STAT I have spent my career caring for people facing some of the world’s most dangerous infectious diseases — Ebola, mpox, Covid-19. I have worked in outbreak zones, in understaffed hospitals, in field units built out of necessity. I’ve seen firsthand how vaccines transform the trajectory of a disease, a community, and a country.
But nothing has prepared me for the exam room conversations I’m having now. Over the past few years, the rise of anti-science and anti-vaccine rhetoric has fundamentally changed the relationship between clinicians and patients. It has made routine preventive care feel like walking into an ideological minefield. Increasingly, it is making it harder and sometimes nearly impossible to protect patients’ health.