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A top Republican lawmaker in the House, Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, after waiting months, revealed he’d finally started the vaccine process this week.
There is a palpable shift in attitude toward the Covid vaccine among some conservative leaders and influencers. Now that they’ve made very clear they think it’s a personal choice to get vaccinated, please for the love of God get vaccinated.
None of your business
“I don’t think it’s anybody’s damn business whether I’m vaccinated or not,” Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas told CNN. “This is ridiculous, what we’re doing. The American people are fully capable of making an educated decision about whether they want to get the vaccine or not.”
Who is and is not getting vaccinated?
And yet with the vaccine readily available, a lot of Americans are making the decision not to get it.
Less than half the total population (48.8%) is fully vaccinated. Excluding those under 12 who can’t yet get the shot, 57% of the country is vaccinated and nearly 66% have started the process.
Cases are up across the country, but generally speaking, states that went Republican in the 2020 election have lower vaccination rates than those that went for President Joe Biden, and they are the focus of this new summer surge. That could make Biden an ineffective messenger for the fact that the pandemic is now focused where people don’t believe the government should take an active role in fighting it.
The pandemic is now focused on one group of people
For example, in California, 30% of vaccinations have gone to Hispanic people, while they account for 63% of cases, 48% of deaths, and 40% of the total population in the state. Similarly, in the District of Columbia, Black people have received 43% of vaccinations, while they make up 56% of cases, 71% of deaths, and 46% of the total population. The size of these differences varies across states. The number of states where the shares of vaccinations received by Black and Hispanic people are more proportionate to their shares of the total population and/or their shares of cases or deaths in the state has grown over time.
Why some people won’t get the vaccine
This is where skepticism in conservative outlets and social media could play an additional role, feeding doubts that exist already.
Some groups are more hesitant than hostile
It is not just White, rural and Evangelical people who are skeptical of the vaccine, according to Kaiser. Black adults were less likely to say they would definitely not get vaccinated (9%), but at 60% reporting having gotten the shot, they were also less likely than White adults or Hispanic adults to have gotten it.
Protecting the vaccinated from masks
He made the comments explaining why Texas schools would not be allowed to require masks. Schoolkids under 12 are obviously among the 57% of Texans who aren’t vaccinated.
Pandering vs. posturing
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, actively encourages Floridians to get vaccinated and bragged this week about how his state prioritized senior citizens soon after vaccines were approved.
But he’s selling “Don’t Fauci my Florida” shirts on his campaign website, a derisive allusion to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert.
DeSantis has also vowed to continue his fight with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and cruise liners that want to require proof of vaccination from passengers itching to get into confined spaces for pleasure cruises.
He’s also ruled out the possibility of another statewide lockdown and argued local jurisdictions that want to reimpose mask requirements are sending the wrong message, no matter how many new cases there are in his state.
The CDC’s mask guidance felt like freedom. It may have been a mistake.
As if his fight with the CDC over vaccine requirements isn’t doing something similar.
But the CDC will have to deal with the logic underlying DeSantis’ opposition to new mask requirements since their push to undo mask requirements as an enticement to get more people vaccinated appears to be wearing off.
“After realizing you’ve erred, the best way forward is to own the situation and hit the reset button. That’s what I did — and that’s what the CDC needs to do, too,” he said.
The government could recommend kids wear masks in school
Biden said at the CNN town hall in Ohio he expects the CDC may recommend masks for unvaccinated students (that means everyone under 12) in the fall. That could lead to another standoff between the federal government and Florida. DeSantis is among the growing list of states to already ban mask requirements for students.
Florida has the most new Covid cases, but Arkansas has the most as a percentage of its population. The Republican governor there, Asa Hutchinson, also signed a bill that bans schools from requiring vaccines.
That doesn’t mean he opposes vaccines. He went on a three-day tour of the state to meet vaccinate hostility first hand.
For now, the vaccine remains for emergency use even though so much of the country has bought in and leaders are finding it so hard to get the rest of Americans to do the same.