The Delta outbreak: Who’s to blame?
Susan Johnson, 62, of Mountain Home, Ark., declined a Covid-19 vaccination this spring, “figuring she was protected as long as she never left her house without a mask.” Linda Marion, 68, feared the vaccine might actually give her Covid, while Barbara Billigmeier, 74, decided she didn’t need a shot because “I never get sick.” Last week, all three women were patients at an Arkansas hospital’s Covid overflow ward, said Sharon LaFraniere in The New York Times. Johnson required supplemental oxygen for 10 days, Billigmeier said she was terrified to discover “you can’t breathe,” while Marion said she was so sick “I felt like I couldn’t take it” and wanted to die. But despite their severe illness, none of the three changed their minds about vaccination. “It’s just too new,” Billigmeier said. “It is like an experiment.” As a result of vaccine skepticism like theirs and the highly infectious Delta variant, the national daily average of new cases nearly tripled over the past month, said Kevin Stankiewicz in CNBC.com, surging to 35,000 this week. Former FDA chief Dr. Scott Gottlieb said the U.S. might be “vastly underestimating” the actual numbers of the infected, warning that “most people” who aren’t vaccinated— including young adults—“will get this Delta variant.”
“Vaccination rates have hit a wall of skepticism,” especially in rural America, said Michael Brendan Dougherty in NationalReview.com. Elites are convinced that these people must all be “morons,” but many skeptics are making a “risk-benefit calculation” that makes sense to them. Covid, they correctly say, is rarely fatal, especially for those under 60. Some feel the risk of getting Covid as an “act of God” is easier to accept “than the unknown risks of a vaccine that they did consciously choose to take.” Unfortunately, attempts to change their minds about vaccines backfire because they are “poisoned by condescension.” Let’s try “leveling” with skeptics, conceding that yes, there aren’t “long-term studies” on the vaccines, even if they do seem very safe so far.
Blaming experts and liberals is ridiculous, said Jennifer Rubin in WashingtonPost.com. Americans are refusing to get the vaccine mainly because of a “right-wing death cult” consisting of Fox News, anti-vaxxers on social media, and cynical Republican politicians who are actively discouraging vaccination to “own the libs.” Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), for example, mockingly calls the
Covid vaccine the “Fauci ouchie” and tweeted that “the easiest way to make the Delta variant go away is to turn off CNN.” Anti-vax disinformation spreads like wildfire on social media, and President Biden “hit the nail on the head” last week when he said Facebook, by spreading disinformation, is effectively “killing people.”
Remember how Democrats spoke of the vaccine when Donald Trump was president? asked Byron York in Washington Examiner.com. They recklessly accused the Trump administration of pressuring the FDA to rush the approval process. During the vice-presidential debate, Kamala Harris said, “If Donald Trump tells us that we should take it, I’m not taking it.” In a polarized nation, vaccination was bound to generate partisan suspicion, and if Trump had been re-elected, it would be Democrats refusing to roll up their sleeves. The Biden administration “made the early mistake of promising miracles in defeating Covid,” said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial, and now they’re blaming “red states and tech officials” for the predictable fact that vaccination will not be universal. The country needs to accept that some Covid cases will persist for the foreseeable future, “and that we have to live with it without shutting down the economy.”
There is a simple way to dramatically increase vaccination rates, said Matthew Yglesias in SlowBoring.com. The FDA needs to give full approval to the vaccines, which currently have only “emergency use authorization.” Vaccine skeptics cite that as proof that these are “experimental” vaccines, even though more than 150 million Americans are fully vaccinated with minimal side effects and astonishing levels of effectiveness. Once the FDA approves the vaccines, major institutions such as the military, private universities, and school districts in blue states could impose mandates, and vaccination could become mandatory for international travel. Full approval makes it easier for employers to require vaccination, too. It’s important to remember that many conservatives live in social circles where Covid is viewed as “hysteria driven by panicky libs,” and that refusing to wear masks and get the vaccine is “a heroic act of courage.” But if “you get the shot not because you’re afraid of Covid but because you have to” in order to work, go to school, leave the country, or attend big indoor events, you’ve got a good excuse. So FDA, let’s give these folks the excuse they need.