ANALYSIS | The next covid-19 tragedy in the United States may follow partisan lines

Mariana toro

(CNN) – President Joe Biden faces his toughest mission yet in the fight to rid the United States of COVID-19: depoliticize the pandemic.

With medical data and polls showing Republicans and citizens of conservative states are less likely to get vaccinated, the president must find new ways to win over an audience that is predisposed not to listen as fears of the atrocious deepen. regional foci of disease.

His task is complicated, and the need for a broader grassroots approach from the White House is underscored by the fact that after months of misinformation and lies about a stolen election, millions of supporters of former President Donald Trump do not believe that Biden It should be in the White House.

The question of why some Americans are so reluctant to get vaccinated, a process that hampers hopes of pushing the virus to full withdrawal, is causing mounting frustration for the governor of one of the most conservative states in the union: Republican Jim Justice of West Virginia.

“If you’re in West Virginia and you’re not vaccinated today, what’s the downside?” Justice asked during a televised briefing Tuesday.

“If we were all vaccinated, don’t you think fewer people would die? If you are not vaccinated, you are part of the problem and not of the solution ”.

Biden, who had just declared on the July 4 holiday that the darkest days of the crisis were over, on Tuesday tried a dovish approach to vaccine stocks, acknowledging that any suggestion of duress by the senior government official would be counterproductive. He graciously suggested that the most transmissible delta variant, which now accounts for more than half of all cases in the United States, should make them “think twice” before rejecting a highly effective vaccine.

The president did not intimidate or condemn vaccine skeptics, but instead played on the fibers of their hearts, appealing to their desire to protect family, friends and the country, warning that those who skipped the vaccine were largely following. risk.

“Please get vaccinated now. Works. It’s free. And it has never been easier, and it has never been more important. Do it now for yourself and the people you care about; for your neighborhood, for your country, ”said Biden, while implementing a redesigned US strategy to reach those who have not yet been vaccinated, which will include a greater emphasis on primary care physicians and pediatricians.

“It sounds corny but doing it is patriotic,” said the president.

Biden says there will be 160 million Americans fully vaccinated by the end of this week

The vaccination map looks like the political map

Biden has some political capital to spend after managing the successful rollout of covid-19 vaccines and as he stops the country from actively fighting the pandemic with measures such as widespread use of masks, business closures, and social distancing, to learn to live with the virus at lower levels.

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll found that more than 6 in 10 Americans approve of the way he handled the crisis, validating his decision to anchor his presidency with a promise to return the country to normalcy.

But, as is customary in a polarized nation, the poll showed a huge gulf in the perception of his performance among Republicans (only 8% of whom approve of the overall job he’s doing) and Democrats. Most troubling for the cause of ending the pandemic, the survey revealed a gulf in attitudes toward vaccines that helps explain why Biden missed the goal of at least 70% of Americans receiving a dose of the vaccine before the Independence Day holiday.

Polls showed that 86% of Democrats have received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, compared to just 45% of Republicans. And 38% of Republicans say they will definitely not get any doses of the vaccine.

In addition, in the 10 states where COVID-19 cases increased more than 10% in the last week, according to CNN figures, eight have Republican governors.

There are many reasons why someone may choose not to get vaccinated. People in rural areas, who often vote Republican, who haven’t seen major covid-19 outbreaks, and who live far from each other may not see the need. Younger people have been told they are at lower risk, although that may be changing with the delta variant. That population bloc is increasingly in the sights of the White House. Other Americans may be waiting for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to update its emergency approval of covid vaccines with full authorization.

ANALYSIS | How Older Americans Show Us Vaccines Work

A haunting reality

But a heartbreaking fact, rooted in the nation’s internal political distancing, is emerging, with nearly 160 million Americans fully vaccinated and deaths have dropped by 90% since January, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC).

More than 99% of COVID-19 deaths in June were in unvaccinated people, the country’s leading infectious disease specialist, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said on Sunday. That means all but a small proportion of those victims should still be alive, and every dose given from now on can save lives. In addition, as rates of covid-19 rise again after months of progress, new data shows that states with low vaccine rates have almost triple the rate of new cases of covid-19, according to Johns University. Hopkins.

