Peter Hotez, a vaccine scientist from Baylor College of Medicine, has been receiving a stream of hate mail.
Much of it is unhinged, paranoid and threatening. He’s not alone — other prominent figures in public health have gotten hateful messages and death threats, especially since the beginning of the pandemic.
He describes the abuse in his new book, "The Deadly Rise of Anti-science — A Scientist’s Warning.” And he argues that an estimated 200,000 people in the U.S. who died from COVID-19 probably would have survived if they hadn’t refused to get free, easily accessible vaccines.