In Idaho, a preview of RFK Jr.’s vaccine-skeptical America
CALDWELL, Idaho — The doctor beamed onto a health clinic video screen in October to convince the regional health board to ban public clinics in southwest Idaho from giving the coronavirus vaccine to the district’s 335,000 residents.
Ryan Cole, a pathologist who touted his expertise in immunology and virology, called the vaccines “experimental gene therapy” and “all risk, zero benefit,” falsely describing the shots that helped the country recover from a pandemic that has killed more than 1.2 million Americans.
“We shouldn’t give untested products to the citizens of Idaho,” said Cole, accusing Pfizer of contaminating its vaccine with “a known carcinogen.” The federal government and medical experts say that the vaccines have gone through rigorous studies and that there is no evidence the shots cause cancer.
What Cole did not reveal during the meeting: The Washington state medical board had restricted his medical license the previous January after determining he had made “numerous demonstrably false” statements about the coronavirus vaccine, among other pandemic-related topics, according to disciplinary documents.
The board restricted Cole from practicing primary care medicine and prescribing medications in Washington amid concerns he would “use his professional position as a physician to harm members of the public,” the documents said. His practice was limited to pathology. Cole is appealing the decision.
Nevertheless, the regional health board in Idaho voted 4-3 that October afternoon to prohibit the district’s four public health clinics from distributing the coronavirus vaccine, three years after the vaccine became widely available — a sign of skepticism over its use that has only deepened as widespread death and fear during the pandemic fade from public memory. The board, one of seven in the state, covers six counties.
It marked the first time in the United States that access to a vaccine has been curtailed because of a local health board deeming it to be unsafe despite federal assurances, according to Adriane Casalotti, chief of government and public affairs for the National Association of County and City Health Officials.
Public health experts said they fear other health boards across the country could follow the Idaho board’s lead in eschewing the medical consensus that the coronavirus vaccine is safe and effective at preventing hospitalizations and death as scientifically inaccurate information about vaccines swirls from the top of President Donald Trump’s potential health administration.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, has falsely referred to the coronavirus vaccine as the “deadliest vaccine ever made” and repeated other debunked statements about vaccines.
Kennedy’s views will be magnified through his new platform, if he is confirmed by the Senate, and further depress already falling vaccination rates across the nation, warned Georges C. Benjamin, longtime executive director of the American Public Health Association.
“He’s dangerous because he doesn’t use the facts,” Benjamin said. “He can have enormously negative influence on people who are primed to use bad information to support their decision-making.”
Neither Trump’s team nor a Kennedy spokeswoman responded to requests for comment.
Idaho is especially vulnerable to the consequences of vaccine misinformation, physicians say. About 14 percent of Idaho kindergartners received exemptions from providing proof of state-required childhood immunizations in the 2023-2024 school year — the highest rate in the country, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Idaho has long led the nation in nonmedical vaccine exemptions, but the rate has nearly doubled since the 2019-2020 school year.
“Idaho’s exemption rate is a wildfire of preventable disease waiting to happen,” said Kelly Moore, a physician who leads Immunize.org, a St. Paul, Minnesota-based nonprofit focused on vaccination education for health-care professionals.
Zach Brooks, a Canyon County commissioner who serves on the health board, said he pushed for the vote to ban the coronavirus vaccine from public health clinics because he is in favor of “protecting people’s health” after listening to guidance from “recognized subject matter experts in this kind of medicine.”
Cole and another doctor who argued that the coronavirus vaccine is unsafe in October have been sanctioned by state medical licensing and national specialty certification boards. Another of the doctors who testified before the health board had been under investigation by a state medical board for previous statements about the coronavirus vaccine. A fourth physician who testified in Idaho said later during a similar presentation in a Washington county board meeting that the medical establishment “threatened me with removal of my state licenses and my board certifications” because of his beliefs about the coronavirus vaccine.
Brooks said their expertise trumped vaccine guidance from the Food and Drug Administration and the CDC, whose authority he says he does not trust. The CDC recommends the coronavirus vaccine to stave off severe illness, especially among the elderly and immunocompromised.
The board’s decision means that residents of long-term care facilities in their Idaho district will no longer have easy access to coronavirus vaccines. “That’s exactly why we stopped providing it,” Brooks said, “to try and protect the most vulnerable in our population.”
Mistrust of government looms large amid the lingering scars of the pandemic, said Ted Epperly, president and chief executive of Full Circle Health, a nonprofit group of clinics serving low-income residents of the Boise area. Epperly had faced armed protesters over coronavirus restrictions he was involved in approving as the physician board member of a neighboring health district — until county commissioners replaced him with Cole in the summer of 2021.
This movement against science is not limited to Idaho, Epperly said.
“The community has just been so poisoned with misinformation, either through social media feeds or word of mouth from irreputable sources that they now hear from a friend, and all of a sudden, it becomes dogma,” he said.
“That is the crisis of truth. Who’s going to believe in what?”
