The coronavirus pandemic, now in yet another wave caused by the very transmissible omicron variant, has killed nearly 870,000 Americans – with over 71 million cases of the disease in the U.S. since 2020. Statistics show that an average of over 2,000 people are dying from the virus in the U.S every day, roughly on par with the deaths seen with the delta variant in late September.
According to the BBC, unvaccinated Americans are approximately 100 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than those who have been vaccinated and boosted, yet the movement opposing mandatory vaccinations, mask-wearing and social distancing continues to grow within the Republican party and among extremist right-wing groups. A rally opposing vaccine mandates at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 23, drew thousands of protesters, many of whom believe the COVID pandemic is a hoax.
Between The Line’s Scott Harris spoke with Alex Kotch, an investigative reporter with the Center for Media and Democracy, who talks about the article he co-wrote with Walker Bragman, titled “How the Koch Network Hijacked the War on COVID.” Here he describes how the right-wing network linked to billionaire Charles Koch has played a key role in fighting public health measures during the coronavirus pandemic.
ALEX KOTCH: Since the beginning, they were questioning the government response, pressuring the government to essentially ignore that there was a deadly pandemic spreading quickly that no one really understood at that point, in favor of keeping all businesses open. You know, some of these businesses are owned by a lot of the donors, including Charles Koch in the Koch network. And so they were concerned, pretty obviously, that they may sacrifice some profits in exchange for public safety, and they decided that they were not willing to do that.
And so, as I said at the very beginning, in March of 2020, Koch-funded groups were already putting out press releases publicly opposed to lockdowns. Charles Koch’s premier political advocacy group called Americans for Prosperity, put out a press release on March 20th calling on the states to remain open and not be shut down.
At the time, you know, Walker and I both live in New York City, which was the world’s epicenter of the pandemic. You know, we had enormous death rates and positive testing rates. There were refrigerator trucks outside of hospitals where dead bodies were stored because the morgues and the hospitals were too full to to store them. It was a really gruesome scene, and at the same time, we had, you know, libertarian groups pushing for people to stay in their jobs, which clearly led to more infections and more deaths.
So as you kind of go forward throughout the early months, we had the American Legislative Exchange Council, which is a right-wing business lobbying group that has members who are state legislators and also corporate members who write legislation together and the members take it back to their legislatures.
They published a letter in April calling on then-President Trump to enable the states to reopen. And it was also signed by the letter signed by other groups like the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which is Koch funded, heavily Koch funded.
There were also lockdown protests. Listeners may remember in Michigan there was a major, I think they called it a “gridlock protest.” That protest was coordinated in part by Koch-funded groups, including the Convention of States Action, whose parent organization is funded by Koch.
So we had a number of these groups initially that have survived, or at least partially, on the largesse of an oil billionaire who is a libertarian and opposes government intervention of any sort, especially in recent years regarding the pandemic.
SCOTT HARRIS: In terms of the total amount of money that’s been contributed to this movement from the Koch network, have you been able to total it all up to really understand the weight those funds may have had on pushing this movement forward?
ALEX KOTCH: Well, that’s a difficult thing to calculate because, you know, few grants that we’ve been able to track, whether they’re from the Koch Foundation or the Bradley Foundation, which is another very far right conservative funder that has gotten involved in some public health issues. Most of their grants to these organizations are not particularly targeted, at least on paper or on the tax records, to COVID-19 issues. So in a lot of a lot of ways, it’s difficult to sum it all up.
But a lot of these organizations clearly spent money on staff time, on marketing things like that against COVID restrictions. Time and time again, over the last two years, they’ve been doing this.
SCOTT HARRIS: As we close here, Alex, I wanted to ask you, is there any idea that the Koch network and their allies among right-wing funders could in any way be accountable for what they’ve done here? I know revealing this information in your article is certainly an important step in exposure and transparency. But what is your idea in terms of accountability when it comes to these folks who have pushed policies that undoubtedly made many people sick and killed an unknown number of people across the country?
ALEX KOTCH: What they’re doing is advocacy, and they’re certainly spreading misinformation, but they’re not the ones who are actually making the policies. You know, it’s the people who are doing the policies or fighting the policies or doing the wrong policies that are actually really the reason this stuff is happening.
I mean, no one has to do what the lobbyists tell them to do. President Trump is responsible for hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths. I certainly think that he should be prosecuted for that. I seriously doubt that will happen.
And frankly, you know, the Biden administration is going to be responsible for a lot more, too. They’re not following the science and even the CDC is not following the science in some ways. So, you know, that’s part of the reason we did the article, it’s because it was very distressing to see what was originally seen as a very fringe idea kind of coming into the mainstream.
For more information on the Center for Media and Democracy, visit prwatch.org.
