26% of the total
Republicans told Kaiser Family Foundation they certainly wouldn’t get vaccinated, compared with 14% of independents and 2% of Democrats. The organization’s polling director Liz Hamel said that the Republican numbers had not changed in statistically significant ways for a year.
It is not an only American phenomenon. Areas of Europe, including those marked by anti-government nationalism, prominent populism in the GOP, have reduced vaccination rates, such as Germany and Austria.
But those countries and other countries with advanced economies still
Fully vaccinated stocks higher Their population is more than 60% of America. For example, CNN data shows Germany at 68%, Austria at 66%, Australia at 73% and Canada at 76%.
America has a century of experience with this problem. What Biden now has to do with frustrating predecessors in the fight against smallpox, polio, measles and swine flu.
“Vaccine resistance is as old as vaccination,” says Elena Conis, a medical historian at the University of California, Berkeley.
Outcry often stems from three overlapping sources: religious objections, claims of individual rights, and disputes over medical risks. As early as the Asian flu epidemic of 1957, the Gallup poll measured Republicans’ higher resistance to vaccines.
The evolution of the GOP since then has made it even more resistant. Its most influential constituencies – white Protestants, blue-collar workers, rural residents – are increasingly felt
threatened by racial, cultural and economic changes in the 21st century and hostile to the well-educated “elite” in government and big cities.
One notable change:
In a Gallup poll This summer, just 45% of Republicans expressed confidence in science, down from 72% in 1975. The corresponding figure for 2021 between Democrats and independents is 79% and 65%. And polls show Republicans are more likely to say the dangers of the coronavirus have been exaggerated.
Trump leaned into that sentiment and ignited it last year. He has clashed with public health authorities even as they say could have helped him politically by curbing the pandemic.
He led
attack Dr. Anthony Fauci, government’s preeminent infectious disease specialist. Trump supported vaccine development early on — and gave it himself after surviving Covid-19 — but hasn’t actively promoted vaccination since.
Biden followed the familiar vaccination campaign book. It starts with making ready-made photos easily, then uses persuasion. In 1956, public health authorities courted reluctant youths by giving Elvis Presley a new televised polio vaccine; Biden enlists in the army
pop star Olivia Rodrigo, among others.
The next step is tangible immunization incentives, such as
$100 payment Biden asks states to provide who were previously reluctant. Government-imposed mandates represent a last resort.
“I waited until July to talk about the mandate, because I tried everything else I could,” the President told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in a statement.
CNN City Hall October.
At the time, the Delta variant fueled the pandemic’s resurgence after months of declining coronavirus case numbers. Some experts, such as former Baltimore health commissioner Dr. Leana Wen, a CNN contributor, say that earlier missions may have caused Delta to drop.
Andy Slavitt, a White House adviser during the inaugural months of the administration has a pretty high chance of letting people down. In previous vaccination campaigns, the missions have provoked a backlash.
So far, government and private sector mandates have succeeded in fostering hesitation without dissolving core resistance. The proportion of blacks and Hispanics reporting that they received at least one dose of the drug, once far behind the proportion of whites, has steadily increased toward parity.
Last week,
Biden outlined new steps to encourage vaccinations in hopes of preventing a winter spike. He dodged asking for proof of vaccinations for domestic flights, which White House aides fear would destroy airports, hurt the economy and anger voters.
That has challenged outside health experts, who say the last resort to using a vaccine to quell the pandemic has been achieved.
“There’s no more convincing,” said Anna Kirkland, a professor of health policy at the University of Michigan.
But even that, history shows, has so far only been Biden’s vaccination campaign.
“Catch as many as you can,” Conis concluded. “With vaccination is often the best we can do.”