Disregarding medical consensus
It all started a year ago in Caldwell, a city surrounded by farmland in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains where new housing developments are rapidly rising to handle the influx of self-described political refugees fleeing California and Washington.
Among the recent transplants was John Tribble, an emergency medicine doctor who said he had quit his job at a California hospital to protest the state requirement that medical staff get vaccinated against the coronavirus. To some board members, Tribble was the ideal candidate to serve as the physician member of the southwest Idaho health board — someone who would lend credibility to the fight against mandates.
Since joining the board in January 2024, Tribble has questioned the CDC’s recommendation of prohibiting unvaccinated children who have been exposed to measles from attending school. He also said he wants more studies investigating a potential link between autism and the childhood vaccination schedule, noting his concerns mirror Kennedy’s. (Experts point to dozens of studies that show no link between vaccines and autism.) He expressed similar skepticism about the coronavirus vaccine.
Tribble soon formed an alliance with Cole, who serves on a neighboring health board and whom he had known because of Cole’s public appearances speaking against the coronavirus vaccine at state legislatures and communities across the country.
In a joint interview at a local dive bar, Tribble and Cole said they see their roles as physician board members as bringing accountability and a critical lens to health issues. That means bucking the establishment and questioning vaccine guidelines set by the CDC, both men said.
They said they have reviewed data about the safety of coronavirus vaccines and concluded the vast majority of the medical profession has it wrong.
Over a period of two hours, the men recited falsehoods about the vaccine. They said they agree with Kennedy that the coronavirus vaccine is the deadliest vaccine ever made. They cited debunked conspiracy theories about the vaccines contaminating DNA. They complained their views have been suppressed and claimed people are suffering as a result.
Tribble and Cole said their advocacy is already having an impact: At least six other counties or health districts in Idaho and other states have contacted them about copying the health district’s ban on the coronavirus vaccine.
“All politics is local,” Cole said. “You can wait to move that battleship of the federal government, or you can act at the local level.”
But if Kennedy were to be confirmed as Trump’s health secretary, he could bring more transparency to government data and restore public trust in federal agencies, they said.
Cole said Kennedy called him about the possibility of joining a Trump administration before Trump won the presidency. Kennedy’s team followed up after Trump’s victory, Cole said; he assured them he would be happy to serve in any role.
Cole said he is challenging the disciplinary action against his medical license in Washington based on his belief it represents an attack on his First Amendment rights. A spokeswoman for the Washington board told The Washington Post that Cole submitted a petition for judicial review.
Spokespeople for Kennedy and Trump’s team did not respond to questions about a potential role for Cole.
What’s next
The public health consequences of anti-science rhetoric from doctors such as Cole can be devastating, said Andrea Christopher, an internal medicine doctor who has seen rising vaccine hesitancy among her patients at the Boise Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
She said she is dismayed that Cole serves as a physician representative on a health board — and could have broader influence in the Trump administration. She has written to the Idaho medical board asking it to investigate Cole’s false claims about the coronavirus vaccine. Bob McLaughlin, spokesman for the Idaho medical board, said the board was unable to comment on potential investigations or complaints.
A previous Post examination found that while medical boards vowed to punish doctors who spread misinformation during the pandemic, those efforts were limited. Those who jeopardized patients’ lives by going against medical consensus and prescribing unapproved treatments for covid or misleading patients about vaccines faced few professional repercussions.
“If we’re not willing to take away any of those credentials, then it allows these folks to be out in the community making false statements that go against the compendium of data,” Christopher said. “It really highlights where some of these movements can take hold.”
While Americans stood in line for hours in 2021 to receive the coronavirus vaccine — with 70 percent of adults having received a shot in the months after they first became available — uptake of the latest versions has been limited, despite recommendations from medical authorities. Only 1 in 5 have received the updated vaccines, according to the CDC, not only because of vaccine skepticism but also because there is greater immunity given that most people have contracted the coronavirus at least once.
Demand for the coronavirus vaccine in this region is not high. The public health clinics in the southwest district administered only 93 shots in 2024, accounting for a minuscule percentage of the population they serve. Public health experts say they worry most about those who no longer have easy access to the shots because of the health board’s ban, including residents at long-term care facilities and those who are homebound.
Without the help of government-subsidized public health clinics, the cost of safely distributing the vaccine in nursing homes and other congregant care settings can be prohibitive because of its cold-storage requirements, said Nikki Zogg, director of the health district. “It’s concerning when you see the vulnerability of the people who need that support in those long-term care facilities or skilled nursing facilities,” she said.
People can still get the coronavirus vaccine from their doctors or other health-care facilities, including pharmacies — just not from public health clinics that serve low-income families and other vulnerable populations.
Public health officials say they fear that under the influence of the Trump administration, more health boards nationally will disregard scientific evidence and medical consensus to limit access to lifesaving measures beyond the coronavirus vaccine.
Brooks, the board member who orchestrated the coronavirus vaccine vote, shared another health concern with The Post: reexamining the childhood vaccination schedule.
