The autism-vaccine panic served as the prototype for Covid vaccine refusal framing

Evidence

The argument is now a ubiquitous one from the Covid era: I would rather have a virus that, despite its potential lethality to many, I have determined is nothing more than a bad cold for me and my healthy family. There is a reason that the measles and Covid arguments sound so similar: one was the prototype for the other. Long before Warrior Moms were going on Bannon’s show to rail against Covid vaccines and critical race theory, McCarthy was out there on all the big shows, hawking her book Mother Warriors: A Nation of Parents Healing Autism Against All Odds. — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 662

Categorization

• XREF: Directly carries the chapter’s diagonalism thread: the same Warrior Mom figures later moved onto Bannon’s show for Covid, showing the pipeline from autism panic to Covid-era right-wing anti-vax. — connects to: Wakefield’s fraudulent Lancet paper linked MMR vaccine to autism — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 256; the MOC “The Viral Refinery: How Preexisting Fringe Fears Get Smelted Into Mainstream Reality”