Editorial: Pandemic anti-vax nonsense is now undermining school …

It’s one of the tragic ironies of the pandemic that anti-vaccination fever arose on the political right despite the fact that record-speed creation of effective coronavirus vaccines was an unequivocal victory for the Trump administration. Why then-President Donald Trump chose to holster his usual self-aggrandizing schtick regarding this one topic (when his braggadocio would, for once, be justified) is a question for political scientists and psychiatrists.

What’s clear is that right-wing demagogues — including Missouri’s attorney general and now senator-elect, Eric Schmitt — were more than willing to risk constituents’ lives by catering to anti-science extremism and sowing unwarranted opposition to vaccine mandates and other reasonable pandemic policies. As we and others repeatedly pointed out, this dangerous opposition to the safe and effective coronavirus vaccines was at odds with the continued acceptance by the same people of decades-old school vaccination requirements for common childhood diseases.

So it’s finally consistent, but distressing, that the many conservatives who bought into the right’s twisted messaging regarding coronavirus vaccines are now rejecting the long-proven policy of requiring that kids be vaccinated for a raft of once-epidemic childhood diseases before attending school. A new survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation finds that 35% of parents oppose the standard requirement in schools that kids be immunized for measles, mumps, rubella and other childhood diseases. That figure was at just 23% in 2019, before the pandemic.

The biggest cause of the jump is from Republican or right-leaning parents, 44% of whom now hold that view, up from just 20% in 2019. Those numbers are apparently a result of the parental-rights movement emerging among conservatives, not just regarding vaccines but also school curriculum — another hot-button target of opportunistic culture-warrior politicians.

Whatever heated political debates there may be on this issue, there are no valid medical debates. The diseases that stalked children throughout human history, packing graveyards with small bodies, were finally reined in during the last century by the miracle of vaccination. There is simply no arguing that.

Parents have the right to foolishly leave their kids unvaccinated — but they have no right to endanger other peoples’ kids for the sake of obstinate ideology. Republicans like Schmitt, who helped usher in this potentially tragic movement, have a special obligation to remind them of that fact.