again in 1956. However cowardice is all the trend on this subsequent century.

If somebody want to write it, I’d recommend Invoice Cassidy be Chapter One in Profiles in Cowardice. He can run from reporters, however he can not cover from historical past. How does a lifelong advocate for vaccination capitulate so readily to the king of the anti-vaxxers? Within the wake of his vote and in any case that has occurred in these brief months, Invoice can’t even rally himself to struggle again for even a second. Does he even consider these kids in East Baton Rouge? That younger lady who nearly misplaced her life to HBV? In fact he does—however he’s decided, which is to place his personal political future forward of the thousands and thousands of youngsters on this nation who will now endure the implications of his cowardice.

This can be a particular type of cravenness. The Susan Collinses and Lisa Murkowskis of this world will at all times categorical concern over dangerous issues after which vote with their occasion. However Invoice Cassidy has
a particular life of service that he has now trashed: Along with organising vaccination packages in his state, he served the poor and uninsured at Earl Ok. Lengthy Medical Middle for greater than 20 years, and arrange a makeshift hospital in an deserted Baton Rouge Ok-Mart after Hurricane Katrina. Now he might be linked with RFK Jr. ceaselessly.

Cassidy opened the door and let RFK Jr. in. Now, he’s listlessly watching as RFK “goes wild” on well being. Fairly a precipitous fall for the nice physician. Sadly, we’ve got not hit all-time low but on this new anti-vaxx period. Cassidy’s popularity nonetheless has additional to fall, too.