Interview
Lawmaker who faced anti-vax attack: 'The movement
is growing more violent'
Vivian Ho
Dodger Stadium protest that hampered distribution is
no isolated incident, says Dr Richard Pan, who has experienced death threats
and assault
Wed 3 Feb
2021 11.00 GMT
On
Saturday, anti-vaccine activists temporarily disrupted access to Los Angeles’s
Dodger Stadium, one of the largest mass vaccination sites in the country,
yelling at healthcare workers and calling the many older individuals patiently
waiting for a vaccine in their cars “lab rats”.
To Dr
Richard Pan, a state senator who has authored one of the toughest
pro-vaccination laws in the country, the misguided, anti-science messaging was
nothing new. Over the last decade, Pan has unwillingly become an expert in the
anti-vaccine movement, having been a target of protests, death threats and an
assault himself.
But that
didn’t make this weekend’s protest any less concerning, Pan said. The unrest
was organized on Facebook, yet another sign the social network is failing to
clamp down on vaccine misinformation. The anti-vaccine movement has noted ties
to extremism and militias, and some of the protesters at Dodger Stadium
appeared to have been present at rallies leading up to the 6 January Capitol
attack, Pan said.
“This is
part of an escalation of violence that we’re seeing in the anti-vaccine
movement,” Pan said. “It’s not isolated an incident. Unfortunately, as they
have continued to become more and more violent, they have suffered few
consequences for that, and without consequences they will continue to increase
their extremism and their violence.”
What was
your reaction when you heard about what happened in Dodger Stadium this
weekend?
I was
outraged, certainly, that people had tried to block other people from getting
access to vaccines. I think that event demonstrated a lie that anti-vaxxers
often proclaim, that it’s about choice and freedom – yet here they were denying
people their choice to get the vaccine and denying our community and our
country the opportunity to be free from this terrible disease that has killed
more people than world war two at this point.
The greatest fear has always been that people will die
who didn’t need to die
In your
opinion, has the anti-vaccine movement grown bolder and more dangerous in
recent years?
When I
first did my bill on educating people about vaccines back in 2010, they would
put forth their myths, but generally, you could have a conversation. When it
came to 2015 [when Pan sought to get rid of personal belief exemptions and
allow only medical exemptions for vaccinations – legislation that ultimately
passed], they engaged in death threats. You had death threats coming not just
to me, but my staff and other legislators. Some legislators actually had to
close their district offices because they worried about the safety of their
staff. You had Robert F Kennedy come and call vaccines the Holocaust and use
violent imagery. He did apologize for that, but then he subsequently used that
analogy in other venues.
Then you
move ahead to 2019, when I introduced senate bill 276 (which required medical
exemptions be approved by the California department of public health, and
ultimately passed). They stepped it up. Not only do they show up in large
numbers, which is fine, that’s their right to do so, but then they engaged in
things like pounding on the walls, basically sounding like they’re trying to
break into the legislative chambers during debate.
They would
try to interfere with the legislature by standing on chairs and screaming, or
screaming in the galleries not just when we’re discussing the vaccine bill, but
overall, just trying to stop the legislature from doing its business. They
invited a militia to come join them at the state capitol, so they demonstrated
an open tie to other extremist groups, and the death threats continued. But
then one of the anti-vaxxers actually assaulted me on the street and
livestreamed it on Facebook.
[The
assailant] didn’t run away from the police when they showed up, and Facebook
allowed him to leave that video up because they claimed it wasn’t violent
enough [to take down], since I wasn’t injured severely. So he continued to get
praise and adulation from from the anti-vaccine community for actually laying
hands on me.
And then
after that yet another [anti-vaccine activist] threw blood on to the senate
floor. Just to put that in the context, the California state legislature has
been meeting in those legislative chambers for 150 years and those public
galleries have been up there in that same building for that same amount of
time. It was the first example I have found of someone intentionally throwing
something from the public gallery at legislators while they were conducting the
people’s business on the floor below.
One hundred
fifty years: just think about all the different issues that came up in that
chamber, everything ranging from abortion, gun control, civil rights. And
that’s the group that does it, and the legislature had to go into recess and
all the senators splattered with blood had to go get checked out and biohazard
had to go deep clean the site.
What are
the responsibilities of local officials and local law enforcement when
confronted with situations like throwing blood into the state legislature, or
the protest at Dodger Stadium?
As far as
people look around, there are no consequences. The people at Dodger Stadium,
there were no arrests, no citations, nothing.
They should
have been cited for violating public health orders. Someone needs to look into
if they violated other laws by obstructing entry into the vaccination site, and
interference with people trying to get medical care during a pandemic – if
there’s no law against that, maybe it’s time to create a law against that.
Then we
talk about anti-vaccine violence. There was that pharmacist in Wisconsin –
someone intentionally trying to ruin vaccines, allowing people to get the
spoiled vaccine intentionally. That’s violence, isn’t it?
The lies
themselves, discouraging people from getting vaccines, those are already
risking people’s lives, but they’re taking it to the next level where they’re
directly threatening people’s lives. When you go unmasked and you shout at
elderly people, you’re potentially spreading a disease.
The real
challenge is this: why don’t we see it that way? People just say, ‘Oh, they
just have some crazy beliefs. People can believe what they want. Oh, they’re
like my crazy uncle or something, I can’t reason with you, you believe the
earth is flat’ or whatever. But this is the real world consequence and people’s
lives are being put in danger.
This is a
public safety issue. We have a public health crisis, but this is a public
safety issue. People are dying.
What was
your greatest fear when it came to the anti-vaccine movement, pre-Covid?
The
greatest fear has always been that people will die who didn’t need to die. We
eliminated measles in 2000. In 2019, we almost lost our measles elimination
status in the United States because we had so many cases of measles and that’s
traced directly to lower vaccination rates.
We know
that the anti-vaccine people are targeting particular communities. The measles
outbreak that happened among Somali refugees in Minnesota, we know that Andrew
Wakefield [the discredited anti-vax doctor] went and told them that vaccines
cause autism [they don’t] and drove down the vaccination rate. The vaccine
outbreak in the state of Washington, we know that Larry Cook [the anti-vaccine
conspiracy theorist who founded the Stop Mandatory Vaccination website and
Facebook group] went and bought Facebook ads specifically targeting women who
were of childbearing age.
We need to
take anti-vaccine propaganda seriously and deal with it because it has real-life
consequences – both in terms of people’s lives and preventable disease, but
also as organizing tools to enact violence against people who try to support
vaccines.
What about
now, with extremism and Covid – what is your greatest fear when it comes to the
anti-vaccine movement?
As tired as
people are of Covid, I’m really concerned that we do not get this virus under
control because of the anti-vaccine movement. They are fueling unwarranted
anxiety about the vaccines through the lies they’re telling, but in addition to
that, the anti-vaccine movement has opposed every public health effort to stop
this disease.
They oppose
masking, they oppose testing, they oppose physical distancing and avoiding
gatherings. They have been out there opposing every effort to stop this
disease. One of their leaders, Del Bigtree, actually had a video that was taken
down, where he basically said, “If you die of Covid it’s your fault because you
made bad health choices and didn’t eat right. This thing is as mild as a cold and
we should spread it as much as possible.” This group is actively trying to get
us sick. They’re also threatening the lives of those who are trying to stop
that from happening.
Think about
that. We have a pandemic that has killed more people than world war two and in
less time. Yet we have a movement of people who not only want to spread the
disease but have aligned with other extremist groups to actively stop people
who are trying to stop this disease. And there are very few consequences
for their actions.
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