Courtesy of Bastrop Advertiser
July 29, 2021
By Bill McCann
I wish our trusty public health scientists would develop a new vaccine capable of injecting some common sense into a large segment of the population. We really could use it, especially since the COVID-19 respiratory disease has been making another scary comeback.
However, given our experience with COVID-19 and the vaccines that help prevent it, many folks who could benefit most from a “common-sense” vaccine probably would refuse to get it.
Far-right conspiracy mongers, who believe Donald Trump is still president, probably wouldn’t get such a vaccine. Nor would fake patriots who support Trump’s claim that the mob that overran the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 was “ushered in by the police.” Nor would those who continue to call global warming “fake news” and those who warn with a straight face that COVID-19 vaccines will make them magnetic.
Anyone with common sense has learned by now to question anything Trump utters. The same goes for some Fox News hosts who have regularly made false claims about COVID-19 and the vaccines. Surely people with common sense know by now that the COVID-19 vaccines work exceedingly well. Did the folks who watch the truth-twisters at Fox News get that message? Did the Fox prime-time pundits tout a new study led by Yale University showing that the rapid rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines prevented up to 279,000 deaths and 1.25 million hospitalizations in the U.S.? I doubt it.
More than 163 million people – about half the U.S. population – have been fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For various reasons, about one-third of U.S. adults failed to get at least one COVID-19 vaccine shot as of mid-July. Some haven’t had ready access to the vaccines. Some are vaccine skeptics. Some don’t trust government. They prefer to believe the anti-vaccine falsehoods from right-wing pundits and science-challenged social media memes. Some think they can beat the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 and show little apparent concern about infecting others. Some think their faith will protect them.
For others it’s political. They still swallow what Trump told them in early 2020 that the coronavirus was no big deal. They don’t like being told to wear a mask or get vaccinated. It’s their constitutional right to be ignorant. They believe in freedom of personal choice, except when it comes to abortion.
The result has been a recent surge in cases of the coronavirus, spawned by a highly contagious mutation. Fortunately, the COVID-19 vaccines are effective against the mutation. The surge has occurred in numerous states, including Texas, which had nearly 35,000 new coronavirus cases last week.
Nationally, the surge has killed hundreds of Americans and hospitalized thousands daily on average in recent weeks. The vast majority of those dying or hospitalized are unvaccinated, according to federal medical experts. The situation is nowhere near as bad as it was in January when daily COVID-19 deaths peaked at more than 4,400 as widespread rollout of vaccines was in its early stages. With free vaccines now readily available, however, COVID-19 deaths are largely preventable.
We have much work to do to convince tens of millions of people that vaccination against COVID-19 makes sense. A recent poll by The Economist/YouGov shows that Republicans are much less likely to get vaccinated. Some 78% of Democrats surveyed said they were fully vaccinated, compared to 50% of Republicans. Also, 29% of Republicans said they would not get vaccinated, compared to 4% of Democrats. Another 13% of Republicans were unsure whether they would get vaccinated. Now at least we know where to begin targeting any common-sense vaccines our researchers might develop.
McCann is a contributing columnist for the Advertiser. He is a retired journalist and may be reached at [email protected].
