"... here in the United States, thousands of Americans needlessly perished because they refused a COVID-19 immunization during our awful Delta wave in the summer and fall of 2021 and the BA.1 Omicron wave in the winter of 2022. Analyses by myself and colleagues have found that 200,000 unvaccinated Americans died during this period. Overwhelmingly, those deaths occurred in Republican strongholds, including 40,000 in my state of Texas. A closer examination reveals that the redder the county, the lower the immunization rates and the higher the death rates.

The dead were victims of what we too often label as “misinformation,” as though these victims succumbed to random junk on the internet.. This was not always the case. The unvaccinated were targeted by a well-financed and newly politicized anti-vaccine movement.
....
Now American biomedical scientists have become targets. A 2021 survey found that 15% of scientists who engage with the news media about COVID-19 have received death threats. Another in 2022 found that almost 40% of COVID-19 scientists report experiencing at least one confrontation either online or in person, including death threats.

How can America preserve its hard-earned dominance in science, especially given the volume of recent attacks on biomedicine?"

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-09-22/antiscience-climate-change-covid-vaccines-antivax