Vaccine uncertainty fading, yet some still resistant to the shot

He has been pushed off Facebook and banned from Twitter, but Larry Cook battles on at StopMandatoryVaccination.com, where the Los Angeles man tries to explain why COVID-19 vaccines are evil and why President Donald Trump — who he insists will return to power — got one anyway.

Some evangelical Christians tie the vaccines to Satan, the mark of the beast and an impend

ing apocalypse.

In sunny Surf City, Huntington Beach Mayor Pro Tem Tito Ortiz refuses to wear a mask and defiantly declares, “I ain’t taking that vaccine — hell no!”

As tens of millions of people rush to get vaccinated and squash the pandemic, hesitancy is actually fading in the hardest-hit communities. A recent poll by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation found that 55% of Black adults said they had been vaccinated or planned to be soon, up 14 percentage points from February. Sixty-one percent of Latinos and 64% of Whites said the same.

“It’s one thing to say you don’t want a vaccine when it’s only been out for four weeks and you can’t get it anyway,” said Andrew Noymer, an epidemiologist and demographer at UC Irvine who studies infectious diseases. “It’s different when we have six months of data and you see that people’s toes aren’t falling off after they get the shots.”

Still, 13% of respondents said they’ll refuse vaccines anyway. Republicans and White evangelical Christians were the most likely to shun shots, with almost 30% of each group saying they’ll “definitely not” get vaccinated.