Backlash

During the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States took an almost uniform approach to prevention: around ninety percent of the country was practicing some degree of social distancing, wearing protective masks, and living under some degree of stay-at-home order. By the summer of 2020, however, support for public health restrictions had begun to fracture, with growing divisions emerging within states and across the nation. Although public health measures during the COVID-19 pandemic saved millions of American lives, a sweeping public health backlash impacted officials, agencies, policies, and funding in every state. Backlash brings together leading scholars and prominent public health experts to explore the deep roots and complex origins of polarized opposition to public health. Through an interdisciplinary lens, the volume probes the social and political forces that defined the COVID-19 pandemic experience and set the stage for the onset of a broader, more devastating politics of backlash under the second administration of President Donald Trump. Across four sections, the book defines public health backlash as a distinct political concept, with chapters tracing the crisis of trust in public health authority and the rise of misinformation and disinformation, the experiences of threats and harassment against public health officials, and the legal and political battlegrounds that codified the war against public health.Drawing on decades of experience and lessons from the pandemic, Backlash seeks to navigate a way forward through the fraught political terrain as we continue to struggle to protect the health of the public in increasingly uncertain times.This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.