Dangerous refusal
A ‘Don’t Mess With Texas’-style ad campaign is needed to convince GOP vaccine holdouts.
Texas knows how to change the minds and behavior of its citizens — white males included. Just think of the wildly successful “Don’t Mess With Texas” ad campaign that helped tamp down littering. Gov. Greg Abbott’s office could do a world of good by launching a similar campaign to convince Texans of the truth that vaccines save lives, including perhaps their own.
Now that Texas is set to become the first large state to open coronavirus vaccine eligibility to its entire adult population, we have to find a way to reach a certain faction of white male Republicans who are insisting they intend to spurn the shot. According to a recent NPR/PBS/Marist poll, 49 percent of GOP men said they are not planning to get vaccinated. That startling number, higher than in any other demographic, is in contrast to only 6 percent of Democratic men saying no. Other polls report similar findings.
The vaccine naysayers apparently are unmoved by the fact that they’re not only risking their own health but also the health of family, friends and the broader community. Their stubbornness threatens to stymie the nation’s efforts to reach COVID-19 herd immunity, the only way we’re going to put this dreadful pandemic behind us.
If Republican men have dismissed Dr. Anthony Fauci, now that he’s working under the Biden administration, maybe they will listen to our local, plainspoken and trusted vaccine scientist, Dr. Peter Hotez of Baylor College of Medicine. Both experts believe that herd immunity will require vaccinating between 70 percent and 85 percent of the population. Men of the GOP are standing in the way, for what appears to be no good reason, just politics.
They aren’t entirely alone. Some Americans, wary of a history of exploitation at the hands of unethical medical authorities, have also proven reluctant to be vaccinated. Reassuring Black Americans has been a top priority for public health officials for months now. But those same efforts have fallen flat among Republican men. Perhaps it’s because a certain immediate past president who made sure he and his wife got their shots, albeit in secret, still has their ear (and their arm). Perhaps these men are listening to Rand Paul, the maskless GOP senator from Kentucky who prefers picking a political fight with Fauci to finding ways to defeat a devastating pandemic. Maybe the holdouts have fallen into the clutches of a shameless Tucker Carlson, who stokes his Fox News ratings by accusing government health experts of lying about vaccine efficacy.
None of these carnival barkers have these men’s best interest in mind. And their objections — plus the ridiculous conspiracy theories bandied about on social media — are taking their toll — and risk ruining what might otherwise be a major accomplishment by Texas. Beginning Monday, our hope is that the GOP skeptics will relent, particularly when they see more and more family members and acquaintances getting vaccinated with no lasting ill effects, more and more friends hugging grandkids, boarding flights and dining at restaurants without fear.
Vaccine holdouts, we implore you to join those who have been freed from the bonds of this pandemic.
We urge churches and synagogues, fraternal organizations, civic groups and, yes, political parties to encourage their members to get the shot. Point them toward the Texas Department of State Health Services website’s links to vaccine hub providers across Texas. Print readers: just Google “Texas vaccine signup” to find the DSHS vaccine page.
In Houston, we’re fortunate to have Dr. Hotez, who recently co-authored a paper with 17 other vaccine experts that corrected much misinformation. Despite the accelerated timetables, for instance, the new COVID-19 vaccines have been proven safe. Tens of thousands of volunteers served as test subjects in those trials, an effort equivalent to other large trials in the past. The work to develop the vaccines didn’t begin last year — it relied on decades of previous research on coronaviruses.
Oh, and the vaccine doesn’t change your DNA, despite what you’ve heard. While mRNA in the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines does enter the cell, it doesn’t enter the cell’s nucleus, where our DNA is kept.
Lastly, while some claim the vaccines aren’t worth it because they can’t entirely eliminate the chance of getting the virus, the vaccines in the U.S. are highly effective at keeping you alive and out of the hospital if you get it. Preliminary research also shows that if you are vaccinated, you have a smaller chance of spreading the virus to someone else.
Bottom line: All of us, from politicians to doctors to concerned sons and daughters, need to persuade the vaccine-skittish among us to step up and do their patriotic duty. To do otherwise, as conservative columnist Kathleen Parker has gently suggested, is just plain dumb — but more importantly, potentially deadly.