Tennessee has gone “anti-vaccine,” state vaccine chief says after being fired

Enlarge / US first lady Jill Biden (L) comforts Adriana Lyttle, 12, as she receives her vaccine at a COVID-19 vaccination site at Ole Smoky Distillery in Nashville, Tennessee. (credit: Getty | Tom Brenner)

The Tennessee state government on Monday fired its top vaccination official, Dr. Michelle Fiscus, who says that state leaders have "bought into the anti-vaccine misinformation campaign."

In a fiery statement published late Monday by The Tennessean, Fiscus warns that as the delta variant continues to spread in the undervaccinated state, more Tennesseans "will continue to become sick and die from this vaccine-preventable disease because they choose to listen to the nonsense spread by ignorant people."

Fiscus is just the latest public health official to quit or lose their position amid the devastating pandemic, many aspects of which have become tragically politicized. Fiscus wrote that, as the now-former medical director for vaccine-preventable diseases and immunization programs at the Tennessee Department of Health, she is the 25th immunization director to leave their position amid the pandemic. With only 64 territorial immunization directors in the country, her firing brings the nationwide turnover in immunization directors to nearly 40 percent during the health crisis.

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