GOP lawmakers, get your vaccines today
Responding swiftly to the novel coronavirus pandemic, the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed effort to encourage pharmaceutical companies to create vaccines was a public health triumph.
In the past, coming up with safe and effective vaccines against deadly diseases and getting them through blind clinical trials and out to the public took years; the 2020 medical miracle took months.
Every single responsible infectious disease expert in the world says that the best hope for global eradication of COVID-19 — or at least keeping the disease in check — is to vaccinate the vast majority of the population in order to create herd immunity against the disease that has killed millions in the last year.
Most Americans are clamoring to get a shot in the arm, so much so that in California especially, ongoing supply shortages are the only thing keeping a majority of us from already being protected against the virus.
So why on Earth are so many Republican lawmakers refusing to get vaccinated themselves? Every member of Congress has had access to a vaccine since late December. Yet the GOP leader in the House reported last week that about 25% of his caucus has so far declined vaccination. It’s unclear how many members of the Senate are also vaccineaverse, but several GOP senators have said publicly that they won’t follow their physicians’ advice. Senators Rand Paul and Ron Johnson, for instance, both contracted COVID-19 already, and so maintain that means they don’t need the shot. False, says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Still, they hold out.
Responsible Republican leaders need to help put a stop to this reckless attitude that under the guise of promoting freedom of choice puts the rest of their colleagues — and the public — at risk. It’s fair for Republicans to critique any number of policy responses to the pandemic.
But given the large number of Republicans who remain reluctant to get vaccinated, Republican leaders ought to set an example. Vaccines ought to be understood as the best available way out of this destructive pandemic and back to normality.
The best way to achieve that goal is to get 100% of lawmakers vaccinated. The disease is not a political one.