Other data from the university that matches the 2020 election results show that 15 of the 16 states with the lowest percentage of fully vaccinated residents were won by Trump. And Biden won 19 of the 20 election battles ranked by the highest percentage of the population that is fully vaccinated. He shared state 20 – Maine – with Trump, winning three electoral votes against his opponent.

So while the argument that Democrats are more likely to get vaccinated than Republicans ignores some nuances, and there are medical, demographic, and economic considerations at play, the evidence strongly suggests that political leanings are an important determinant of attitudes toward vaccines.

Former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Dr. Thomas Frieden drew attention to an appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” when he noted that vaccines were developed during the Trump administration, in an apparent moment of rapprochement with the conservatives.

There are increasing real-time indications of a political undertone in the fight against covid-19.

Very pro-Trump West Virginia, for example, got off to a fast start in the vaccine race. But it has since slowed, despite offering incentives like lotteries for people to get their shots and now only 35% of its population is fully vaccinated, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University.

Justice explained what that means in human terms.

“We have a lottery that basically says, if you are vaccinated, we will give you things. You have another lottery going on: it’s the lottery of death, ”Justice said on ABC’s“ This Week ”on Sunday.

Republican governors ask their residents to get vaccinated against covid-19

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson also told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” Sunday that political and cultural reasons were hampering the vaccine effort in the wild.

“In a rural state in a conservative state, there is hesitation and you are trying to overcome that,” Hutchinson admitted.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the coronavirus has possessed an almost uncanny ability to widen American political divisions, a process exacerbated by politicians like Trump, who displayed suspicions about government and science among their voters for their own political advantage.

The basic act of wearing masks, social distancing, and restrictions introduced by federal, state, and local governments collided with American skepticism of authority and the nation’s genetic creed of individual liberty. However, in a pandemic, the unwillingness of one part of the population to get vaccinated eventually affects everyone else, as it expands the viral pool that could lead to vaccines avoiding variants and could also put a ceiling on activity. economic if a new social distancing is required. For Biden, this is also a political question, given the importance of relaunching the country to the Democrats’ midterm election hopes.

Trump undermined science

Whoever was in the Oval Office, the national preference for individualism over altruism has been a unique complication of America’s response to the pandemic, compared to some European and Asian nations where people have a more communal worldview.

And, in many ways, America’s independent streak and distrust of centralized power is a hallmark strength of a frontier nation born into a revolution that has built what is so far the most powerful economy ever seen.

But Trump, who is highly influential among grassroots conservatives, repeatedly undermined public health messages, in an apparent effort to galvanize his top supporters ahead of the 2020 election.

Even when he announced new federal guidelines recommending that Americans wear masks in public places in April 2020, the then president said he would not follow them. “I just don’t want to wear one myself,” Trump said, and spent the next several months openly disobeying public health guidelines while holding super-spreading events during his failed reelection campaign.

Trump’s pressure for conservative states to reopen last summer recognized the terrible number of closures that affected the economy overnight. But it also likely caused many deaths that could have been prevented with the rise in covid-19.

The chances that conservative Americans still reluctant to get vaccinated will belatedly listening to public health officials are further undermined by the assault on Fauci by Trump, his acolytes and the right-wing media.

Fauci warns that there may soon be “two US” as the gap between vaccinated and unvaccinated areas widens

The veteran official, who has served the Republican and Democratic administrations for decades, is being indicted without evidence of covering up China amid a debate over whether Covid-19 was naturally occurring or escaped from a virology lab in Wuhan.

The campaign appears designed to rewrite the history of Trump’s mishandling of the crisis and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans under his command as he contemplates a political comeback.

But when the country leaves behind a summer that restored many pre-pandemic freedoms, it would be a stark, if predictable, tragedy if the rising death toll in winter could be predicted just by looking at the electoral map.

The-CNN-Wire
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